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

007bistromath wrote:

I do, in fact, believe that the only way out of this mess is to dismantle the federal government.

And...at this point you've gone screaming off the deep end, and for the sake of trying to yank the thread back onto track I'm not going to respond any further.

Oh, and Mikey? Sit on it and rotate.

My very first Math class in college, Math 90(Beginning Algebra, aka Algebra I, for college students) was taught by a man who had a PhD in math.

He was great.....the first time he explained a concept. Then he would explain it four more times and my brain would shut down. I really don't think too many people in the class passed, and when we brought it up to him that we were having a hard time? he literally said:

"It's not my fault you guys aren't learning this stuff!"

........excuse me?????? You're the fucking teacher. Teachers are supposed to teach us the stuff so that we understand it and pass the class. If we are not understanding it, it is not just because we are stupid or whatever the hell you're thinking, sir, it's because you're not doing the best job at teaching.

I am so glad I got a C in that class and didn't have to retake it. I passed Algebra I with an A when I took it. I firmly believe it was his fault, not me suddenly growing stupid about math.

VB wrote:

Considering that this is a classroom full of pre-vet majors, and therefore animal lovers, and the topics are things like eating dog and cat meat, you can imagine how someone with a penchant for snark and egotistical drama might find enrollment in this class to be the metaphorical kid in a candy store.

While I'm sorry you have to deal with it, at the same time I'm very happy to hear that this sort of behavior isn't limited to religion courses. Your example's like the sister course to our Religion & Politics in the US course. Once the poli sci crowd realized that starting drama with some of the more... fervent religion students was relatively easy, it all went downhill from there.

Spotts1701 wrote:

Lady Anne wrote:

Sometimes bad students get through school because somebody likes them. There was a student at the school I work for who was failing and wasn't going to graduate, but the principal felt sorry for the little shit poor little dear and changed his grades.

My sister's a high school English teacher, and she had a similar experience. She had a student that was dramatically failing her English class (and just her class), and was on the verge of not graduating.

His parents came down and used the magic word ("lawsuit") claiming that their son had a learning disability (that somehow only affected him with respect to his English class).

The solution? His entire English requirement (including a year-long project) was waived and he was allowed to graduate.

You and I have discussed this one before, and it still makes my blood boil. I went to a private school for a little while where I'm sure that teacher intimidation and grade changing was happening (even had one teacher tell me as much after I graduated).

Mafiosa wrote:

Penguin take your friend back to wherever you found him.

It's out of my hands now. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

lemmingwriter wrote:

Your example's like the sister course to our Religion & Politics in the US course. Once the poli sci crowd realized that starting drama with some of the more... fervent religion students was relatively easy, it all went downhill from there.

That reminds me of the 'Sociology of Religion' course I did when I did my degree. The students were 10 religious types and 2 atheists - I was one of the atheists. It wasn't about religion per se, but about how religious thinking affects social organisation and it drove the religious types bugnuts even before the two atheists started winding them up.

I´m currently following Introduction to Linguistics. It has a set-up that begets little interaction: standard lecture hall, about 70 students, a goal that can be summed up as 'teaching you lot the groundwork of linguistics'. Despite this very basic premise, there's this girl who is contesting all the statements the professor makes on language and linguistics and constantly tries to provoke him into a philosophical debate. While I usually don't have issues with going toe-to-toe with a professor, I do have them in this case, since it's A: a 101-course, so it gives us the basics, and I'd like to know what I'm getting my teeth in before I'm getting all hot and bothered and debatey with it - "walk before you can run", ya know?; and B: it's a lecture for 70+ people, you twit. Added to that, her interrupting consists ever so rarely of valid points and even more annoying, her points are never interesting.
Grr. STFU, basically. However, I do have a slight sense of admiration for her: I've never seen an entire lecture-hall-worth of students radiate massive hate at one particular student within 45 minutes.

Maybe because I went to a private Catholic Uni for my undergraduate, but I never saw any rebellious atheists students in the religion courses. However, I did have my fair share of embittered and snarky Catholic professors, so that was kinda awesome.

(To be fair, it's a very liberal uni. In fact, we have a reputation of being full of rich bastards. You should see some of the skanky female students we had around...)

I once was in an exercise group accompanying a lecture about a grammar book developed by the professor. It was pretty cool, since it was a small group led by the professor's assistant, a really nice woman. She'd clarify some points from the lecture and discuss the theory with us - to the point that some things we said were incorporated in the final draft of the grammar book. It was fun...

