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

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.

My old roommate was a bio major who refused to believe evolution, "at the macro level." Her family were born again Christians, but insisted that she major in science (they were also Korean). After we covered our evolution unit in intro bio I asked her about it, and she accepted that bacteria and viruses evolve, but couldn't believe that "God would allow something as amazing as human beings to come from bacteria." *shrug* One of the brightest girls I ever met, but she did have some damn stupid opinions.

Lapin wrote:

(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)

Couldn't you have abandoned him in the woods? Let him interact with some of the other wildlife?

He was actually put in our group because, as our professor explained to our group leader, we could be trusted to look after our less-aware teammates. Basically, we were trusted to keep him alive. Still, when we went out on the salt marsh, I was very tempted to push him off the edge.

Also, it was SERC, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. We're not allowed to interfere with the environment, and a human body decomposing would probably interfere. Probably.

Unfortunately, the one intelligent design troll I mentioned earlier was doing bio so she could go to nursing school afterwards.

I'm afraid she's probably gone on to become one of those 'conscientious objector' types who is like "My morals are superior to yours. So no birth control for YOU." It strikes me as something she would have done.

Though I am aware that this is mostly a thread for college horror stories, I have some ballbusters from my secondary education that I simply have to share.

The first takes place at a homeschooling co-op focused on freshman-level biology. We kids were dissecting a snake, and we discovered that the snake had been about to lay eggs and was full of tiny snakes in transparent shells. Not being a squeamish bunch, we crowded around oohing and ahhing, and I said, "look at the snake fetuses!"

Someone's mother emerged from the shadows: "That's why we left the public school system. They expected my daughter to say things a certain way."

I gave her a bewildered look.

"Our family," she said, "does not use the word 'fetus.' It's an evil way to talk about unborn babies. It's like the N word."

"Snake babies!" her daughter chirped.

"That's right," the woman said to her daughter, giving me a look.

I'll remind the reader that this was a pro-evolution homeschooling co-op. I can't imagine the kind of people the religious ones attracted.

____

Then I went back into the evil, correct-scientific-terminology-using public school system for high school. I accumulated these gems:

- A boy in my science class thought the Jews killed the Germans during the Holocaust. He could not be persuaded otherwise.

- There was this truly awful girl in algebra who talked about her outfit every day, informing everyone of how much each item cost. She tanned so much and had so many highlights that her hair and skin were the same color. One day, something prompted her to shift from inane talk to insane talk, and she began describing what measures should be taken against Muslims pretty much everywhere. "We should, like, go into their countries and nuke them, like we did to Japan in World War II, you know. *tsk* And if they're Muslim in like a normal country - like yesterday I saw this gross girl in like a head thing - they should be, like, brought out into the street with guns and like, asked if they want to accept Christ's ultimate love and forgiveness, because Jesus is like my life, you know, and if they don't, BAM! Let God sort 'em out. *tsk*" I felt compelled to tell her that what she was proposing was genocide. Her response: "I - I - I - it's my right to free speech; I have a right to free speech, so you shut up!"

- A girl in mythology was politely astonished that Catholics were Christians: "I thought they worshipped that lady!" she said, with the innocent smile of someone who had learned something that day.

- I was taking an AP English class with two girls who were considered TEH NICEST PEOPLE IN TEH UNIVERSE, with Facebook fan clubs and yearbook pages devoted to them. I was in their arranged study group, and they ignored me, even when I complimented them, gave my all to the assignments, and bought them little presents. Anyway, one day after our work was done they just started talking without any effort to include me (what else was new?) Apparently, one of them had seen someone talking about Obama on FOX the night before. She didn't remember who the pundit was or what he had said about Obama, but by God she remembered he was RIGHT. The other girl was very impressed. I should note that AP English III is the AP English class devoted to building critical thinking skills.

- A student I didn't know came to school in a T-shirt that said "DAY OF SILENCE - FINALLY THEY SHUT UP: ------ BAPTIST CHURCH"

- A less odious but no less ridiculous T-shirt: "Jesus died for MySpace in heaven"

- Another student hit everyone in our high school network with the infamous picture of watermelons photoshopped onto the White House lawn.

