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Author Topic: University/College  (Read 435685 times)

Carl-E

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Re: University/College
« Reply #950 on: 24 Mar 2012, 20:15 »

History, Bitches!
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Asterus

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Re: University/College
« Reply #951 on: 24 Mar 2012, 20:32 »

the digital turn in does nothing but grade the multiple choice assignment

I see... and I feel like part of me just died after reading this. That kind of logic is my Sora
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Carl-E

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Re: University/College
« Reply #952 on: 09 Apr 2012, 09:54 »

<moderator=Paul>The following posts grew naturally out of another thread, in which they were increasingly off-topic.  I have moved them here, and added the quote below to provide a link in from the other thread.<moderator>

Redball- To teach kindergarten in her 60s, your wife must have been an amazing woman. After every kindergarten class I taught, I was ready for a nap myself! Education is such a fascinating field of study and it amuses me to think that I truly hated school when I was younger. Now I realize that I was just bored.

I hope I can hold onto it too! Sometimes I think that no matter what field they are in, one is destined to feel either naïvely optimistic or completely jaded towards their career. A happy medium must exist somewhere, right?

I don't know of any happy mediums - they know too much...  :-D

What you say reminds me of when I started my current adjunct position.  All the other adjuncts were newly minted students and got mentors.  I asked the department head why I didn't have a mentor.  He replied, "You're already jaded". 
« Last Edit: 10 Apr 2012, 10:29 by pwhodges »
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Redball

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Re: University/College
« Reply #953 on: 09 Apr 2012, 11:03 »

I don't know of any happy mediums - they know too much...  :-D
 I asked the department head why I didn't have a mentor.  He replied, "You're already jaded".
Was he right? And are you still jaded, or is there a post-jaded career?
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Carl-E

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Re: University/College
« Reply #954 on: 09 Apr 2012, 13:53 »

Well, I wasn't really jaded when he said that.  It was about 7 years ago.  Since then, I got and lost another tenure-track position, and now I'm an adjunct again.  Lost an online job, too.  And now I've been shipped to siberia to teach the bottom-of-the-barrel-scrape-it-till-we-hit-wood students. 

I can put on a good front, but if this is the rest of my life, I really want out.  I also just turned 50, and I always get depressed around my birthday (spring sucks). 

So no, I dunno if there's anything post jaded.  Still looking. 

Oh, wait - wrong thread, sorry...  Just pretend this is Pessimism. 
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Redball

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Re: University/College
« Reply #955 on: 09 Apr 2012, 15:39 »

I can put on a good front, but if this is the rest of my life, I really want out.  I also just turned 50, and I always get depressed around my birthday (spring sucks). 

So no, I dunno if there's anything post jaded.  Still looking. 

Oh, wait - wrong thread, sorry...  Just pretend this is Pessimism.
Didn't need to pretend; I'd just come from there. The pessimism's understandable. Any options? What subject?

Redball- To teach kindergarten in her 60s, your wife must have been an amazing woman. After every kindergarten class I taught, I was ready for a nap myself! Education is such a fascinating field of study and it amuses me to think that I truly hated school when I was younger. Now I realize that I was just bored.

I hope I can hold onto it too! Sometimes I think that no matter what field they are in, one is destined to feel either naïvely optimistic or completely jaded towards their career. A happy medium must exist somewhere, right?
I started to respond that what kept her going were the hugs. But it was much more than that. She functioned often as a special ed teacher and while working for sub pay (plus her pension, of course) she took every workshop she could and a few applicable courses. She enjoyed learning and putting what she learned to use. She had been challenged in college by instructors or counsellors who'd seen her test scores and thought difficult stuff would be too hard for her.
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Carl-E

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Re: University/College
« Reply #956 on: 09 Apr 2012, 21:20 »

Any options? What subject?

I got my doctorate in Mathematics (Knot Theory) in '95.  I thought I'd be able to continue doing research, but it never happened.  I got one publication from my thesis (in the Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, no less!) and a few conference papers on a smattering of topics, none of which ever really panned out. 

But I did it to teach anyway.  The year I got my masters I got a one-year sabbatical leave appointment and was encouraged to go back for my doctorate by the department chair so I could keep on teaching, so that's what I did.  And I'm good at it, too. 

But being a good math teacher is like a relativistic snowball, it doesn't hit the student right away - sometimes not for years.  And sometime in the last 20 years, university administrators decided that they could should run a school like a business.  They started making all their decisions based on customer satisfaction, including student evaluations of faculty. 