...except for the debates with my friend. I adore this guy, he is charming and always nice to a fault, looks really good and can play the guitar well. So, in general someone you like to have around. Unfortunately, debating with him is like sloshing through knee-deep water. I don't even know how he does it, he just has a knack to ask questions that sound like they make sense but when you start to formulate your answer, you realise that you have no idea what he is talking about. Any attempt to clarify just leads to more confusion. During one discussion he managed to frustrate the assistant so much, she looked ready to throw something at him.

Deutschtard wrote:

My very first Math class in college, Math 90(Beginning Algebra, aka Algebra I, for college students) was taught by a man who had a PhD in math.

He was great.....the first time he explained a concept. Then he would explain it four more times and my brain would shut down. I really don't think too many people in the class passed, and when we brought it up to him that we were having a hard time? he literally said:

"It's not my fault you guys aren't learning this stuff!"

........excuse me?????? You're the fucking teacher. Teachers are supposed to teach us the stuff so that we understand it and pass the class. If we are not understanding it, it is not just because we are stupid or whatever the hell you're thinking, sir, it's because you're not doing the best job at teaching.

I am so glad I got a C in that class and didn't have to retake it. I passed Algebra I with an A when I took it. I firmly believe it was his fault, not me suddenly growing stupid about math.

Where did you go to college? That sounds exactly like my experience.

lemmingwriter wrote:

While I'm sorry you have to deal with it, at the same time I'm very happy to hear that this sort of behavior isn't limited to religion courses. Your example's like the sister course to our Religion & Politics in the US course. Once the poli sci crowd realized that starting drama with some of the more... fervent religion students was relatively easy, it all went downhill from there.

This, so much. I was in a political science class with a fundie who got offended by everything--and when she got offended, she would make this noise like a whining puppy. I just could not resist. I would show up to class in hooker clothes, argue in favor of gay rights and separation of church and state--and anything else I thought might get a reaction out of her. One day, however, we agreed on something (we'd both a heard a report about a student who had been forbidden to read the Bible on the long schoolbus ride each day). We both thought that forbidding the student to read the Bible was wrong--but for different reasons. She thought it was wrong because of her religious convictions, while I thought it was wrong because it violated the girl's First Amendment rights.

The instructor about had a heart attack at learning we actually shared an opinion.

Penguin wrote:

There is a strange thing about electricity: Basically everything we think we know about it is all theory. On top of this, we use really confusing language to describe different aspects of it. For example, an increase in current does not mean that it is going faster.

Sometimes, you just have to accept what the instructor tells you. "The sky is green," or "the magic smoke in the box makes it happen," etc.

We had a dude who wasn't able to really get over this, and was trying to understand every aspect of it perfectly. The resulting back-and-forth between student and instructor managed to just confuse EVERYONE ELSE on the subject.

My AC/DC class never had much of a problem with this, but none of us could seem to wrap our brains around the fact that Positive and Negative were labeled wrong and never fixed...

Narwhal wrote:

So, Roxanne is one of those middle-aged "It's never too late to go back to school" people who wears cat sweaters all the time. She can't go five minutes without sharing some stupid anecdote about her pets and will use anything the professor says as a possible segue into a long-winded "One time at the newspaper I worked at-" story.

One time we were reading a story that used this deer as a symbol to represent change. Roxanne raised her hand and went on, at length, about how this deer was obviously the narrator's "animal spirit guide". She then proceeded to lecture us all on her own animal spirit guide (an albino fox) and recommend about fifty books and websites on the subject. The professor looked ready to eat a bullet.

My speech class had a middle-aged woman who could not, in anything she did at the school, communicate other than to ask about any given subject in excruciating, pointless detail. This came to a head when someone gave a speech about Linux, and she, very computer-illiterate, mind, ambushed me in the lounge later to ask me if she should use Linux.

Understand that this woman did not know what an operating system actually is or why a computer/electronic devices need one.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

AND NOW YOU REALIZE WHY I AM WHAT I AM!

Why be a liberal, hippy douche and feel all warm and fuzzy all of the time when you could be a heartless, conservative asshat and buy happiness?

I like to think of myself as an Objectivist Socialist, myself.

Stop looking at me like that.

007bistromath wrote:

Spotts1701 wrote:

So what's the answer, O Wise One? Burn it all to the ground?

What would you honestly suggest as an alternative? We can't vote these people out. They control, at minimum, which candidates are viable. That's the whole purpose of all media in the first place. Just considering the political machine itself it is nigh impossible to hack through, and that's before considering the two other things in play.

1) Follow the money. You're not even allowed to pretend to vote for the guys who run GE, Lockheed-Martin, or Pfizer, and they are ultimately responsible for determining who the political parties put up front, and how the media will quell any meaningful third party movement.