- A girl in English defended all her positions with the statement, "that's the way I was raised." Upon my pointing out that someone might be raised in a radically different manner than herself, she appeared flustered and confused.

Teacher Stories

I got close enough to a teacher's assistant that she ended up sharing things about her life. One thing was a TEWIBBLE TEWIBBLE incident in which someone at Shoney's told her "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." She responded to this atrocity by demanding to see the manager and berating the poor service worker with exclamations of "Well, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas! GOD bless you!!!!" while the poor girl mumbled something about store policy and Hannukah. People tell stories to make themselves look better, but no spin was helping it look like my TA hadn't done a rude and petty thing.

I said, "It's not a big deal. I guess they were thinking about all the people who aren't Christi-"

"But this country was founded on the principles of Christ," responded my TA, uncharacteristically pissy.

Now I was feeling exasperated: "This country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment."

"What's the Enlightenment?"

_____

A different TA was visiting my classroom (what is it with TAs?) She was a California transplant who had left California, apparently, out of sheer hatred of Mexicans. "I was sick of teaching their anchor babies. Those little brown kids all looked the same and were dumb as rocks, and they wanted us to dumb down the curriculum for them," she scowled. She also said that she had belonged to a Southern Baptist-affiliated church in California and had come to my area in part to be with her "kin," but had found real Southern Baptist churches to be "scary and a little funny."

_____

My Study of Shakespeare teacher was working on writing a curriculum for a similar elective class on Holocaust literature. I was thrilled, because this was my thing, and I raised my hand and said, "Oh, so you know Primo Levi!"

"Who?" she asked.

"Primo Levi." I answered. You know, the Jewish-Italian writer-chemist who is considered by most scholars to be on par with Elie Wiesel and Anne Frank, excerpts of whose Survival in Auschwitz (or maybe The Drowned and the Saved ) appear in every Holocaust literature anthology I've had the pleasure of picking up? You know, Primo Levi.

"Hum, he might be on my pile. I have a pile this high. I'm more interested in the women's perspective," she said.

The next day, I found myself kicked out of the class due to a "scheduling conflict."

I think I can top yours, LittleDorrit.

Girl in my freshman history course in High School said 'The Holocaust couldn't have been that bad' and laughed when we read Night. The part we read was the part where Elie Wiesel's father died.

CaptainMcNeil wrote:

I think I can top yours, LittleDorrit.

Girl in my freshman history course in High School said 'The Holocaust couldn't have been that bad' and laughed when we read Night. The part we read was the part where Elie Wiesel's father died.

Shit, man. And that book changed my life. I know it sounds cheesy, but I used to be a pretty cold person who, though not violent and rarely actively mean, couldn't be bothered to imagine another person's experience. At 14, I was starting to open up because I read so much, but I still got annoyed whenever I saw people engaging in "sappy" behavior (i.e. at funerals); empathy struck me as a superfluous emotion - I wanted to be Vulcan.

I picked up Night b/c at the time it was everywhere (thanks, Oprah), I was getting interested in WWII, and, well, that was the age I read anything and everything. Businesslike, I set off thinking that it would be a quick one to add to my log.

Night knocked me off balance. I have never cried so much over a work of art before or since. The death of Wiesel's father forced me to consider how I would feel if I lost a family member in some cruel way. The scene at the gate at which he glimpses Mengele's facial expression forced me to think about the implications of a life lived without empathy. I felt I had been grabbed, suddenly, by the sides of the head, my benevolent assailant shouting, "Look! Look at humanity! Look at yourself!" I thought, it is fine that I am thoughtful, but I must have a heart and soul. I set about cultivating my emotions. In a year's time I felt sympathy and empathy fully, as judged by my reactions to my mother's lupus and the sight of kids being bullied. Sure, I've decided that in terms of artistry I prefer Primo Levi's memoirs, but I will never forget Night, and I get angry when people just dismiss it. I'm sure I'm not the only one.



/favorite subject

Room for two more stories? Well, in Sophomore English, we were reading The Poisonwood Bible, a novel that centers on a missionary family. One girl was pissed the whole unit because Poisonwood portrayed a missionary as being a patriarchal control freak and the impulse to convert to be neurotic (never mind that the book's conclusions about Christianity itself were eventually positive). She talked about how the mission trips she had been on were sooo wonderful, how no one on missions was "controlling," and how moving it was to see brown people get saved. Quote: "How could Nathan Price be a negative character if he's brought souls to Christ? Shouldn't we consider that?"

