Well, I’m an older student too. That being said, I can relate to the OP. Last semester I had this stupid cow (yes, yes she was a stupid cow) who felt that because she was a “Mature Student” she should be excepted from writing the final on the scheduled day, because it interfered with her holiday. Additionally, because of all her life experience, she knew more about genetics than the prof. Did I mention that the prof was a geneticist? It took all my strenght not to laugh out loud when he verbally smacked her down with a detailed description of Mendilin genetics, including diagrams, and pretty much a big pointing arrow to her saying “You’re an idiot.” Ah, it was great.
However:
Are you sure you’re not confusing relating to with ass kissing? I’m the same age or older than many of my profs - therefore I’m going to relate to them differently (on a more “peer” level) than some 18 year old just out of high school.
Well, I’m sure we could all agree that the two go hand-in-hand to a certain degree. Both are fine in small amounts, but- when over done- it’s annoying. I suppose it isn’t ass kissing in the traditional sense, but I see it as a new, exciting variation on traditional ass kissing
Why, in my day we weren’t allowed to ramble. Why, I remember back in 1942 we had to get right to the point, yes sir, because there was a war on and we had no time to waste, so we’d keep the conversations short and carry on with the scrap-metal drive to keep the factories working, and wouldn’t you know it but toothpaste in those days came in tubes of soft lead, not like that fancy plastic stuff you kids have today, so they’d always be telling us: “you brush your teeth nice and clean and save the tube for Uncle Sam”, they did, so when I went to my dental appointments (which were hard to get because all the good dentists were over in Europe ‘cause of the war), they always said “That’s a nice set of choppers you got there, son,” and I’d smile all the way home, well, that was back when I had my own teeth, not like these things [pops out false teeth to scare the grandkids, then puts them back in to continue]. Say, did you kids know George Washington had wooden teeth? Boy, that was another thing that was scarce when I was a kid. Our favourite pictures of George Washington were always on the good ol’ dollar bill, but times was tough and we’d say to each other “Seen George lately?” and you were supposed to say “Not since 1929”, which was the big joke of the day. Of course, if you HAD seen George, a good kid would treat his friends to a visit to the amusement park, where you could get hot dogs for a nickel and ride the tilt-a-whirl, though if you were smart you rode the tilt-a-whirl first 'cause you didn’t want to give your hot dog back, if you know what I mean. Yeah, then there was the hall of mirrors, and the favourite one was the one that made you look fat, becuae none of us really had any meat on our bones to spare, what with the Depression and then the War and all, not like kids today with their big Nintender thumbs and trinkies cakes, or whatever they’re called. Now, if you had a penny left over after the day at the park, you were supposed to put it in the poorbox at Church, but I usually tricked my folks and I’d drop in a small flat rock instead so it would make that sound, though I’d kept my penny. Now the best flat rocks in those days were found down by the beach…
This was particularly annoying with two people I had in classes one semester. Nothing wrong with either of them, I guess, but:
Person 1: A woman, somewhere around 40, I’d guess, and she has 2 kids. Runs a theatre in a neighboring town. She talks, and talks, and talks about how the professors grade her unfairly, she walks out of the class crying about a C she got on a test, and grarrgh. On the plus side, she was incredibly organized and did put a lot of time into things. She let me study with her one night, and (to her dismay), I almost aced the test that she got a B on, after I studied for 3 hours, and she studied the whole weekend. But she made copies of things for me.
Person B: Veteran, in his 40’s, has kids. I’m going to stop here, because none of that description was needed above, and I don’t want to erase it b/c I don’t want to have typed it for nothing.
Not to stereotype needlessly here, but I have noticed a definite trend for older people to be more likely to share what pops into their head in class.
