Wednesday, October 30, 2013

"Shouldn't We Be Addressing These Idiots on Twitter?" Mike in Memphis Muses.

From Twitter:
"Professor, I pay thousands of dollars to this school which subsequently pay your salary so I will pack up whenever I damn well please."
"Miss a class 4 times and the professor wants to fail me.... Hold up I help pay your salary how does that work?"

You sometimes post Twitter screenshots and it got me hooked on that site. I cannot believe the idiocy pouring out of so many students. I really think some kind of concerted anti-idiocy movement needs to be started, so that people in the real world, students, parents, etc. will understand what the "new" professors job is like, what it pays, how insecure the employment is, etc.

I've heard students say things like the two examples above, and when I've tried to correct them, they don't fully believe me, regarding salary, what have you.

Would we get more respect from students if they knew how much our jobs sucked, or less? I just hate that most of them don't know at all what I do, what their tuition actually pays for.

This is driving me mental. I want to smack these douchebags with reality. Or is that a waste of time?


12 comments:

  1. Nothing will help students understand something so complex. But it'd be fun to fuck with them anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Waste of time. We can't win an internet propaganda war, there are many more of them. Plus it would expose the person doing it to ridicule, like the "professors strike back" feature on "that site" (does any self-respecting proffie use that?) Let the losers vent, it doesn't matter.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The "professors strike back" feature doesn't work to begin with. It's just a button that allows you to send a message to the mods, which in turn gets sent to the circular file.

      Delete
  3. Not a good idea. It would lessen their already low opinion of us. Let the idiot leave class and suffer the "stated in the syllabus" consequences.

    Who was it who stated on this site long ago, "when you join a gym you don't instantly get great abs. You have to go and work out there. Paying for a class and not participating does therefore not get you an automatic A." ?

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  4. The last time I heard a student utter this sentiment to a colleague, I heard my colleague retort: "If you don't like the 'customer service' in this class, you're welcome to shop elsewhere."

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  5. Every year, I amuse myself by calculating (very unscientifically/using what my accountant brother calls "Hollywood Accounting") the amount that any student of mine contributes to my salary. Since I have not had a raise in 2 years, it has remained constant at 49 cents.

    I keep this sum ready at all times, ready to hand over. When and if I ever hand it over, I will then ask for a refund. As a taxpayer, I will explain: "I am paying part of your tuition. You are making a very poor use of my investment, and I want my money back!"

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  6. Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, used to yell back at hecklers. This never works: it just makes the speaker look undignified.

    Don't worry about smacking your douchebags with reality. Reality will smack them soon enough, hard. This is why I never bother to take attendance: being a snowflake has a very bad effect on how much one learns, and on one's grade, if you design your exams well.

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  7. I have never understood the allure of Twitter. First of all, the name conjures up the image of a small, twittering bird, i.e. - a bird-brain. That used to be a common pejorative back when the culture frowned on terms like dumbass and stupid f*ck being used in public.

    Second, it seems to be to have devolved into the most efficient way for idiots to broadcast their stupidity to the world. But it's the natural progression of a generation that can't be bothered to learn cursive, read a book, learn how to spell, learn how to punctuate, or learn how to think. Or learn how to deal with disappointments and setbacks.

    ReplyDelete
  8. A little smacking up side the head may be in order. I'm a new professor and students constantly treat me as if they own me. Or shall I say that they *bought* me?

    We're working on an upper-level, class research project right now. Because my department has no research funds, I've dug into my own pockets to sponsor their data collection. Rookie mistake, huh?

    A student was disappointed because I've limited the size of their datasets to control my costs. So, she told me to incentivize more subjects for them because her tuition dollars need to "go to work!"

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  9. I've had a student try that pay your salary line on me . . . at a state-funded community college . . . with some of the lowest per unit fees in the country . . . while having a full fee waiver.

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  10. I cannot even comment because my blood pressure just shot up after reading this. I have to go lie down and pet my dog.

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  11. I live in an country where evil socialism provides universal health care and subsidized education, so whenever the topic of tuition comes up I state... "your tuition barely pays the heat and lights around here to give you some place warm to do your Facebook in the winter. The government pays for your education, so as far as I'm concerned, you're a government employee, and I'm *your* boss. So get to work."

    I haven't lost that argument once.

    I do like the "customer service" comment earlier. I'll have to add that to my list of smack-downs. Thanks! :)

    ReplyDelete

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