So as to perpetuate the infighting amongst ourselves about the relative intelligence of students in different majors, and because I am in the middle of grading umpteen student assignments and right now I feel like being a dick, I am hereby offering my opinion, which has formed over more than a quarter-century in both grad school and on a tenure line. I was too busy working as an undergrad to pay attention to how smart people in other majors were, but I’m pretty sure that things would have looked much the same.
Ed majors. Barring the occasional exception proving the rule, a huge portion of those people are thisclose to being classified as mentally handicapped. At least if I were doing the classifying.
Ditto "General Studies" majors, which was a major we created to house all the dim bulbs that had washed out of their original majors. If we had a major in "fucking up," this would be it.
Business majors also pretty much suck ass. And every theater major I've ever had has shown up to class drunk at least once, and/or shot off their mouth at length when it was obvious they haven't done the reading. I understand why they do this. They like to get drunk and hear the sound of their own voice, which is why they became theater majors to begin with. Mostly I am forgiving because at least they won't be exposing their drunken ignorance to school children, and if they do, they will probably be arrested. I can't say that about the elementary ed majors.
Hrm…who else? Paralegal majors are all plagiarists. Lazy, fucking plagiarists.
I will say that there are a whole bunch of smart, NOT lazy students in math, history, biology, philosophy, religious studies, English, etc., so long as they're not also ed majors.
There. That felt better.
I suppose many of you are thinking “Why are we fighting amongst ourselves?” “Can’t we all just get along?”
Well, no. Not if you continue to rub talcum on the behinds of your silly-ass students when they take courses in your building, but then send them over to mine where those same asses are likely to get kicked.
I don’t mind being the bad guy, but it gets fucking old.
Now, back to grading.
Feeling a little kicked in the gut by this post. I guess I would've been one of your targets, simply by majoring in something you don't respect.
ReplyDeleteNot exactly fair after a long day on the adjunct gravy train. The disrespect there is as palpable as it is right here, Stella.
I am in a bad mood. And just finished trying to deal with the umpteenth ed major that can't read a fucking syllabus and is vociferously blaming me. Frankity, you are likely one of those exceptions that proves the rule. As is my mother, by the way.
ReplyDeleteI think.
And Frankity, darlin', adjuncts aren't the only ones who get the blues.
ReplyDeleteRevised due to big ol' honkin' typo:
ReplyDeleteYippee ki yi yo! Go Stella! Go Stella! Thank you from the bottom of my black liberal studies heart. I've been steaming a bit about the same comment that I believe may have set you off. I'm also blonde and feeling a bit tetchy about prior comments in that area, too.
Nothing gives me more pleasure than watching smirking asshole flakes from "practical, applied majors" end up as sniveling wrecks on the floor of my classroom. Their smirks in week one about how easy this class will be turn to grimaces of pain and agony by mid term when they realize that holy shit, this fluffy lil' ol' liberal arts class requires some hellacious heaps of so-phis-ti-cated thinkin' and stuff.
I run my own discussion sections. Smart students don't skip them.
Frankity, I may be a lame brained, non critical thinking, blonde liberal arts proffie...but I truly think there's a wee bit o' the satire in Stella's screed. Don't take it personally--unless you chose your major because it didn't require as much reading and writing as some others. :0)
@Annie,
ReplyDeleteI gave up a TT in my final semester of approval. o_o
I resigned to follow my husband, who was following his dreams (or was it a nightmare?). I wish I was back on the other side of the pasture. I'm afraid I'll never have that opportunity again. I know I won't. Stella is right! I am thisclose. It is I! 'Tardo!
The disrespect offered up daily by my "colleagues" is worse than the flakery of my students. Was looking for a soft spot to rest my head tonight. CM is not it today. I'll go consult Oprah or watch some Keyboard Cat now, with a cup of cocoa and box of Puffs. Or maybe I should just get back to my shitty stack of essays, of which a student asked me today, "Does spelling count?" I don't know what's wrong with me. A few of the submissions have been making me cranky lately. Catch ya later.
Frankity, CM is a lumpy pillow at best. But we mostly love our own, even the ones individual ones of us don't like. Tell Keyboard Cat hello.
