I’m taking an on-line behavioral genetics course. Its a very straight forward class: read a chapter each week and answer questions on the course website by Friday.
Last week, we were on the chapter discussing cognitive ability - the genetic factors related to intellegence. One of our study questions was “What do you think are the most important finding or concepts in this chapter?”
I answered, “The correlation between school achievement test scores and general cognitive ability is an interesting concept. Also, the stastical evidence that genetics play a larger factor intellegence as a subject ages is something that should be researched further. These factors imply that no matter how hard I study for the test next week, the results will have more to do with my genes than with my study habits.”
I figured that the professor just check to see if the study questions were posted on time and didn’t read them.
Prof emailed me. “What did you mean by the answer your posted to question #11?” What is that saying about “assume”?
I can’t imagine reading that line and not recognizing either a joke or a bit of despair. No big deal; you had a long-assed day, you were tired, and you made a little joke.
As long as the joke is out there, you can always consider it as well. It funny because it’s “true,” not necessarily true; if I were the prof and you could make clear you understood it, I wouldn’t have any problems. Profs like to be amused, too; just as long as you learn the material.
Hey, I’m just impressed that the professor is apparently reading and responding to the quiz answers. I’ve take a couple of online courses, and I would swear that it was a bot at the other end.
For awhile I thought I could enter in poems by Robert Frost and get credit for the assignment. Last week someone from this class sent an email asking if anyone else was having a difficult time. Maybe this made the prof pay more attention.
Dear Professor: please excuse the addendum at the end of response 11. I have a precocious younger brother visiting and he occassionally likes to tack on extra sentences to my posts and emails when I am in the restroom.
I taught college classes in graduate school, and the bonehead remark from my first post was an actual comment inserted into the middle of a short paper. And this was my class, I wasn’t just grading papers. Needless to say, that kid was lucky I have a sense of humor. I think I wrote something along the lines of “Yes, I am reading it, and I strongly advise refraining from such comments in the future.” I reckoned that was more professional than “Yeah, I’m fucking reading it you fucking 'tard!”
My favorite ever was when I was grading for an economic-history course. One of the answers to the questions on the midterm involved the word “peasant,” and most of the students accidently wrote “pheasants.” Without any further comment, I wrote things like “Isn’t that a bird?” “Gosh, that’s one clever bird,” and so on. On the final exam, there was a similar question; everybody got “peasant” correct. One student wrote “peasant,” and then added, “not the bird, thank you!” Man, I cracked up.
Our 9th grade History teacher was a lawyer who’d been asked by the school to sub for another guy and stayed. The other 9th grade History teacher was a Jesuit out of the Dark Ages (when, by the way, the SJ had not been invented yet) who made his students memorize lists of battle dates; Mr. C claimed that he wanted to spark in us an interest in History, not scare us away from it and that he didn’t mind if we never got to the end of the book or knew what day of the week did St. Quentin happen in, so long as we learned to… learn from our forebears’ mistakes.
A classmate’s answer to one of our Monday essay tests was to write down the recipe for roast salmon. She got a 9. So, after declaring that Mr. C really didn’t read the essays (as rumor had it), next week she wrote the recipe for potato omelette. And got it back with a 5 and a note saying: “you forgot the salt, the salmon was much better” :smack:
We never got anywhere near the end of the book, but it was a helluva fun class and it did spark an interest in History in most of us.
That last sentence in your response is… uhm… in need of clarification but actually true. After all, while you and I both know that how much you study will have an impact in your grades, it’s also true that having a good, perfectly functional brain (which you do, MouseMom be damned) is sort of a necessary requisite. Or, as the cover for Discworld the PC Game put it, requirements include “a hemispherical brain in good working order”. Just clarify it with the profe and you should be ok.
That’s entirely how I would have interpreted it. I probably would’ve responded with an equally sarcstic comment, something about reviewing range of reaction or risking Canalization with a capital C-.
The prof may have been going one better: this comment may have spoken to a sense of despair, as someone else pointed out. The prof may be checking in with the OP to make sure (s)he isn’t feeling overwhelmed.
Or, since it’s a behavioral-science course, it could be something about Cognitive Dissonance with either a captial C- or a capital D+. Both would be better than Fucked Up with a captial E.
In undergrad, I had a test in an archaeology class that asked “name the archaeologist who conducted the excavation of the Neolithic village in Soandso Valley in Okalahoma.” I couldn’t remember for the life of me, so I answered “I can’t remember his name offhand, but he’s a really great guy and lots of fun at parties.” The professor wrote back “met him once or twice myself!” and gave me full credit. Turns out it was him.