I could write a paper about how fucked up that is, but no one would publish it, because it's gospel now.  I've lost three jobs to student evaluations, because I keep my standards up and don't put up with bullshit.  And each time I've lowered my standards some more, hoping to keep the job, and my peer evaluations all admire how well I do at keeping my standards high, and the students slam me for it.  But it feels like I'm teaching half the material half as well as I used to.  I love to teach, but I can't do much with those who won't learn.  Those of you who are students, please, don't take offense, but giving you the power of who keeps their job and who doesn't is basically putting the asylum in the hands of the inmates.  You are not in a position to judge yet, you are students, by definition you don't yet know what we're even teaching you.  My stats classes all build up to a point, about two weeks from the end of the course, where everything is tied together.  Evaluations are done two weeks before that, before I can show you the power of my science.  What the fuck am I supposed to do?

As for prospects, it doesn't matter.  I'm tied to the job, I have a very sick daughter for whom I need to keep my excellent insurance.  I can't strike out and change career paths, or start my own business or any such thing if I want to keep her... I was going to say healthy, but that's never going to happen again, as long as she continues to live.  And to keep that insurance, I took the one position that was guaranteed, the position at the outpost where the uneducable are educated.  And just to get some of the better ones through the course, I've had to cut back more

Oh, god, I'm making myself nauseous.  Or maybe it was the chicken wings...

Really, this should go elsewhere.  I shouldn't even be reading this thread, much less posting in it.  Sorry, everyone. 
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Skewbrow

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Re: University/College
« Reply #957 on: 10 Apr 2012, 02:13 »

I share Carl-E's pain about teaching basic math at college.

But there are alternatives to being jaded.... my choice is to be naïvely optimistic. Yeah, I will really make an impression to the next batch of freshmen, and we will get a platoon of wonderfully enlightened future math teachers saving the country and the world.

My homework assignments and in-class examples are occasionally designed to set the bar high (so that the aspiring students get a challenge). This also works in getting the weaker ones to drop the course early enough. But my exams are relatively easy. I've been instructed to see to it that we don't totally scare off the freshmen. Because they all did relatively well in high school they just need to be shaken up a bit so that they realize that professionals need to work.
« Last Edit: 10 Apr 2012, 09:58 by Skewbrow »
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Barmymoo

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Re: University/College
« Reply #958 on: 10 Apr 2012, 06:13 »

The idea that students get to choose who stays and who goes is appalling. I don't approve of formalised state education anyway, as a concept (although obviously it is often the best option for most families), so I guess I'm already biased against the idea of schools. But. Ugh. Carl, I don't envy your situation. Come live in the UK where things are still slightly better. Bring your daughter. Our healthcare is free, at the moment.
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lepetitfromage

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Re: University/College
« Reply #959 on: 10 Apr 2012, 06:31 »

I don't know of any happy mediums - they know too much...  :-D

This made me LOL  :-D

I started to respond that what kept her going were the hugs. But it was much more than that. She functioned often as a special ed teacher and while working for sub pay (plus her pension, of course) she took every workshop she could and a few applicable courses. She enjoyed learning and putting what she learned to use. She had been challenged in college by instructors or counsellors who'd seen her test scores and thought difficult stuff would be too hard for her.

I think the secret to a good teacher is one who is committed to a lifetime of learning. That's my favorite part of teaching (and art)- there is always more to learn. Sometimes I think that my thirst for knowledge is really just providing something for my brain to do so it doesn't get itself in trouble or piss me off. Other times, I think it's because my mother called me a know-it-all while I was growing up and now I'm truly trying to Know All The Things.

But mainly, it's just fun.  :-)

I got my doctorate in Mathematics (Knot Theory) in '95.  I thought I'd be able to continue doing research, but it never happened.  I got one publication from my thesis (in the Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, no less!) and a few conference papers on a smattering of topics, none of which ever really panned out. 

But I did it to teach anyway.  The year I got my masters I got a one-year sabbatical leave appointment and was encouraged to go back for my doctorate by the department chair so I could keep on teaching, so that's what I did.  And I'm good at it, too. 

But being a good math teacher is like a relativistic snowball, it doesn't hit the student right away - sometimes not for years.  And sometime in the last 20 years, university administrators decided that they could should run a school like a business.  They started making all their decisions based on customer satisfaction, including student evaluations of faculty. 