In Junior English we had a free paper; the only requirements were that it be formal, that it be editorial, and that it not be about abortion. One boy decided to do his essay about how creationism should be taught in school. Asked to briefly justify his position verbally before beginning his paper, he said, "I'm sick of being attacked by-by science!" Mid-process, though, he changed his position - having read up on the separation between church and state, he decided that it was wrong to teach creationism, and that instead . . . nothing about how life got here should be taught. Seriously, he wanted that part of the curriculum left blank forever.

Another girl in the class brought her finished paper beautifully packaged and printer-embossed with the title "Capitol Punishment: a Controversy."

You know, capitol punishment. Like impaling someone on the Washington Monument.


I really wish I had crazy liberal stories to balance all this. There were liberals at my school who were arrogant, aloof, and cliquey, but they never said anything idiotic in class. I'm sure some center-right high school student in Portland, Oregon has a laundry list of brain-dead and offensive things his far-left classmates have said.

CaptainMcNeil wrote:

I think I can top yours, LittleDorrit.

Girl in my freshman history course in High School said 'The Holocaust couldn't have been that bad' and laughed when we read Night. The part we read was the part where Elie Wiesel's father died.

And they say the United States educational system is not doing it's job. Rubbish.

So a new year started and we have... in college terms, we have someone who's been going to school with us but changed his major and is actually in my class now, for the first time ever.

Today, we had our economics/politics class, and I asked if we could discuss current affairs ocasionally, and when the teacher agreed, people wanted to discuss London (as did I).
Now, this was a spontaneous discussion, so nobody was prepared, and half the class has not really followed the issue anyway, so there was a lot of speculation and snippets of information, I'll admit that, but it was still interesting to hear what other people thought and to compare it with our situation here, and so on.

Then new guy put his hand up and said that we were just speculating on things we'd only heard about, and throwing opinions around, and he thought it was stupid and it would be a better use of his time to read a newspaper and get "actual first-hand information". Or maybe for the teacher to tell us what's what.

littledorrit wrote:

- A girl in mythology was politely astonished that Catholics were Christians: "I thought they worshipped that lady!" she said, with the innocent smile of someone who had learned something that day.

This one's not that surprising. Churches in the US that tell their parishioners that Catholics aren't Christian aren't exactly super rare. I don't think I've heard them called Mary worshippers too often; usually it was saints or the Pope.

[When I was much younger than the student in that story, I was confronted by a girl who asked me, "Are you Christian or Catholic?" I recognized the term just enough to be suspicious of the question, but it was still obvious what answer she wanted, so that's the one I gave.]

Quote :

Churches in the US that tell their parishioners that Catholics aren't Christian aren't exactly super rare.

It's not just in the US, sadly enough.


My story, I'm taking a 'Ancient Religions' class. With someone who got offended that the teacher left out the whole Christians.

"How can you talk about religion and not about the Christians?!?" Is more or less how he put it.


I also have a student in one of my classes who is ANGRY about the fact that we have said stuff during the recent war like "Those people might be hiding in caves." Because OMG that's so racist against people that aren't from America! Why do we think they all live in caves?

Also, he is offended on a book we have to read because it's sexist against women. It was written in the 1700's and ALL the females in the class are ok with reading it.

bleachedblackcat wrote:

I also have a student in one of my classes who is ANGRY about the fact that we have said stuff during the recent war like "Those people might be hiding in caves." Because OMG that's so racist against people that aren't from America! Why do we think they all live in caves?

...because they're hiding in a mountain range. In caves. In the mountains. Fucking idiot.

Quote :

Also, he is offended on a book we have to read because it's sexist against women. It was written in the 1700's and ALL the females in the class are ok with reading it.

Well, you know, he has to protect our delicate female sensibilities! We cannot possibly comprehend that in that past, we were treated like property. And still are, depending on the place.

Apparently the majority of my math class is filled with Texans who, true to the stereotype, can't take a fucking joke.

bleachedblackcat wrote:

ALL the females in the class are ok with reading it.

