Why, God, Why are you taking this class? Bad Students Redux

I have a question. Why are Southern people still flying that flag? They lost. Like, over a 150 years ago. Let it go already.

I'm from the United States South, and I don't understand this.

because the civil war isnt over yet apparently

just go to mississippi for a few days and see jim crow still in action

also lol at the one california electoral district that spirals through all the white neighborhoods but avoids as many black voters as humanly possible

~my spirit animal is the gerrymander~

This isn't an official college course I'm taking, it's more like a self-improvement class that gathers in a book store once a week to help people improve their writing. There's one girl in the class (I've mentioned her earlier) who is usually very quiet, but every other day or so, she'll say something so incredibly stupid and narrow-minded that it literally drops some peoples jaws.

First of all, she always complains about her dog dying when she was 12, and how traumatized she was because she loved the dog so much. Every writing project she has written so far has been about this damn dog, which leads me to the next point...

She can't take criticism. We've started giving peer critiques of each others writing by passing our work around a circle, reading it, and giving each other our opinion. She wrote a story about an obvious self insert character (with "deep brown eyes that can bore into your soul" or some shit) and her dog. It wasn't eye-gougingly bad, but her prose was like a baby calf learning to walk on stilts, jerky and awkward. She wasn't the only one with awkward prose, and I told her and the other two offenders about it. The other two offenders nodded their heads and considered what I was saying. Her response?

"You think everything is awkward."

Than it came time for my story, which featured a main character who was both spiteful and obsessive. Her criticisms...

Quote :

"He repeats things."

Well, he is an obsessive, and it's written from his POV, so I would think his thoughts would be a bit repetitive.

Quote :

"He seems very hateful, he's a lot like you"

Mr.Doobie wrote:

First of all, she always complains about her dog dying when she was 12, and how traumatized she was because she loved the dog so much. Every writing project she has written so far has been about this damn dog, which leads me to the next point...

She can't take criticism. We've started giving peer critiques of each others writing by passing our work around a circle, reading it, and giving each other our opinion. She wrote a story about an obvious self insert character (with "deep brown eyes that can bore into your soul" or some shit) and her dog. It wasn't eye-gougingly bad, but her prose was like a baby calf learning to walk on stilts, jerky and awkward. She wasn't the only one with awkward prose, and I told her and the other two offenders about it. The other two offenders nodded their heads and considered what I was saying. Her response?

"You think everything is awkward."

LOL, it's kind of like a female CWC, quick somebody hook these two up

No wait, then they might breed

Quote :

Quote :

"He seems very hateful, he's a lot like you"

Bwahahahaha

Mr.Doobie wrote:

Quote :

"He seems very hateful, he's a lot like you"

Oh wow.
Seems like what you said really got to her.

DarthDarthington wrote:

Mr.Doobie wrote:

First of all, she always complains about her dog dying when she was 12, and how traumatized she was because she loved the dog so much. Every writing project she has written so far has been about this damn dog, which leads me to the next point...

She can't take criticism. We've started giving peer critiques of each others writing by passing our work around a circle, reading it, and giving each other our opinion. She wrote a story about an obvious self insert character (with "deep brown eyes that can bore into your soul" or some shit) and her dog. It wasn't eye-gougingly bad, but her prose was like a baby calf learning to walk on stilts, jerky and awkward. She wasn't the only one with awkward prose, and I told her and the other two offenders about it. The other two offenders nodded their heads and considered what I was saying. Her response?

"You think everything is awkward."

LOL, it's kind of like a female CWC, quick somebody hook these two up

No wait, then they might breed

Quote :

Quote :

"He seems very hateful, he's a lot like you"

Bwahahahaha

Nihilist wrote:

Mr.Doobie wrote:

(with "deep brown eyes that can bore into your soul" or some shit)

She's smart knowing that I'd go straight for her brown eye.

What can I say, her multiple deep assholes bore into my soul. Going to have to clean that shit out, though.

Lurv wrote:

Mr.Doobie wrote:

Quote :

"He seems very hateful, he's a lot like you"

Oh wow.
Seems like what you said really got to her.