ReplyDeleteAw Frankity. I'm sorry. There's always another side of the pasture, and it can be easy (especially in the early morning hours with a stack of crappy papers) to curse the electric fence keeping us from the other side. You are NOT 'Tardo. You are a human with a heart who followed another human with a heart.
ReplyDeleteAnd to feel alone at school is pretty sucky. Have you looked outside your own department? When I started at my current position a few years ago, I replaced a proffie who was loathed by the others in the department. They transferred their vitriol to me, immediately. So I looked outside...figured out which folks were doing good things in their classrooms and stopped in to say hi and ask if I could sit in on class sometime. There are really awesome people on our campus, and I ended up with a great interdisciplinary network of colleagues with whom I could commiserate.
In the meantime, things turned and changed in my own department. It took a while, but they've come around. A couple of us will never be besties, but at least they've realized they can't drag me down.
Hang in there. I hope things get better...or, at least, seem better in the light of day.
Oh, and I want to throw desks and bitch slap someone anytime I get the "does spelling count?" question.
1/2+1/3
ReplyDelete5/6. -An English major/theater minor.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the lcm of 2 and 3?
ReplyDelete5/6, Mr Smarty Pants EMH.
ReplyDeleteYou answered the wrong question.
ReplyDeleteTo ensure no one is using a calculator,
ReplyDeleteWhat is the lcm of 2 and 3?
5/6 was in response to your first question, @EMH. And I majored in looking at pictures and drawing stuff. I know the answer to the second one, but I'm not telling.
ReplyDelete6.
ReplyDeleteWell, maybe I'm talking to the wrong audience.
ReplyDeletePeople who are too dumb to add fractions probably would not be on this blog to begin with.
Also, I don't own a calculator.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm a college senior who hasn't taken a math class since high school.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I added 1/2 and 1/3 by finding the LCM, converting the numerators (ie 1/2 into 3/6 and 1/3 into 2/6) and then adding the numerators. I learned this in elementary school, and have never forgotten it. That said, if you ask me to remember anything from high school calculus, I'll probably have issues. Strange the way that works.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not exactly the brightest student out there. My GPA is 3.05, I'm ranked 410 in my class of about 650, and I usually get Bs and Cs in my classes. I read this blog because I find it amusing, and I enjoy getting an inside look at what annoys professors so as to avoid being "that snowflake."
ReplyDelete@ Alex
ReplyDeleteThank you! You don't know how many times people try to tell me that they can't add fractions because they HADN'T taken a math class since high school,
or that their teacher being a jerk destroyed the part of their brain that adds fractions (and usually everything indicates that their teacher's name was meth).
I throw up a little whenever I think about elementary school. You know, I have actually seen some of them teach that 1/2+1/3=2/5. When called on it, one person responded that you don't need to know how to add fractions so there's no point in teaching it correctly. How they keep their jobs is beyond me.
And then the little kids grow up and become snowflakes and I have to set them straight.
ReplyDeleteFun stuff!
@ Alex,
ReplyDeleteI can totally sympathize with not remembering calculus. That's some pretty convoluted stuff when learning it for the first time.
Before you disparage theater majors, you might want to spend sometime over in the theatre department. There is more to theatre than acting. And more to acting that reciting a monologue. And more to earning a PhD in theater than you can imagine.
ReplyDeleteTheater design/ tech requires a good grasp of math and esp., fractions. You cannot build a piece of scenery or hang a light without knowing basic math. Acting requires a good grasp of English, sociology, history, and so on. Directing requires good business management skills. As does Stage management, and so forth.
And finally, a play can only be produced if everyone involved pulls their weight. Students who fail to come to rehearsal or crew, who fail to learn lines quickly drop out. Theater requires a lot of self-discipline. It is a ruthless field. Many are called, and few are chosen.
The loudmouth theater majors you had, Stella, are the ones who end up failing out of theater.
The loudmouths in ANY department are usually the ones who fail out....
ReplyDeleteWouldn't presume to speak for everyone in a major. I've known smart kids from all of the disciplines. And I actually like the theater majors.
ReplyDeleteBut education majors. Oh my.
I wonder what they do over there in the school of education. I've heard whispered rumors at the water-cooler of students being assigned coloring books as homework (I shit you not) and final essay assignments about their feelings, but I want to disbelieve those. I want to think that there's some sort of core of rigor that you come upon after the stuffed animal parade has mashed all of the I'm-OK-you're-OK fluff that surrounds it into a sweet-smelling pulp.