I could write a paper about how fucked up that is, but no one would publish it, because it's gospel now.  I've lost three jobs to student evaluations, because I keep my standards up and don't put up with bullshit.  And each time I've lowered my standards some more, hoping to keep the job, and my peer evaluations all admire how well I do at keeping my standards high, and the students slam me for it.  But it feels like I'm teaching half the material half as well as I used to.  I love to teach, but I can't do much with those who won't learn.  Those of you who are students, please, don't take offense, but giving you the power of who keeps their job and who doesn't is basically putting the asylum in the hands of the inmates.  You are not in a position to judge yet, you are students, by definition you don't yet know what we're even teaching you.  My stats classes all build up to a point, about two weeks from the end of the course, where everything is tied together.  Evaluations are done two weeks before that, before I can show you the power of my science.  What the fuck am I supposed to do?

As for prospects, it doesn't matter.  I'm tied to the job, I have a very sick daughter for whom I need to keep my excellent insurance.  I can't strike out and change career paths, or start my own business or any such thing if I want to keep her... I was going to say healthy, but that's never going to happen again, as long as she continues to live.  And to keep that insurance, I took the one position that was guaranteed, the position at the outpost where the uneducable are educated.  And just to get some of the better ones through the course, I've had to cut back more

Oh, god, I'm making myself nauseous.  Or maybe it was the chicken wings...

Really, this should go elsewhere.  I shouldn't even be reading this thread, much less posting in it.  Sorry, everyone.

No need to apologize! It's directly related to the topic at hand and it's all important stuff. I'm sorry to hear that you are in a tough spot  :-\ It is ridiculous to me that your evaluations are a month before the end of classes. In all my time attending college courses, we did evals during the last week of class- when we started reviewing for the final. And the fact that they have that much weight is really scary. They should be taken into account, sure! But not to that extreme. Some students have helpful opinions. Others are just spiteful idiots.

This might be a silly suggestion, but maybe you could use something to invigorate your practices. If your approach isn't working for you because it's not working for your students, perhaps there is an alternative method that can incorporate what it is that you want to achieve while not going totally over your students' heads. Do you ever go to conferences? Sometimes it helps just being in a space filled with hundreds of people who "get" what it means to be in the field that you're in. Just by Googling "math teacher's conference" I found one happening this month in Philadelphia.

I can't imagine teaching math so you and Skewbrow have my utmost respect. It's doesn't have the best reputation as far as the majority of students are concerned and I know that doesn't make it any easier. That's one similarity between our subjects. Nothing drives me crazier than listening to students talking about how much art sucks and how useless it is. We need to break down the stereotypes regarding our subjects to the students who object to them before they even walk in the room.

Preconceived misconceptions combined with difficulty handling the material are a deadly combination. Maybe a pep talk/explanation of your tactics at the beginning of the semester would quell your students' fears and get them to trust your methods more. A sense of humor goes a LONG way and what I've seen from you here indicates that you've definitely got a good one. I've been in a lot of REALLY difficult courses that the prof made a little easier to handle just by easing my fears and lightening the mood. If everyone feels defeated right off the bat, it's harder to make connections (in more ways than one).

Now that I've pummeled you with unsolicited advice, feel free to disregard it all. You've got a lot more experience than I do and I obviously don't know your teaching methods firsthand, but I know that sometimes a fresh perspective helps. It's hard to see solutions when you're so close to the problem, y'know?
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schimmy

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Re: University/College
« Reply #960 on: 10 Apr 2012, 09:47 »

Carl-E, as a current (well, soon to be ex-, I suppose) student, I pretty much completely agree with you about student evaluations of teachers.

I'll start this post with the caveat that I think in principle student evaluations of teaching staff can be a good thing. After all, some people are terrible at teaching, and I do think that students can be in a position to maturely evaluate that.

I had this one lecturer last year who would start off the lecture by giving everyone a "handout" that was pretty much just a 6 page, double-sided essay on whatever we were supposed to be learning that week. He would then proceed to read it word-for-word, completely monotonously, as if he was bored shitless.* The result was that everyone who had the stamina to go to one of these lectures would end up losing focus, and consequently not learning anything. This is bad teaching that we, as students, could recognise as it was happening. In theory, he should have read his evaluations, and made an effort to make his lecture delivery more engaging. However, given that  this particular lecturer was a senior Professor at the University, he must've been getting these complaints for years and done nothing about it.