Oh, I wasn't done. I just had to go to one of those classes. And today was one of those days.

Bear in mind this girl is about 19-20, she's a college freshman, so it's not like she's younger than the rest of us or anything, so she doesn't have youthful naivety going for her...

So today we did more reviews of each others work. When we all got in a circle to share, she took her chair back to a corner and sat there with a trying-way-too-hard-to-look-defiant look of smugness plastered on her face. The teacher asked her (paraphrasing) what the hell she thought she was doing, and she responded by saying, "I don't want to do this. I think it's stupid."

"Well how else are you supposed to grow as an artist?"

"All you guys do is critique me, you're all stupid."

"That's the point of this circle."

"You don't have to say negative things about my writing though."

" [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] "

"Your all so mean and negative people, your just crippling my creativity. You're all stupid."

She than proceeded to spend the rest of the peer review session just sitting in the corner and ignoring us.

As for other anecdotes, we have a girl in the class who's a recovering cutter. In the class, we had to share a mundane thing of great emotional importance to us, and the recovering cutter brought in a poster she made when she was 16 as part of her self-harm therapy. She began to go into a slightly teary eyed explanation about how the therapy helped save her life and how grateful she was for it.

In comes this other girl, comparing the one girls struggles with self-harm to her dog dying. This comparison involved the girl saying "I mean, you can just get over your cutting. I'll never get over my little dog dying."

That comment had me and several other members of the class about to go on a [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] spree.

Than there's also the other comments that I quoted in the other thread that I talked about this girl in. Like how when we were discussing parody-as-literature she said...

Quote :

"I don't write in that style. So I think it's stupid."

Seriously, there is not enough [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] emoticons in the world to describe this girl.

I'll keep you posted on further stupid comments to come...

Mr.Doobie wrote:

As for other anecdotes, we have a girl in the class who's a recovering cutter. In the class, we had to share a mundane thing of great emotional importance to us, and the recovering cutter brought in a poster she made when she was 16 as part of her self-harm therapy. She began to go into a slightly teary eyed explanation about how the therapy helped save her life and how grateful she was for it.

In comes this other girl, comparing the one girls struggles with self-harm to her dog dying. This comparison involved the girl saying "I mean, you can just get over your cutting. I'll never get over my little dog dying."

Oh my lord, she is a female CWC [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Has she tried to tell someone who lost a relative to suicide or in the 9/11 attacks to "just move on" and compare her dog dying to their situation as an example of how she got over it (even though she still talks about it all the fucking time)?

I was amused and Picard-ing over her previous quotes, but really, this thing with the ex-cutter just infuriates me.

DarthDarthington wrote:

Mr.Doobie wrote:

As for other anecdotes, we have a girl in the class who's a recovering cutter. In the class, we had to share a mundane thing of great emotional importance to us, and the recovering cutter brought in a poster she made when she was 16 as part of her self-harm therapy. She began to go into a slightly teary eyed explanation about how the therapy helped save her life and how grateful she was for it.

In comes this other girl, comparing the one girls struggles with self-harm to her dog dying. This comparison involved the girl saying "I mean, you can just get over your cutting. I'll never get over my little dog dying."

Oh my lord, she is a female CWC [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Has she tried to tell someone who lost a relative to suicide or in the 9/11 attacks to "just move on" and compare her dog dying to their situation as an example of how she got over it (even though she still talks about it all the fucking time)?

I hope so, since then they'd be fully justified in beating her ass.

Mr.Doobie wrote:

First of all, she always complains about her dog dying when she was 12, and how traumatized she was because she loved the dog so much. Every writing project she has written so far has been about this damn dog, which leads me to the next point...

She can't take criticism. We've started giving peer critiques of each others writing by passing our work around a circle, reading it, and giving each other our opinion. She wrote a story about an obvious self insert character (with "deep brown eyes that can bore into your soul" or some shit) and her dog.

Clearly the only solution here is to write an X-rated parody of her story where she loves her dog a little too much, if you get my drift.

