Sunday, November 27, 2011

Comic relief at grading time. Fun and funny student words of wisdom.


I've made fun of student writing before. Some student writing is poor; some isn't. In this post, it isn't about that. It's about writing that is just plain fun. Here's a small sample from the last few months. Each quote is from a different student, different situation (tests, online forums or conferences, papers, etc.)...

"The modern cities are very heavily urbanized."

"I do not see Iraq becoming democratic in the near future but when the first Wal-Mart or McDonalds rolls in that will be the democratic companies taking over."

"I guess all people aren’t consider equal in America (Liberal belief) because under this same constitution which was provoked by Liberalism, slavery of people happen for more than 400 plus years, this reminds me of Realism in the most Imperial way, it was just used on a group of people at a dangerous domestic level. Liberals who claim they want religious freedom continue to take the Bible out of school and teach homosexuality which in return tears down the citizen of America (Aids, STD’s), they (Liberals) want freedom but in there exercise of that continually take freedom away."

"I did my research using the Internet and tried to put into my own words what I read and researched on the Internet. Alot of the information is hard to reword due to the fact that they are facts and not opinion."

...and my personal favorite...

"Plato wrote the last days of Socrates, and describes within that document how Socrates comes to accept his death is 399 B.C. The text was written the years following his death but wasn’t officially published by Penguin Classics until 1954."

8 comments:

  1. Oh, wow, that last one is a gem to be posted in your office in about 3 years' time.

    Gorgeous.

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  2. slavery for 400 years after the constitution, eh? So it's due to end in 2187? I'll put that on my calender

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  3. I love the last one a lot. One place where MLA kicks APA's ass is in using older (if not ancient) texts. It feels really silly to highlight your 2010 edition of The Republic in text. :)

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  4. Judging from the third one I'm guessing Glenn Back is one of your students?

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  5. Adjunct Slave....have you seen "Shit my Students Write"? Great blog, full of hilarious nonsense like this. Come to think of it, I might have read about that blog either here, or RYS back in the day. Thanks for these amusing tidbits, BTW.

    http://shitmystudentswrite.tumblr.com/

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  6. Well, it took Plato awhile to learn English.

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  7. @ Cranky - Thanks for the tip. I had heard of that site, but I have forgotten it and not looked at it in a long time. I'll go check it out again.

    @ MA&M - Sometimes I think I have Hannity, Beck, O'Reilly, Coulter and Limbaugh in every single one of my classes! This particular student dropped a number of these fun quotes throughout the class.

    @ Merely - Yes, he had to learn English or convince some American foreign exchange student to translate it for him. It was necessary to get the publication, as the student put it, "official." You see, back then, Greek was only allowed in "unofficial" publications.

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  8. AS: That's because if Plato "officialy" published it in Greece he'd have to pay tax on it, and as we've all learned recently greeks do not pay taxes.

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