That caveat was longer than I expected it to be, anyhoo continuing on. At my university, we have exactly the same problem with evaluations being filled in before course completion. How in the heck am I supposed to know how well I've been taught if I've not recieved my grades yet?

I've had modules where I thought "This is really easy!" and ended up doing badly on. In hindsight, it was probably because I wasn't pushed by teaching staff as hard as I needed to be to be capable of doing well when examined.
And, on the other side of the same coin, I've had modules where the set work every week has felt so hard that I  was sure I was destined to fail the module, but what's happened is that I've come out with a great knowledge of the subject at hand, and consequently done really well in the exams.
 Delaying the evaluations until after I recieved my results would have completely changed the feedback I would have given.  In the first case, my evaluation would have gone down, and in the second, it would have gone up.

What does puzzle me is that, as a finalist, I'm asked to evaluate my experience of the university as a whole. How in the heck am I supposed to objectively evaluate the only university I've ever attended? When asked how satisfied I am with the university, how am I supposed to know, if I have no other university experience to compare it to?

*He probably was bored shitless. I would be if I had to do that at 9am every Monday.

Addendum: Perhaps a mod could kindly figure out a nice clean way of chopping off this part of the thread, and putting it in the University/College thread?
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Jace

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Re: University/College
« Reply #961 on: 10 Apr 2012, 17:35 »

As a student in a trigonometry course (that is, the second course you take for your math credits in a non-science degree) where I am one of like 4 students who understands the curriculum. I feel for Carl. We spent probably 2 months (2 classes a week) covering chapter 5. There was spring break in the middle of that, but then because people ask dumb questions and don't retain their math skills from the previous semester, we end up having to go over stuff over and over. So then there was easter break (4 day break) before we took the test for chapter 5. I don't think I did very well on it because of the fact that I was looking at material that I hadn't seen for 2-7 weeks. Now we have 9 classes to finish chapters 6 and 7. We started chapter 6 after the test monday (which coincidentally I had to leave for because it was my 2 year anniversary with my girlfriend and we had dinner plans)
Now we have 9 classes to finish chapters 6 and 7.

Of course, except for myself and one other person, no one cares if we finish all of the material, because they aren't going to be taking any higher level mathematics courses, for me it is pretty integral to the rest of my degree.

btw, if someone could explain how to verify cos^2(x)-sin^2(x)=2cos^2(x)-1 it'd really help since the book doesn't give very good examples for that one. I have a feeling that I am supposed to use the pythagorean identities but it is just not clicking.
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Akima

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Re: University/College
« Reply #962 on: 10 Apr 2012, 19:12 »

Ratemyprofessor.com is a joke.  They have no protocol, no accuracy, and no godamned honesty.
I had never heard of this site, but it really is hilarious to read college-level students bitching in misspelled, illiterate gibberish that their professor unfairly marked them down for bad grammar and spelling... Hello boys and girls, you are supposed to have mastered basic English before you leave high-school. If ESL people can do it, why not you?

I am appalled though that colleges actually dismiss lecturers on the basis of this crap.  :x
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Carl-E

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Re: University/College
« Reply #963 on: 10 Apr 2012, 20:17 »

The really appalling thing about that site is the "hotness" rating. 

Yes, you can give your professor a chili pepper. 
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Skewbrow

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Re: University/College
« Reply #964 on: 10 Apr 2012, 21:51 »


btw, if someone could explain how to verify cos^2(x)-sin^2(x)=2cos^2(x)-1 it'd really help since the book doesn't give very good examples for that one. I have a feeling that I am supposed to use the pythagorean identities but it is just not clicking.


The pythagorean identity basically says that

cos^2(x) + sin^2(x) = 1.

Multiply both sides of that equation by minus1 to get

- cos^2(x) - sin^2(x) = -1.

Add 2cos^2(x) to both sides

2cos^2(x)-cos^2(x)-sin^2(x) = 2cos^2(x) -1.

On the left hand side of that equation combine 2cos^2(x)-cos^2(x) to cos^2(x), and you are done.