DarthDarthington wrote:

Mr.Doobie wrote:

As for other anecdotes, we have a girl in the class who's a recovering cutter. In the class, we had to share a mundane thing of great emotional importance to us, and the recovering cutter brought in a poster she made when she was 16 as part of her self-harm therapy. She began to go into a slightly teary eyed explanation about how the therapy helped save her life and how grateful she was for it.

In comes this other girl, comparing the one girls struggles with self-harm to her dog dying. This comparison involved the girl saying "I mean, you can just get over your cutting. I'll never get over my little dog dying."

Implying losing a relative in a terrorist attack is the same as being a little cutter bitch.

lol [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

grmblfjx wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Being an ass

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Pillow fight. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Sooooo all I have to do to revive this thread is talk. I figured necromancy to be more complicated.

Anyway, I started a new school a month ago and I feel like talking about my classmates. You see, I am going to a school to be a goldsmith... ta-da! Weird artsy people. And just weird people.



The first person I noticed was in our orientation class, ten minutes in on the very first day. He's the type that will sit in row five-out-of-seven (read: towards the back) and respond to everything the teacher says allllllll the way in the front there, as if they were having a personal conversation.
The principal was talking about where to smoke (in a nutshell: not on school premises), and he just interrupted and went WHAT ABOUT SMOKING HEADS?? When the principal didn't understand, he said, "you know, if we're working hard and thinking a lot and out heads start smoking?"
To which the principal said, "ohhh. I though you said smoking pot."

At one point, the teacher was explaining something, and one girl said what about lefties? When the teacher said, well, you just mirror everything, Dude said, OH GOOD I WAS GOING TO ASK THAT.
Ten minutes later he asked how to do it since he was a leftie. The teacher, slightly incredulously, asked, "we just talked about it, did you miss it?" and he went, yeah, I must have.
In another class everyone was drawing the left side of an object, so he asked if he could draw the right side, since he was a leftie (). The teacher said, well, these are engineering drawings, there are set rules to follow, so no, and he insisted he was lefthanded OMG lefthanded! Teacher says, I don't know what to tell you, and he goes BUT I'M LEFT-HANDED!!!!!


Then, there's the punk. He's a friendly, easygoing kid, very cheerful overall, and I like him a lot, but OH MY DEITY OF CHOICE DOES HE SMELL. The other day he smelled, well, I think it was his shirt actually. It smelled as if it had been at the bottom of the dirty laundry pile for the last week before he put it on again.
Today, he opened the window and a breeze came in. I was unlucky enough to sit downwind, even though there were several people between us.



Then there's a girl like a yappy little dog. Once, she managed to cut herself with one of the things we were working with (these things being paper; a ruler; a pencil) and was told to go over to Shop to get a bandaid. The second she got back and opened the door (and mind you, there was a class in progress) she started yapping into the room. "I got a bandaid, had to find an open shop first, and they had to get the box for me because I'm too short, and they were all like, do you not have bandaids in your shop?? and I said, nuh, I don't have shop today, we're doing technical drawings, and they were all how did you manage to cut yourself???? and I said, I don't know!!!!"

We also have a few not-goldsmithing related classes, and in one of those we were discussing welfare, and she goes (unasked): "they all have huge flatscreen TVs!" Class: "??" Yappy girl: "It's true, I saw it on television!!"



One other girl, she's fairly nice and quiet, definitely not one of the ones getting on my nerves, but she's so... strange. She will sit with other people, which I condone wholeheartedly, and try so, so hard to contribute to the conversation; but half the time what happens is that she hears someone say something, anything, has an associative thought... some memory of some vaguely related event or something... and throws that out there (complete with saying names instead of relations- "Amy" instead of "a friend", and then everyone wonders if we should know who Amy is)... and then never goes past that one sentence. Hypothetical situation; we might be talking about our favorite foods, someone says, "I LOVE spaghetti, and this one place at home makes the best spaghetti ever, omg"; and she'll go "we went on a class trip once and Claire made really good spaghetti." The END.





