IANAT, but this incident from 8th grade stands out in my mind as if it were yesterday…
Teacher: Ok class, today we’ll be talking about canines. We all know that dogs are canines, so can anyone name any other animals that are canines as well?
Student (hand shoots up Horshack style) OOH! OOH! FOXES AND WOLVES-ES!
:rolleyes:
I still remember this one from the 7th grade:
STUDENT: Mrs. K, if I wanted to hand in a pro, could I. . .
MRS. K: A pro?!
STUDENT: Yeah, you said we could hand in poetry or prose. So if I wanted to hand in a pro, could I. . .
My OOP professor is writing a book, entitled Students Write the Darndest Code. The kicker was reading an answer on a test which went like:
if (Ptr == NULL)
{Ptr->(etc.);}
If he ever publishes it, I’m so going to buy a copy.
I spent a good 90 minutes or so trying to convince them otherwise to no avail. . . Of course one of them ended up in the family way before the school year was out. No telling how many aspirin laced Cokes she drank. . .
Last year I took a lower division American Studies class that was optioned for G.E. credit, so the class had a wide range of students from freshmen up to fourth and fifth year students, from all majors. The final project was to write an eight to ten page group paper, each group had eight or nine people. My group decided that we’d have each person except one write a page or so and turn it in to the last person, who would have the responsibility of compiling the pages into one cohesive document.
I got picked to be the person.
We had two weeks before the due date when the paper was assigned. Mind you, each person only had to write one page of double-spaced text. One. That’s what, three or four paragraphs? The group agreed to have their pages turned in at least four days before the due date, so I’d have time to rearrange everything, rewrite stuff to make the language cohesive, and give it some structure.
The day before the paper was due, I had one person’s page. By eight o’clock that night, after I’d called and threatened dire consequences, they were all emailed to me.
Now, here’s the really bad part. A couple of them were logically constructed, made actual points, showed some modicum of thought and ability to use the English language. Three of them were mediocre, clearly written at the last moment with no thought whatsoever. Sloppy, but understandable. Two pages, between them, had a total of three actual sentences. I’m talking about structurally sound, containing a subject and a predicate, makes perfect sense, complete sentences. Both writers had used the “word” – are you ready for this? uncomfortability. Two different people, in separate papers.
The mind boggles.
In an AP Geography class this year (don’t ask why I’m there, it’s a matter of credits), our teacher was talking to the class about climate zones in America. She asked where we could find tropical climates in America.
Quack: Hawaii.
Nearby fool: That’s not one of the United States.
Quack: Slaps forehead Argh. Yes it is.
Fool: Since when?
Quack: It’s been a while now, trust me.
I have to know - how did he suggest we prevent it?
IANAT or a student, but I do a lot of essays and rants and things. One of them turned into a flame war of college-age kids. I spent most of the debate pointing out that the definitions of words in the dictionary were not just ‘guidelines.’ There was no reading comprehension whatsoever, and at least of these kids was a graduate student. They kept arguing stuff because they wanted it to go their way, and who cared if the dictionary contradicted them? Anyway, it got so bad I had to lock the post. A couple months passed and some college kid emailed me, more or less demanding that I open this post so he could use it as the basis for his discussion in his class. Now, it’s a controversial subject, and I’d been treated pretty badly by the people who liked this particular…thing. So I questioned the kid cautiously, and it turns out he was in favor of it, which meant he he had lied to me when he claimed he had no interest in the subject. Then he tried to claim that his professor would email me, but he gave me a free email address. Finally, after he displayed some truly scary reasoning ability, I told him that I really couldn’t feel comfortable allowing him to use my piece in his class. I got this in response:
The bolded statement refers to a sexually explicit story one of the, er, debaters wrote about me in revenge for writing the essay criticizing their habit of…writing sexually explicit stories about real people, usually actors or so on. What’s scary? A lot of those kids had no idea—and asked questions which proved it----that actors and the characters they play are not the same people. There’s some serious reality issues there. And the spelling, oh God, the spelling—and the attitude that comes with it. “At least we don’t care too much about spelling and grammar because we have lives, you know,” was what one of these kids sneered at me. (I corrected the grammar and spelling, obviously.)
It would have to be the student who showed up on the very last day of class, having not made it to any since the very first class, and asked “is there anything I can do to save my grade”???
Ummm. I will work with students and bend over backward to help them keep from getting an F or lowering their GPA, but not ever coming to class, and then expecting to be able to pull it out of the fire in the 11th hour?
sigh.