A simpler way of achieving the same result is to replace sin^2(x) with 1-cos^2(x) on the left hand side (justified by Pythagoras). After you get rid of the parenthesis, you combine like terms and are done. I wasn't sure how comfortable you are with the rule: -(A-B)=-A+B. If you are happy with that, then it would go like

cos^2(x)-sin^2(x)=cos^2(x)-(1-cos^2(x))=cos^2(x)-1+cos^2(x)=2cos^2(x)-1.
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Jace

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Re: University/College
« Reply #965 on: 11 Apr 2012, 00:23 »


btw, if someone could explain how to verify cos^2(x)-sin^2(x)=2cos^2(x)-1 it'd really help since the book doesn't give very good examples for that one. I have a feeling that I am supposed to use the pythagorean identities but it is just not clicking.

A simpler way of achieving the same result is to replace sin^2(x) with 1-cos^2(x) on the left hand side (justified by Pythagoras). After you get rid of the parenthesis, you combine like terms and are done. I wasn't sure how comfortable you are with the rule: -(A-B)=-A+B. If you are happy with that, then it would go like

cos^2(x)-sin^2(x)=cos^2(x)-(1-cos^2(x))=cos^2(x)-1+cos^2(x)=2cos^2(x)-1.

This was the one I was looking for! Since we are verifying, we are only meant to manipulate one side of the equation to get it to look like the other. I was just drawing a blank! Thanks for helping!
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Lupercal

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Re: University/College
« Reply #966 on: 11 Apr 2012, 01:12 »

Ratemyprofessor.com is a joke.  They have no protocol, no accuracy, and no godamned honesty.
I had never heard of this site, but it really is hilarious to read college-level students bitching in misspelled, illiterate gibberish that their professor unfairly marked them down for bad grammar and spelling... Hello boys and girls, you are supposed to have mastered basic English before you leave high-school. If ESL people can do it, why not you?

I am appalled though that colleges actually dismiss lecturers on the basis of this crap.  :x

Its weird, because students these days don't seem to have any problem with not being able to spell or use grammar properly. The people I've talked to about such things seem to think it is somebody else's fault that they don't know that the apostrophe in "it's" is usually for "it is", or that "whom" usage is necessary once in a while (for her/him). Recently, the student newspaper that I write for came under attack for having printed articles with spelling mistakes in them - and yet people freely admitted that they sent off their articles full of mistakes, and still felt it was the editor's fault for not making a pristine example of their work. It is appalling, really, to try and suggest that bad grammar usage and poor spelling, when you're writing for print, is anyone else's fault but your own.
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Carl-E

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Re: University/College
« Reply #967 on: 11 Apr 2012, 08:21 »

Oh, but it's always someone else's fault. 

I had an exchage with a student Monday before a quiz.  He was asking for aother example of the material the quiz was over.  We'd done one last class (by way of review), had done dozens of them the week previous (because of the homework that was due), and so I said no.  He said he'd done the homework (it's online, instant feedback, so he knew if he had them right or wrong and could redo them until they were right), but he still didn't understand it. 

...and that's when I told him that it was his responsibility to do more, or seek out a tutor, or get some kind of help.  I'd done what I could, if he still had trouble, it was his turn to do something. 

He was shocked.  Shocked, I tell you.  And I'm pretty sure he wasn't the only one...


So you know who's going to get blamed for not "teaching" him, right? 

 :psyduck:
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Re: University/College
« Reply #968 on: 12 Apr 2012, 00:40 »

heh, I am one of the tutors that people go to with those problems. I'd say that at least half of the college age clients I have just expect me to do their homework for them. And they all seem to be under 27. Any student over 27 that I've tutored really wants to learn the material.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #969 on: 12 Apr 2012, 06:35 »

It really is scary how bad some people are at forming coherent sentences. I saw something yesterday on Facebook that REALLY made me shudder.

Someone I'm friends with posted something along the lines of "Why me? Boohoo, my ex-girlfriend is ruining my life but I still love her". Someone responded with "Your better then them and your gonna get threw this. There just a piece of shit."