Also, I have a real live-action weeaboo in my class. Well, not quite -she doesn't pretend to be Japanese- but she did try to learn the language, listens exclusively to J-Rock, does interesting things with her hair and clothes, has glitterized her phone and the one time ~*~GACKT~*~ came to Germany she went to Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich to see concerts (I'll leave it up to you to find the distances involved here) because WHEN THESE PEOPLE COME HERE YOU GOTTA MAKE THE MOST OF IT IT DOESN'T HAPPEN OFTEN!!
What throws me is that she is a really nice, down-to-earth, sensible person.

All I want to do is strangle the Anthropology student in my course on the different criminal justice systems. I want to tell her, "Look, I get that this is a Criminal Justice course and therefore isn't your major. I get that you're probably taking it to fulfill some requirement and that's all you care about. But this is an upper level course and that means you must have some sort of mind to have gotten this far in your studies."

However, when discussing the incident with the Sri Lankan maid, she kept saying "But why didn't they just send her back if she didn't want to work anymore?" Not only did she completely miss the point of why they wouldn't have done such a thing, her repeated questions prevented us from discussing how this was being handled legally.

She's a goddamned Anthropology student - isn't the point of that major to learn to observe other cultures and determine things from their perspective?"

When our professor used her background and current family situation (she's Indian but attended a strict Muslim school for awhile) to help us understand Islamic law and conflicts between Indians and Muslims, this girl didn't want to let the professor's personal life go.

More than once, she has also asked questions that are so poorly worded, our professor has to stop and stare and say "I'm afraid I don't understand what you're trying to say..." and we waste more time while the girl tries to clarify. Half the time, the question proves to only be mildly relevant.

I am also irritated by the number of students who ignore the fact the professor posts her Powerpoint presentations before class, so we can print them out if we want. (Personally, I do, since she often uses the slides as a bare-bones version of the lecture and I can write my notes beside them so I don't forget what lecture point goes with what) Despite her pointing this out and urging them not to do so, they try to scribble everything down, neglecting class discussion, and then slowing things down when she switches slides and they ask her to repeat something she read off the slides.

Sparrow wrote:

I am also irritated by the number of students who ignore the fact the professor posts her Powerpoint presentations before class, so we can print them out if we want. (Personally, I do, since she often uses the slides as a bare-bones version of the lecture and I can write my notes beside them so I don't forget what lecture point goes with what) Despite her pointing this out and urging them not to do so, they try to scribble everything down, neglecting class discussion, and then slowing things down when she switches slides and they ask her to repeat something she read off the slides.

Reason why one of my current teachers refuses to allow people to print her transparent sheets; everyone just forgets about reading the books.

One previous teacher of mine (Semiotics), meanwhile, changed her evaluations from research papers and interesting group works to a boring test, because of the rampant plagiarism. Since she had to check everything manually, the amount of work was getting out of control.
Sometimes I felt like I was the only person in class who understood the subject at all.

Ah, the classroom. What a fun place... or not.

Honest to God, I'm taking a Business course, nothing special, you know, just an introductory thing. While I'm trying to pay attention and take down notes like I should be doing MY GODDAMN SEATMATE KEEPS CHECKING HIS HAIR. WITH HIS CELLPHONE. Then, when everyone is done he just looks up and goes, "Oh, wait, can you repeat that? I didn't hear what you said." Which causes so many freaking delays it isn't even funny anymore. And this has been going on for two years.

Not to mention I always get the worst group mates. And the one time I get an intelligent member for an essay? "Nah, I've decided I'm gonna be a team player this time." Translation= you can do the work by yourself.

God dammit, I just want, for once, to work with someone who will do AN EQUAL SHARE OF WORK.

Malganis wrote:

Clearly the only solution here is to write an X-rated parody of her story where she loves her dog a little too much, if you get my drift.

DO EET

I did a crash-course on safety issues for some guys in our company which were taking an admission test to work in a power plant.
They all passed minus one. Why? Because the examiner was suggesting the right answers but told them beforehand not to give them all right as it would be suspicious.
So this guy CONSCIOUSLY TICKED THE WRONG ANSWER ON EACH AND EVERY QUESTION ON THE FORM.

You wouldn't want him working a power plant, right? So you should be thankful he took himself out of the equation.

Oh gawd. I can't even...