I want to believe these things, but evidence points to the contrary. They don't read the syllabus, or if they do, they don't understand it. I had one of them raise his hand on the fourth (the fourth!!) day of class and ask "are we supposed to be actually *doing* the reading listed on the syllabus?"
My favorite major: the Engineering students. They're the most ready to insist that the topic isn't their thing (I teach in the humanities), but they're the hardest workers, ALWAYS ask for help when they need it, ALWAYS show up and have something to say, ALWAYS point out errors in the rest of the class's reasoning. They're money in the bank, that's right, a bank fulla money.
Oh, Stella, where I am, at least we differentiate between high school ed and elementary ed. I've noticed the elementary ed can only read up to the grade level they plan to teach. Perhaps that's appropriate. Sigh.
ReplyDelete"or that their teacher being a jerk destroyed the part of their brain that adds fractions (and usually everything indicates that their teacher's name was meth)."
ReplyDeleteNo, her name was Betty. EMH, I hope you don't treat your students like you treat us. I scored in the 99th percentile on national-level math tests from 3rd to 8th grade. Then I had Betty in 9th grade. She was as contemptuous as you are, and I dropped to the 50th, was tracked out of high-level math, and never made it to pre-calc. I was too afraid of a repeat experience to take remedial college math, so I didn't.
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ReplyDeleteAs I said elsewhere, our aspiring teachers (we don't have ed majors per se) seem to be pretty good. They certainly don't stick out in the way they apparently do at some of your schools. If I had to pick one major that seems to attract a disproportionate number of the lazy, indecisive, and/or clueless, I'd probably say Communications, though of course there are also some very good Communications majors (and I have some friends who teach Communications, and both complain and hold the line when it comes to grades). Overall, though, Communications seems attract some of the students who used to go into English because they couldn't figure out what else to do, and thought maybe they'd like to be journalists or go into advertising (now they want to be news anchors or publicists). I'm not sure whether that's a good or a bad thing, since our traditional literature concentration is beginning to look like it's on the road to becoming the new Classics: respected, maybe, but with very few majors. At least when we had the budding journalists and ad-copy-writers, they helped fill up the lit classes.
ReplyDeleteI haven't had a lot of contact with Business majors (though that's changing this semester), so I can't really speak to their abilities (or lack thereof). But it does seem to be another major students select because they're not quite sure why they're in college (and/or they're very sure that they're in college to learn how to make money). Other majors on our campus that seem to have more than their fair share of underachievers are Sports Management, some of the flakier areas of Physical Education (the aspiring physical therapists, on the other hand, are generally very bright and curious, with good people skills to boot), and Event Planning/Tourism.
P.S. @EMH: Despite being a liberal arts type, I, too, can add fractions without a calculator, and apply the principle of the least common multiplier in doing so (though the initials didn't immediately spark my memory of the term; I had to see it spelled out to remember it, but I didn't need to remember it to use it). I also know what calculus is good for (finding the area under a curve), though I couldn't actually do any of it without a refresher course. I learned fractions sometime in elementary school, calculus in high school (and a bit more in college, but that's where I encountered not quite a Betty, but a male TA who preferred teaching to the students who had already taken the whole AB/BC sequence in high school, and were just in the class for an easy A, rather than me -- and perhaps a few quiet others -- who were encountering sequences and series for the first time. I'm still pretty sure I could master them -- and maybe I'll go back and do so when/if I retire, to keep my brain alive and show I can do it -- but I didn't in that class). I still use fractions a bit, but mostly the increments that show up on a ruler or measuring tape, which of course are easy to convert from one to the other.
ReplyDeleteyes, ed majors and business majors blow, with some notable exceptions. theatre majors at my slac are kind of awesome. so many of our students are bland carbon copies of each other - theatre majors spice things up. then again, maybe they are just drunk.
ReplyDelete@ F&T
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry for what happened to you with Betty. I hope you strive to be a better teacher than her.
My primary disdain comes from students who just don't give a fuck. However, some experiences with bad teachers can be so traumatizing that it creates a mental block. Dealing with a little PTSD myself, it kinda makes me rough around the edges at times. However, some students actually lie about bad experiences with prior teachers in the hopes of being enabled. That was the true nature of my comment.