I get that this is just FB so it's not really serious and most people don't really think before they post....but....whyyyyyyyyyyyy??? It hurts my brain to read things like that. These people all graduated high school!
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Re: University/College
« Reply #970 on: 12 Apr 2012, 06:56 »

And it's actually no more trouble to write the correct words rather than the wrong ones.
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Carl-E

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Re: University/College
« Reply #971 on: 12 Apr 2012, 07:03 »

And you can't really blame the autocomplete for getting the words wrong - not if you start them correctly and actually look at what's being foisted upon you! 
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Re: University/College
« Reply #972 on: 12 Apr 2012, 07:52 »

Someone I'm friends with posted something along the lines of "Why me? Boohoo, my ex-girlfriend is ruining my life but I still love her". Someone responded with "Your better then them and your gonna get threw this. There just a piece of shit."
I had to read that about five or six times before I understood what it meant.
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Barmymoo

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Re: University/College
« Reply #973 on: 12 Apr 2012, 08:33 »

A girl in the year above me at uni (so a final year law student at one of the best unis in the world), who is at least bilingual and possibly trilingual as she's Swiss-American, writes lyk this on fb and it makes u want 2 cry.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #974 on: 12 Apr 2012, 09:03 »

Well, technically that's a fourth language for her...


Or at least, a dialect. 
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Re: University/College
« Reply #975 on: 12 Apr 2012, 11:51 »

A girl in the year above me at uni (so a final year law student at one of the best unis in the world), who is at least bilingual and possibly trilingual as she's Swiss-American, writes lyk this on fb and it makes u want 2 cry.

Eergrghhh....yeah, that drives me insane. The word "you" is only 3 letters, you mean to tell me that it's too hard to type the whole thing? I hate when people leave out practically every vowel too. Vowels are your friends!!

We could probably have a whole thread dedicated to ridiculous language usage on the internet. (And in meat life as well.....it's sad how many errors I find in the paperwork at my job. Just this morning, our youth program put a press release in the local paper and it mentioned that they helped students focus on community leadership, career development and "collage preparation".)
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Method of Madness

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Re: University/College
« Reply #976 on: 12 Apr 2012, 12:23 »

It goes beyond laziness or the occasional misspelling, though. Sometimes it seems that people are being intentionally wrong.
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Akima

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Re: University/College
« Reply #977 on: 12 Apr 2012, 16:10 »

And it's actually no more trouble to write the correct words rather than the wrong ones.
Yes, especially if you touch-type. I don't actually think about the separate letters in a word any more unless it is distinctly unfamiliar, I just let my fingers take care of that.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #978 on: 12 Apr 2012, 16:43 »

I've been a good speller before, during and after a 30-year career as a reporter and copy editor. When someone asks me how to spell a word, the letters usually come out of my mouth almost as fast as I can type them. When the letters don't start immediately, if I'm at a keyboard I tell the person, "Just a minute, I'll ask my fingers."
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Re: University/College
« Reply #979 on: 12 Apr 2012, 23:42 »

...and it mentioned that they helped students focus on community leadership, career development and "collage preparation".


So... it's an arts program?   :-D
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Method of Madness

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Re: University/College
« Reply #980 on: 13 Apr 2012, 00:11 »

And it's actually no more trouble to write the correct words rather than the wrong ones.
Yes, especially if you touch-type. I don't actually think about the separate letters in a word any more unless it is distinctly unfamiliar, I just let my fingers take care of that.
On the rare occasion that I type in that shorthand, it's as a joke, but it takes significantly longer to type for this reason, I have to actively think of how to spell it wrong.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #981 on: 13 Apr 2012, 03:12 »

I suppose Twitter kind of re-introducted having to do stuff like year = yr or using you know, actual numbers instead of words (one/1)

I live with a ridiculously smart English student and his facebook is a horrendous concoction of "lol"s and "exclaiming everything! I can't help putting one of these on the end of the sentence! Its really so much better than a full stop! Yay!!!!"

But hey, if everyone had my grammar/word sensitivity, there would be no future job or complaining for me to do, so it keeps me busy.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #982 on: 13 Apr 2012, 08:18 »

Usually I think about what the word looks like and read it from my head. I've always been pretty good at spelling. And for the tricky words, mnemonic devices/breaking the word into its roots both tend to work pretty well.



Well....that and the red squiggly line. How do people ignore that?!
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Re: University/College
« Reply #983 on: 13 Apr 2012, 08:23 »

cool article about the brain learning to read: NPR
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Re: University/College
« Reply #984 on: 13 Apr 2012, 09:24 »

I suppose Twitter kind of re-introducted having to do stuff like year = yr or using you know, actual numbers instead of words (one/1)
I can't get myself to do that, and thus sometimes I need two or more tweets. Am I doing it wrong?
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Re: University/College
« Reply #985 on: 13 Apr 2012, 09:34 »

Seeing as how you use twitter you are, by definition, "doing it wrong."
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Re: University/College
« Reply #986 on: 13 Apr 2012, 09:48 »

It seems I'm even doing "doing it wrong" wrong.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #987 on: 13 Apr 2012, 13:30 »

I frequently go into 3 texts to send a message, because I have always written out words in full and punctuated. You know how people always go "no one ACTUALLY punctuates their texts"? They do. I do. That is how I know.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #988 on: 13 Apr 2012, 16:13 »

My texts are all properly worded as well. And properly capitalized. And grammatically correct.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #989 on: 13 Apr 2012, 19:33 »

Me too!