So, my major is a double, both sciences, one hard, one soft. And I will say that I am one of those science geeks who really, genuinely loves their subject. I have no idea if this is tainting my perspective or not, but I have to talk about this kid.

This kid is stupid.

See, I had to take Environmental Science as part of my soft major. Was actually really interesting, but anyway, when the class started, because it was a small class, we had one of those "Get to know each other" exercises. (Christ) (I did get lucky though, because one of my partners was a mathematics major). Well, this kid says that he's a biology major. I remember it because he said he wanted to study sharks, and I thought that he was sort of confused as to what the differences between biology, marine biology, and zoology were. Note that this was not a class of freshmen.

We get to the bit about evolution, natural vs. artificial selection, etc., and this kid goes:

"So how does the beetle decide brown spots are better than green?"

"No, what happens is that the beetles with the brown spots are able to better blend in with their environment, so they live long enough to breed and pass down their genes."

Kid: (Blank face) "I don't understand. How do they turn brown?"

"Well, the gene was already there in a percentage of the population, before the environment change."

"So how do they decide brown is better?"

(Entire class makes a "Are you serious?" face)

He was a sophomore. How does a sophomore majoring in biology not yet understand this process? And he kept up with these questions throughout the whole semester. Even the concept of mutations was beyond him. He's a biology major.

Or he's intelligent design trolling. I had genetics as an undergrad major, and there was one person in the entire program who was damn determined they could get their biology major without having to believe in evolution. They'd pull about the same routine every time it was discussed in a class. You'd think there'd be a limit on how many times one could repeat the same rote talking points about intelligent design, but this person proved there isn't.

grmblfjx wrote:

You wouldn't want him working a power plant, right? So you should be thankful he took himself out of the equation.

Eh... he was not supposed to operate the power plant, just to go around carrying buckets from point A to point B while his colleagues did the actual job. Sometimes you also need people to do a mule's job. I'm convinced we'd be better off using mules, after all no mule has ever capsized a forklift or smoked in the solvent storage area or stolen tools on the job.

tachikoma01 wrote:

Or he's intelligent design trolling. I had genetics as an undergrad major, and there was one person in the entire program who was damn determined they could get their biology major without having to believe in evolution. They'd pull about the same routine every time it was discussed in a class. You'd think there'd be a limit on how many times one could repeat the same rote talking points about intelligent design, but this person proved there isn't.

This kid also compared the Endangered Species Act to the Holocaust.

I really wish that was a joke.

It was a throwaway line, so there really isn't much of a story to go with it. But we were discussing the merits of genetic diversity, and he just randomly says, "The ESA is like the Holocaust!"

(Cue silence from the rest of the class)

K: Ooooookay, so for all we know, some trash gene in a random breed of algae could have frostbite resistance that would be valuable in agriculture?

(Class starts talking again)

In retrospect, now that you say that, it's entirely possible. I think that since the class was mostly full of science majors (Including an astrophysics major! She was one of my partners and she was awesome, because astrophysics is the coolest thing ever, she was just taking the class to fill a block, but still!) it never really occurred to any of us. We assumed he was stupid. I think even the professor assumed he was stupid.

I don't understand that. If you don't believe in science, go major in something else, like art history. Don't waste everyone's time by using up our precious two hours of lecture on your stupidity. Really, I had to go to SERC with this guy, and no one wanted to be on his team. He didn't understand why the plant life was different on the island and the mainland (Elevation, acidity levels from the oak trees). Also, he tried to touch a snake. (It was eating a frog!)

Lapin wrote:

Also, he tried to touch a snake. (It was eating a frog!)

Clearly, he was cleverly trying to make a point about evolution not existing! After all, if survival of the fittest were true, then we would've bred out morons with an inclination to touch snakes a long time ago!

(Waves hand) It was a non-fatal variety. He tried to pick it up by the tail. Poor thing was terrified. I about knocked him flat, the idiot. You don't touch wild animals! Everyone knows that!

And he got in the way when we were trying to take pictures of this pair of trees that had completely intertwined over the course of their lives, even though they were completely different trees. He was just "Why are they growing like this? They look like they're doing something gross."

Rest of Team: (HATE YOU SO MUCH)