2) The election process can't even be trusted anyway. The whole thing's been gerrymandered all to hell since long before these troubles, the numbers are so big and the competition so choked with pageantry that somebody could just make some shit up and nobody would know the difference, and now electronic voting is gaining traction. A few states, thank god, have better sense than that, but once it starts getting used on a regular basis in federal elections, no reasonable person can possibly say democracy isn't dead. Those machines can be corrupted with a thought, and might be by design, and forensic experts are required to detect such fraud, assuming they're even allowed to check, since Diebold does everything it can to make sure the source code for the fuckers stays out of court.

The "political process" in this nation amounts to a grand theater of misdirection. The parties become more and more alike while fighting ever more bitterly and shrilly about things that don't seriously affect policy whatsoever, polarizing the people so they're too busy frothing to think. It's the circus they put on for us so we don't notice them stealing our bread.

I do, in fact, believe that the only way out of this mess is to dismantle the federal government. I am under no illusion that it will happen anytime soon, but in ten years or so, things will have probably gotten worse, so we'll just have to see who's right then. Even if it began today or years ago, it seems to me that the cost in blood and treasure cannot be considered as prohibitive. We're already grinding ourselves to paste on the other side of the earth, and we're already barreling down the path towards being wholly owned and operated by China. We shouldn't cry about destroying "the most powerful nation in the world" if we've already pissed away that title because of traitors at the top who want to institute world plutocracy by doing whatever European banks think is a good idea.

Everything I need to know about politics, I learned from Metal Gear Solid 2.

No, really, stop looking at me like that.

Lady Anne wrote:

Deutschtard wrote:

My very first Math class in college, Math 90(Beginning Algebra, aka Algebra I, for college students) was taught by a man who had a PhD in math.

He was great.....the first time he explained a concept. Then he would explain it four more times and my brain would shut down. I really don't think too many people in the class passed, and when we brought it up to him that we were having a hard time? he literally said:

"It's not my fault you guys aren't learning this stuff!"

........excuse me?????? You're the fucking teacher. Teachers are supposed to teach us the stuff so that we understand it and pass the class. If we are not understanding it, it is not just because we are stupid or whatever the hell you're thinking, sir, it's because you're not doing the best job at teaching.

I am so glad I got a C in that class and didn't have to retake it. I passed Algebra I with an A when I took it. I firmly believe it was his fault, not me suddenly growing stupid about math.

Where did you go to college? That sounds exactly like my experience.

I had a guy like that teaching stats last year. The thing was, he wasn't a complete arsehole and would get noticeably upset as he noticed that nobody was understanding his lectures.

I passed, thank God. I would not want to repeat that class.

Alhazred wrote:

Everything I need to know about politics, I learned from Metal Gear Solid 2.

No, really, stop looking at me like that.

You guys probably think he's making fun of me, and the fact of the matter is that he is laughing at me, because he enjoys seeing me suffer and is too lazy to stick up for his dudebro.

However, he is being dead serious. He believes that my assessment of the political landscape is basically accurate, and he actually does get his worldview from Metal Gear Solid 2. Go ahead and ask him about it sometime. It's a fucking trip and then some.

Lady Anne wrote:

Where did you go to college? That sounds exactly like my experience.

It was a community college in California, I'm so glad I'm going to a UC now.

Hey Bistro, how about you just, oh, I don't know, shut the fuck up about shit you obviously know nothing about beyond your own insane ramblings.

That would be really super if you did that.

Deutschtard wrote:

Lady Anne wrote:

Where did you go to college? That sounds exactly like my experience.

It was a community college in California, I'm so glad I'm going to a UC now.

It wouldn't have happened to be MSJC, would it?

Lapin wrote:

Hey Bistro, how about you just, oh, I don't know, shut the fuck up about shit you obviously know nothing about beyond your own insane ramblings.

That would be really super if you did that.

How about you shove the horse you rode in on up your ass? A degree is not the basis of a valid opinion on anything, especially not a topic in which basically all sources of information are inherently biased and unreliable.

So if I had say, a medical degree, and my opinion, based on the knowledge I obtained during my long years of study to earn the degree, was that the patient had lupus, my opinion wouldn't be valid?

TL;DR: Gawd you're dumb.

Lapin wrote:

So if I had say, a medical degree, and my opinion, based on the knowledge I obtained during my long years of study to earn the degree, was that the patient had lupus, my opinion wouldn't be valid?

It's never lupus.

...I walked right into that. Gawddamnit.

If your "knowledge" were composed of biased and unreliable ideas about how to interpret biased and unreliable information from biased and unreliable sources, themselves written by authors who are biased and unreliable, then your opinion about the patient would be worth something somewhere between jack and shit. "Political science" is an egregious misuse of the latter word, and I hope all you people who dumped money on those degrees can hear me.

