Sunday, June 10, 2012

My graduation speech to Gregory Gradegrubber

Hello Gregory Gradegrub. Why yes, you did fail the last exam. What is it your generation says? Oh, yes, it was an epic fail. Your intense and bizarre obsession with the extra credit for the course reveals your complete lack of mathematical acumen.

No, I will not spend more time in my office to help you understand the extra credit assignment. Your inability to plan ahead is not my panicked emergency. You did this to yourself. The extra credit has been available since the first week of the class.

You need this class so you can graduate and get a job? Listen, Grubbers, I'm sorry that the American mythos has enshrined the piece of paper called a College Diploma as the Golden Job Ticket. I really am. Frankly, if I owned a company, and you were my employee, I would have fired you after the first week. You are unmotivated and disrespectful. Your grade in the class reflects your lack of dedication and comprehension.

I am absolutely sickened by the thought that you want to work in the medical field. I wouldn't trust you with the responsibility of unpacking tongue depressors, let alone taking someone's blood pressure.

The College Diploma will get you in the door, but your performance will get you fired.

College is about learning how to learn, how to approach and synthesize new information, and how to meet multiple expectations and deadlines. For students like you, Gregory, it is a four-year, dog and pony show. You party with your friends, come to my class reeking of booze, and never complete the most basic of tasks. You will get the College Diploma, because you managed to scrape the bottom of the barrel of your intellect to meet the bare minimum requirements.

You are not educated. You have a piece of paper. Congratulations.

17 comments:

  1. ....And then you pull out your Colt .45 pistol and blow his head off.

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    1. Colt would rip his head clean off.

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    2. Nagant M1895. Red Army WWII standard issue

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    3. Waste of good ammunition, where a simple baseball bat would do, and much more satisfyingly, at that. Don't use the new Louisville Slugger: use the old one that someone used to hit rocks.

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    4. Nonsense. You use a good bat, one that has been used by a famous big-league player. It lulls their suspicions.

      http://youtu.be/QHH9EYZHoVU

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  2. "You are not educated. You have a piece of paper. Congratulations."

    Gregory sez => "I didn't want to be educated. I wanted a piece of paper."

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    Replies
    1. Hell, sometimes all I want is a piece of paper. Usually every morning right after I finish my coffee.

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    2. You can't shame these people with their lack of education, or curse them with ignorance. Again, see the old RYS post, "May your perfidy ramify through your life": it sums up this situation well.

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  3. As far as Gregory goes, yes, lots of people need to graduate so they can get jobs. And that's why you get this grade, and fail this class: so that those who do graduate can continue to get jobs. If every idiot was given a diploma, the diploma would eventually mean nothing. We've already started on that scary slide to doom, and I'm not going to contribute to it, no, not tenured little me.

    As far as "I just want the piece of paper," I suspect that some of the students who say such things don't really believe it. They say it to fit in, to sound hangdog and uncaring. Hell, even I said it, once upon a time. Then I'd check out books of French poetry and read them alone in my dorm room. I have to believe they don't really mean it, because if they mean it, I'm just a glorified paper salesman, which is an honorable trade I'm sure. But not mine.

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    1. I think most of them mean it in the sense that a college diploma is really nothing more than tangible proof of their genius. They don't like being forced to prove their awe-inspiring brilliance by having to go to college; it should be immediately obvious to anyone who looks at them, and they resent having to jump through this hoop just to please future employers. But they really don't think they're learning anything in college or that anyone expects them to.

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  4. Oooh. Big words. Are you trying to make him feel stupid? You can't expect him to know words like acumen, mythos, comprehension, or synthesize. And certainly not the word responsibility.

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    1. Well, "responsibility" has six syllables, so what did you expect?

      "Discipline" should be added to the list. Whenever my Dad pronounced, "Quiet" as a four-syllable word, that was the signal to quit being silly, now.

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  5. One wonders why they spend four years on something that isn't of any interest to them. Why not do another major, get a job, volunteer for humanitarian demining ... ?

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    1. Because they get to party for four years, at their parents' expense. THAT interests them. I asked one, why that major? He said, "Because it's easy, so I can get a job afterwards."

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  6. This should be burned onto the forehead of every flake student (reverse for reading in the mirrior): "College is about learning how to learn, how to approach and synthesize new information, and how to meet multiple expectations and deadlines."

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