In other semi-related news.....it did not take 6 months to get my certificate! Had to pay an extra 25 bucks to get a paper copy, but it's here! It's here! Weeeeeeee!
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Re: University/College
« Reply #990 on: 13 Apr 2012, 22:57 »

Aww, fuck, I'm finally done with this shit.

Aww, fuck, I'm starting back next month.

I'm not sure how my life got to this point.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #991 on: 14 Apr 2012, 17:23 »

One of the speakers at the conference I was at today said that a friend had told her to stay in school until they threw her out. 

Next thing she knew, she had a Ph.D. 
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Re: University/College
« Reply #992 on: 14 Apr 2012, 20:07 »

One of the speakers at the conference I was at today said that a friend had told her to stay in school until they threw her out. 

Next thing she knew, she had a Ph.D.
What was her topic? Did she know it?
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Re: University/College
« Reply #993 on: 14 Apr 2012, 20:25 »

You know, I am semi worried about this. I am more than a few years off from teaching biology at college, but when I do I am going to use an idea from a book I read in urban outfitters, I will record all of the silly basic errors my students make over the year. Then I will release them all at the end of the year to my students. (The authors will be anonymous of course). The offenders do not get revealed, but they are shamed. Or I just might call them out in class.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #994 on: 15 Apr 2012, 12:44 »

My dissertation is due in 8 days.

 :psyduck:
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Re: University/College
« Reply #995 on: 15 Apr 2012, 13:59 »

I got to call out actors who were not reading their line notes, in front of the 50+ person cast. It was immensely satisfying, because line notes are a pedantic pain in the ass, which we were doing for the benefit of people who were clearly ignoring them, because they kept making the same mistakes every day.

In a less shaming method, some of my high school teachers - calc and english, I think - would use people's poor work as exercises for finding errors. So in math (or maybe it was physics?), we'd have to find where the calculations went wrong, and in English we'd correct the spelling/grammar/punctuation of sentences pulled from recent essays.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #996 on: 15 Apr 2012, 23:50 »

Yeah, can't really do that nowadays.  The shame factor thing pisses people off.  You wind up being called out for it. 

My dissertation is due in 8 days.

 :psyduck:


Get off the fucking boards - we'll still be here next week. 
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Re: University/College
« Reply #997 on: 16 Apr 2012, 03:30 »

Right. I submitted my master's application form. It's missing one of two reference letters, my bachelor's diploma (which I haven't got on account of still having to graduate), my bachelor thesis (which I haven't completed yet, instead I have a second-year thesis), official transcripts of my grades (I have no idea if I can even get those and how) and it's one day past the deadline. Also, my GPA is 0.4 points below the required 7.5.

I am about 50% sure I screwed up enough things in the procedure that I'll be rejected immediately. However, I wrote a pretty badass motivation letter, and I hope the stuff that is there will be enough for them to consider me for an interview. Fingers crossed.
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Lupercal

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Re: University/College
« Reply #998 on: 16 Apr 2012, 03:49 »

Yeah, can't really do that nowadays.  The shame factor thing pisses people off.  You wind up being called out for it. 

My dissertation is due in 8 days.

 :psyduck:


Get off the fucking boards - we'll still be here next week.

Thing is, there is so much individuality in teaching and in learning that it should be reasonable to call people out and shame them.

If someone is a shit teacher (comparable to the teaching methods of staff as a whole), then they should be called out.
If a student is lazy and can't be bothered with doing work properly compared to their peers, they should also be called out.

I guess I'm an advocate of having been shamed a few times in high school and given the kick up the ass to meet requirements set by my teachers and my peers.
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Re: University/College
« Reply #999 on: 16 Apr 2012, 05:15 »

Well they didn't say who had done it, so it was just kind of like, everybody now knew that someone in the class was taking an honors-level 12th-grade English class and still didn't know the difference between common homophones.
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