I know that story, CanvasShoes. Here’s what I like to say when a student asks me (after doing no work whatsoever for the entire term) if there’s anything he can do to save his grade:
Me [very straight-faced] : OK, I think there’s something you can do. It just might work…
Student [eager] : Anything; I’ll do anything [except, of course, do any reading or class work during the term]
Me: I want you to go find a DeLorean…
Student: Um, OK…
Me: Make sure the flux capacitor is working, and then drive it to around 88 MPH. Then, you see, you can go back to the first day of class and read the material like everyone else! I think that’ll work great!
Student: Ugh.
(Note: I don’t do this with just anyone, or with F students, because first, I don’t want to be too cruel; second, because there might be a legitimate problem causing the poor grade; and third, because they probably wouldn’t get the joke anyway. I reserve this for bright and capable, but lazy, students.)
One student emailed me asking about a work by Michelangelo we had discussed in class, the Sixteen Chapels.
Another closed his paper about a visit to the museum by noting that visiting museums would make his girlfriend think he was a sensitive guy.
I had to (no choice, it was a component of the class) make the students create an art project. I had them turn in a prospectus, but changed it to a proposal after everyone spelled prospectus differently the first semester. Despite the proposal, many students ended up changing their projects at the last second, mostly to collages of magazine cut outs. One turned in a store bought 3-D puzzle. The semester Tupac died I got over a dozen tributes to him in various media. My favorite art project of all time was probably the wire sculpture of a pimp bitchslapping a whore. All I could say at the time was “Why?”
OUCH, you almost made me pee my pants! That’s a good one, I wish I could use it. But I’m a big ole softie pushover, I try to let them down as gently as possible, and I feel really bad for them.
Also, I teach PE for crying out loud. So it’s not like the students even HAVE to be “bright” just do the few assignments and show up. According to my students remarks on my evals over the last 5 years, it’s the most fun PE classes they’ve ever taken.
So I’m always thinking “how hard could this be? there are only 3 assignments, you show up and are entertained and get a good workout, then you get to go back to your day all endorphined out and feeling good”.
But even so, when I have to hand in my grade sheets, I always feel guilty about that one F. Argggghhh.
gee, could that post have had a few MORE mistakes?? 
This might not be entirely appropriate, but it’s too good not to share:
At a Jiu Jitsu first aid course, some one sticks up their hand and asks ‘What happens if someone comes in the dojo with an enormous strap on?’
IANAT, but I’ve been cohosting an afternoon science program at our local elementary school for a couple of weeks. The program is designed to introduce fun science to children who are in kindergarten to second grade. Our science program is weak and some of us (the mom’s) decided to do something about it.
The little kids are so eager that they spend nearly the whole hour with their hands waving in the air hoping to be called on to provide and answer to a question (any question!). When called on, they never seem to know the answer and start off with a very long “Ummmmm…” while they try to think of something.
Last weeks topic was ‘simple machines’ (wheel, incline, screw, etc). For some reason, the whole class began offering “ferris wheel” as the answer to most questions asked. I swear, it was like a contagious disease! “Ummm…ferris wheel.”, “ferris wheel!!”, "umm…ferris wheel?. I had to pinch myself to keep from laughing.
OK, I am in medical school. Mind you, that’s medical school, where you’ve supposedly passed a number of science courses in undergrad including general chemistry, organic chemistry, biology and physics as well as a couple of years of science courses in medical school itself.
So we’re in a lecture and one of my classmates was reading a case presentation out loud for the group to discuss. The patient being described was taking an “H[sub]2[/sub] blocker” which is basically a drug like Tagamet that blocks the Histamine[sub]2[/sub] receptor in the stomach. But the guy reads it outloud as the “hydrogen blocker.” I can understand this mistake, obviously, because “H[sub]2[/sub]” is also used for hydrogen gas, and there is another class of drugs, the proton pump inhibitors, that block production of hydrogen ions in the stomach as well.
So I didn’t say anything immediately, but after we were done discussing the case, I leaned over and said, “Hey, H[sub]2[/sub] refers to the histamine receptor, not hydrogen”
So he says to me, “Oh yeah, you’re right, H[sub]2[/sub] is Helium.”
:eek: :rolleyes:
In my second grade class one of my classmates sneezed on the teacher as she walked by, and got strings of snot all over her, connected from his nose to her dress!
Nacho4Sara, I would also appreciate it if you e-mailed me the paper.
You may be a been, but I am most definetly a weenie.