Lady Anne wrote:

Deutschtard wrote:

Lady Anne wrote:

Where did you go to college? That sounds exactly like my experience.

It was a community college in California, I'm so glad I'm going to a UC now.

It wouldn't have happened to be MSJC, would it?

o_o It was. Are you outside my window? Who are you? -paranoid now- Do you know the name of mister Professor, too?

007bistromath wrote:

If your "knowledge" were composed of biased and unreliable ideas about how to interpret biased and unreliable information from biased and unreliable sources, themselves written by authors who are biased and unreliable, then your opinion about the patient would be worth something somewhere between jack and shit. "Political science" is an egregious misuse of the latter word, and I hope all you people who dumped money on those degrees can hear me.

To be fair, most Political scientists (and most of those involved in the humanistic sciences) are aware of the fact that what they are doing isn´t science - at least not in the traditional sense of the world. Considering the status an officially acknowledged science has in Western society, however, it's somewhat sensible that they don't want to give up the appellation of 'science'.
But that's just semantics. The issue here is that, apparently, you think that a Political science major has just about the same level of authority on the subject as any given layman, simply because the subject matter is subjective. Let alone the debate about subjectivity, I daresay a Polisci-major has a firmer grasp on the lexicon and methodology used in the political minefield and has a greater awareness of how that minefield is used in general. I'm not saying you should agree with the Polisci here, but I do think it's somewhat unwise to disregard his opinion just because he's a Polisci, instead of, say, combatting his arguments with some of your own.

Rarely have I seen such a misplaced sense of superiority as the one displayed by the girl in my class tonight. She's been generally bitchy since the beginning of classes toward the professor, generally for no reason at all. The first day, the professor noted that her picture was not on the list of students. This is unusual since the list of students the professors get have the same pictures as from our ID cards, so she was curious why. Chick copped an attitude about it.

The professor ordered the 'extra' book for the class so that we wouldn't have to have the campus bookstore order them and mark them up 50%. This girl has heard the professor asking for the money from people, asking if people have their book yet, etc, every class period until tonight. It is on the syllabus that it is needed. Tonight was the first day we used it and she didn't have it. The professor asked people why they didn't have it; most people just forgot it. Girlie, however, demanded to know if it was on the syllabus. The Prof said in a 'well-duh' tone of voice, "Yeeeah." This is in part because it'd been mentioned at that point no less than six times, the first being when we went over the syllabus. I know this chick was there to hear it if she'd been listening. There was a bit of a go-around about her not having the syllabus, it coming down to her taking up a fair bit of our class time when we had very little left, so the professor told her to see her after class to work it out.

The girl said in the snottiest voice possible, "No." Everyone in class went and stared at her.

The professor went, "Wat." I think the prof was as shocked as the rest of the class. The girl went on to say, still sounding like a spoiled brat, "I have to go someplace." :redangry: I'm aware there's plenty of professors who have no business teaching. This is not one of them. There is no reason to be such a wanky little cunt. For her sake, I hope she works retail soon. I hope her paycheck depends on it. It will be a positive life experience, I think, for her to learn what it is like to be forced to take other people's shit with a smile. And I hope that she gets fired while mommy and daddy will still take care of her.

Deutschtard wrote:

Lady Anne wrote:

Deutschtard wrote:

Lady Anne wrote:

Where did you go to college? That sounds exactly like my experience.

It was a community college in California, I'm so glad I'm going to a UC now.

It wouldn't have happened to be MSJC, would it?

o_o It was. Are you outside my window? Who are you? -paranoid now- Do you know the name of mister Professor, too?

Dr. Vasek? Or have they gotten another bad one?

Jay/Cris wrote:

The issue here is that, apparently, you think that a Political science major has just about the same level of authority on the subject as any given layman, simply because the subject matter is subjective. Let alone the debate about subjectivity, I daresay a Polisci-major has a firmer grasp on the lexicon and methodology used in the political minefield and has a greater awareness of how that minefield is used in general. I'm not saying you should agree with the Polisci here, but I do think it's somewhat unwise to disregard his opinion just because he's a Polisci, instead of, say, combatting his arguments with some of your own.

I said what I had to say, and was countered by appeals to authority and a collection of minutiae that have little or no bearing on the greater scale of reality. What a polisci major has to say is in line with how Washingtonians talk, think, and scheme, but it is largely disconnected with what Washington actually does to the nation. This is no mistake. There is active obfuscation of the truth in this "field." As I pointed out, this topic is more than subjective. It is instruction in bias, for the biased, by the biased. Academia has a reputation among idiots for being liberal not because liberals are necessarily smarter than the idiots, but because academia as an institution is drowning in so much Kool Aid that people from it don't know which end is up, and even an idiot can see that if he's not subjected to it.