To be fair, just because the women around don't speak out against it doesn't mean it's not fucked up. I mean, I have witnessed someone saying SHOULDN'T YOU BE MAKING BABIES to a girl and she was all "lol haha no I know it was a joke".
That said, a book form the 1700's is bound to have weird ideas about women in it, and as long as that gets adressed, I don't see the problem.

When I was a TA for high school World history, grading papers was the highlight of my week. I didn't know people could be that stupid until I graded papers for that class. One of the questions was name 2 people involved in the Protestant Reformation and what they did.

The three most popular answers:
Shakespeare: His contributions of poetry inspired revolts
Da Vinci: Science made people think differently about religion
and Michelangelo: He painted stuff to support the Protestants

The Biggest Fail:
Shakespeare: He wrote a play about the Catholic Church
The guy who invented the radio: Radios broadcast about the reform.

He got a -1 on the quiz.

Heard the following exchange between two students on the first day of my Anatomy class. We were asked to look at some models and label them. We were examining a model of a human kidney when:

Guy 1: "I think that's the cerebellum."
Guy 2: "No, dude. It's not."
Guy 1: "No, I'm right. It just looks like a cerebellum."
Guy 2: "Man, the cerebellum is in your brain.
*pause*
Guy 1: "Then what's this?"
*headdeskforever*

In a class full of college seniors and juniors. A handful of people didn't know what prime numbers were, and it took more than 10 minutes of explaining before they could even begin to grasp the concept.

I started learning Japanese this semester. I didn't know anyone in the class, so I approached this guy who also looked like he didn't have any friends there and suggested that we'd get partnered (since the teacher said there'd be lots of partner work and it would be good to have a regular partner). Oh, boy. What a mistake.

If I didn't like the language so much, I'd have already quit the class. This guys sucks all the fun out of everything around him. He's pessimism personified. He complains about every single thing and exaggerates the smallest of problems until they sound like the end of the world. And when the situation changes, he still complains. In the beginning of the course, the teacher said that Japanese exchange students would occasionally join us so that we could try talking to native speakers. This guy immediately thought it was horrible and that the Japanese were only there to laugh at our mistakes. But then later when the Japanese got busy with their own studies and could no longer come, he complained that they weren't there despite their promise.

He won't go a day without telling me that he's a shitty person, that nobody likes him, that he'll never do anything with his life and that he's probably going to end up jumping under a train because he'll fail at everything he tries. I don't know what to say to him. He has no friends, which is no surprise with that attitude, but I can't tell if he's being serious with what he says or if it's just part of his extreme complaining habit.

Whenever I try to offer him solutions to his problems, he just tells me that they'll never work because his life sucks. He kept telling me he was feeling tired, so I suggested he should eat more fruit since his diet mostly consists of pizza and chips. He said he can't afford them, but that's a total lie because I know his parents pay his rent and this is Finland where the government gives you monthly student grants that you never have to pay back. There's no way a student in Finland can't afford an apple a day.

He's also rude and makes nasty comments about other people's clothes, body shape and so on. I once told him that my main reason for taking the course was that I collect doujinshi and want to learn to read them. Ever since then, he has made it his mission to announce that I'm a total pervert who reads tentacle porn in bed every night as loudly as he can so that the whole class can hear it. Once he heard that I'm going to become a teacher, he said that teachers can't read pervert stuff unless there's something wrong with them and that I'm obviously going to become a teacher just so that I can get close to children. I don't think I have ever been so disgusted and insulted in my life.

And what really gets under my skin is that he has been studying Japanese on his own for about seven years. He's pretty much close to fluent in the language, and yet he's still attending a course for beginners. And of course he complains when the teacher is explaining something simple or when the rest of us can't read Japanese as fast as he'd like. Since I'm his partner, I've had to start learning every lesson in advance at home so that I'll be spared his impatient sighs and snide corrections when I make a mistake. I've tried asking him what the heck he's doing in a beginner's class when he's so good and when he apparently is so frustrated with the level, but he has yet to give me a coherent answer. I suspect he's there only to feel superior since he pretty much fails at everything else in his life.

This person is so irritating, but at the same time I pity him so much. He's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. With that negative attitude of his, I wouldn't be surprised if he's never going to be happy in his life.