In my one-weekly clinical psych research methods class, after one class, I have learned the following about one of my non-traditional student peers:
-He came from the South
-He went to UNC
-No, not the Chapel Hill that everyone talks about, Raleigh
-Raleigh was a great place to live until the furniture business went downhill
-He’s really looking forward to applying his statistics class that he took at UNC-Raleigh
-He always had trouble with remembering to include a category column in StatView and has to erase everything that he types in and type it over again
And this was in response to what question from the prof? “So, everyone here has met the course prerequisites for statistics and psychopathology?” Gah.
I am instructor at a business school, where I teach computer science classes. One class I teach fairly regularly is an Intoduction to Computers class, which is designed to make sure that incoming students in the Computer Science program have a good solid understanding of what a computer is, and the basics of how they work.
When I taught the class last term, I had a mature student who had tons of mechanical engineering experience through the Army, and who used computers extensively in the 1970’s, but who really hadn’t spent much time working with computers since then. He sat in the front row, and as soon as I asked any question on any topic, he would start answering it. Okay, the enthusiasm was good, but the vast majority of his answers either had nothing to do with 21st-century computers, or were so technicial that no one else in the class had a clue was he was talking about. That meant that not only did he use class time telling irrelevant stories, but I then had to spend additional class time pointing out how things were different now, or trying to explain to the other students what he was talking about. As we got further into the term, he even started cutting off other students’ comments during class, and more than once, I had to ask him to PLEASE let someone else talk. The more polite I was, though, the less he seemed to get my point, and as much as I hated it, I did occasionally have to be almost rude to him about taking up so much class time.
The majority of my students, though, are the blank-stare younger students, who really don’t seem to understand how much money they are throwing away by attending a class but doing as little as humanly possible in the class. It irritates me even more when I’m trying to teach them basic stuff that they need to know for their major and their chosen career, but they seem to think that sitting in the classroom staring at me is sufficient to get them into the $70,000/year jobs they’ve been told they can get with a degree in programming.
I LIKE students who ask questions, and if I had my druthers, I would conduct class by choosing a topic and letting the students ask questions about that topic for the entire period.
I have no problem with the OP unless it is used as an overgeneralization, and a stereotype.
I have been going to school on and off for the last 30 years or so, and have had to take classes in which I had extensive knowledge. (One prof: “Why are you taking this class, you could be teaching it?” Me: “Um, because it’s required, and they don’t offer any way to test out of it?”)
But I have tried to always be helpful and not disruptive. I haven’t asked why a professor was teaching it in that order and introducing this concept before that one. (Even after class.) If I needed to ask a question that was probably above the level of the class, I tried to keep it short or ask it after class. I have tried to be helpful by offering my debugging experience when a classroom experiment went wrong – but only quietly and quickly where possible.
I hope that younger students realize that a lot of older students are self-educated and occasionally have gaps in their education. In order to integrate what we are learning with what we already know, we sometimes need to ask a question which may sound strange or overly complex to the other students. As I said above, I try to make these short or ask them after class. But if you listen, you might find yourself understanding a subject better also.
Take advantage of the knowledge and life experience of the older students. Who knows, maybe by networking with them, you might get an “in” on a tough job market?
I realize that some of us old farts tend to wander in our conversations. Just don’t paint us all with the same broad brush. And, like another poster said, some of us hate gaps in the flow – “Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?” – and tend to jump in with answers if we know them. So, speaking up yourself might help.
You seem aware of, and avoid, the pitfalls of the minority of “non-trad” students who annoy.
I could always tell within the first class if there was a bad apple. He would almost immediately pipe up with a statement that had all of the following characteristics:
Tangentially related or completely unrelated.
Spoken without a shread of succinctness; seemingly unaware that the soliloquy is taking up instruction time from the class and himself.
Personally-related instead of subject-related.
90% of the rest of the statements during the sememster from that student would also follow the rules.
This is a far cry from the attentive student who asks a lot of or complicated questions in order to learn more.
My nighttime graduage classes (MBA), though skewed to an older average age than undergraduate classes, seem to be free of the ramblers. Maybe because the subject matter tends to attract succinct people? Maybe because people see the classes for their uitility than their “enlightenment” qualities more associated with liberal arts classes?