VampireNaomi wrote:

This person is so irritating, but at the same time I pity him so much. He's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. With that negative attitude of his, I wouldn't be surprised if he's never going to be happy in his life.

Yeesh... I feel for you, I really do. I used to work with someone like that. no way near that extreme, mind, but I know how you feel.

You make friends with them because you kinda feel sorry for them. You come to realise their social problems and try to help them, then you slowly realise that you're working on a lost cause whose only causing you stress and not reciprocating. Then you start hating them, and kinda hating yourself for hating them because you know how sad an individual they are and you feel bad for not having the strength to help them figure out how to help themselves, but then they won't help themselves because they're too far stuck up their own ass and AAAAGGGHHH!!

Soul leeches, I call them.

Sounds like you've got the measure of him though.

Can you talk to your tutor and ask for an intervention or something?

When I was at college there was one 'difficult' student in a class that needed a lot of group work and no one wanted to work with him. He had Asperger's, specifically. The tutor, being made aware of the problem, sent him out on a made-up delivery task in one lesson and actually asked the class if we wouldn't mind taking it in turns grouping with him. I volunteered there and then to be his partner for as long as needed. It took a while but once he was settled with me and felt comfortable 'coming out to the class' as an Asperger's sufferer he started becoming more popular. So long as I was there to be a kind of 'social buffer' for him he became a very active and appreciated member of the class.

Prolly a bit too rosy a prediction for your case, unfortunately, but your teacher should be made aware if this guy is seriously impeding on your enjoyment of the class.

VampireNaomi wrote:

I don't know what to say to him.

"I suck."
"It is possible to work on that, you know."

"Look at heeeer. She's ugly."
"How lucky that you and I are such beautiful people."

"I have no friends."
"Yeah, but you don't really want any, do you?"


It's amazing (and liberating!) how much you can get away with if you say it with a grin.

littledorrit wrote:

A boy in my science class thought the Jews killed the Germans during the Holocaust. He could not be persuaded otherwise.

This made my day. Thanks.

Gumball wrote:

It's amazing (and liberating!) how much you can get away with if you say it with a grin.

I'm in an acting class, and I heard the most irritating thing to date yesterday. One girl was saying that she went to an Asian restraunt for lunch. One of the guys mentioned that the Asians there were funny.

Teacher: How are they funny? Do they tell jokes?

Kid: No, they're just laughable creatures.

On a more humorous note, we were also going over questions a casting director might ask to get a feel of who we are during the audition.

Girl: I like to go scuba diving!

Teacher: Really? Where?

Girl: Colorado

Teacher: I never would have thought of that.

Girl: It was near Mexico.

Necroposting to add a dumb story.

I had to work with a group to put together a presentation on the stomach for my Anatomy class. We used Google Docs (which is actually pretty efficient). Anyway, I went to check on the thing because we have to present it in about three hours, and one of the sources has been cited as "Anatomy text book".

I love going to school to be a teacher, but after a quadrillion courses on how to be an artist, taking a course on how to teach art to elementary school students is annoying because half the class is like I WISH I COULD DRAW LIKE YOU and they go into what they're taught, with being encouraging of others' talents which is no big deal and really wonderful and good, but I've heard that same I WISH I COULD DRAW from everyone since I was like, 4, and it irritates the shit out of me. It's like, yeah, well, toil away then! You want it? Go get it? You want to learn? Go, then! Stop whining at me how you wish you could draw.

You're going to make all those little kids you teach feel all inadequate and shit.

An artist would be a better teacher in this regard but still, it's like, no wonder the two departments make fun of each other

I feel all your pain.

I'm completing a Post Grad DERPloma in Maths teaching. With the most stupid man on Earth. He has asked the same question for the past 5 weeks, namely "How can I 100% prove something in my research"? Each time the lecturer tells him there are far too many factors in his study (whether apprentices are better at Maths than full time college learners) to say he has 100% proven anything. This goes on and on and on. Admittedly, the tutor should tell him to shut up but really.

And there is a woman on the English DERPloma who is actively proud of her ignorance.
"How do you know when to use "a" or "an"? Does it even matter?"
And the almost constant "we're learning to TEACH English, why do we need to know how to use it?"
And this is a head of English. Scary.