Your "Best" Student Answers

[long_time_lurker]

Some students will put non sequiturs into their assignments to try and catch you not reading their assignments.

[LLajax]

Some students will put non sequiturs into their assignments to try and catch you not reading their assignments.

Nooooo, I don't believe that. I mean, we were all students, right? As a student, I would definitely disagree.

[ktel]

Nooooo, I don't believe that. I mean, we were all students, right? As a student, I would definitely disagree.

I know people who did that. I also know students who would be writing up reports and accidentally write something inappropriate as a joke to their friends, and then forget to take it out. I was surrounded by occasionally immature boys in undergrad.

[juilletmercredi]

Honestly, I never went to pick up graded anything. I felt like it is the TA or professors job to return graded assignments. It actually REALLY pisses me off when they tell us to "go pick it up". In undergrad, I had no clue where their office was, and wasn't about to spend precious study time figuring it out and picking up an old assignment, but I still want to know what grade I got!

This is just pure laziness, and it's attitudes like these that make professors want to make fun of the students' work. Part of studying is learning where you made past mistakes and doing better.

It's these students who irritate me the most - the ones who ask me 8 weeks into the semester where my office is or when my office hours are (it's been listed on the syllabus since BEFORE the first day of class), the ones who don't bother to pick up their homework even when I bring it to CLASS and then badger me about what their grade is. I had a student complain to me that she didn't realize that there was a late penalty on homework, so she felt like she had to talk to the professor because if she had realized there was a penalty, she would've turned it in closer to the due date. You're trying to tell me that you made it all the way to college (twice) and you didn't realize that there's almost always a penalty for late work? (And yes, we announced it.)

I also don't believe the sentiment that there are no stupid questions. It's simply not true. There are a variety of stupid questions students can ask during class - the ones that ask me something I've repeated 5 times already; the ones who ask questions that are unrelated to the subject at hand; "will this be on the final" questions (EVERYTHING is on the final. it's a statistics class!).

[kaykaykay]

You act as though you know me better than I know myself... that's odd. Are you seriously telling me I am lazy for working 20 - 30 hours per week, taking 5 courses a semester and paying my mortgage/bills, fixing my roof/washer/oven/eletrical/etc. and still trying to make time for my wife? Maybe the professor or TA could be considered lazy for not bringing the assignment with them to the class they are going there anyway, rather than make 40 students all take seperate trips to their office. Just making the point that people don't always do things for the reason you personally would, or assume other people would.

Nobody asked you to do all that stuff. If you decide to get a degree you should make time for it . I am very simpathetic with all my students endeavors but I treat them as adults with full respect to their choices. They have every right to prioritize their work /other study/ family life/love life but they do not have the right to complain about their grade if they decided to do something else . Life is full of trade-offs they have to take responsibility for their choices, and be happy with their choices, a failed class is not a huge deal.

Edited November 20, 2011 by kalapocska

[Sigaba]

I can't tell if people dislike me, think absolutely nothing of me, or avoid me because I am married or none of the above.... Argh. I am back to being socially awkward and confused all of a sudden[.]

The answers to your earlier musings are evident in this thread.

Just making the point that people don't always do things for the reason you personally would, or assume other people would.

Your point is interesting, given many of your previous posts in other threads.

[mandarin.orange]

"In college, few will come to pick up their final labs, papers and tests that you've taken time to comment upon."

Honestly, I never went to pick up graded anything. I felt like it is the TA or professors job to return graded assignments. It actually REALLY pisses me off when they tell us to "go pick it up". In undergrad, I had no clue where their office was, and wasn't about to spend precious study time figuring it out and picking up an old assignment, but I still want to know what grade I got! Usually someone would pick mine up for me though. Also, most of the time I knew what I was doing just as well as the TA anyway. Nevertheless, I personally love comments, as it means whoever graded it actually read it. I know I'm not in kindergarden, but I still like to see the "Good job!" on a 105/100 exam. :-)

What if it's work done and collected the last day of class? Hence my use of "final" in the original statement; that was the built-in assumption. Sorry if it wasn't clearer. Still, a logistical problem - how is a TA/prof/instructor going to efficiently redistribute work back to everyone if there's no more class? I've offered ways to save students this trouble in the past (mailing final labs, scanned copies of midterms via email), and been rather surprised by the underwhelming response.

As an aside, a professor friend of mine recently had a new university decree: 1) all graded work must be returned, and 2) it now had to be done in such a way that there was NO opportunity to see others' grades. No more stacks of exams on a table at the beginning/end of class, or left outside of offices, for people to sift through -- he had to give up instructional time to individually hand them back, which amounted to 15-20 min in big lecture courses. Which is the more asinine - profs having to cut out curriculum to allow time for an overly-PC mandate, or expecting students to adapt their schedule and sacrifice 5-10 min if they genuinely care to see their grade and feedback?

[ktel]

P.S., let me know if you didn't intend on being rude or calling me lazy, but I tend to see a lot of rude, mightier-than-thou posts on here and might be making undue assumptions myself.

Yes, and many of these posts come from you. If your real world behavior is similar to your online behavior, I second Sigaba's opinion that perhaps there are deeper reasons as to why you lack social connections within your department. You certainly seem unable to make them here.

As an aside, a professor friend of mine recently had a new university decree: 1) all graded work must be returned, and 2) it now had to be done in such a way that there was NO opportunity to see others' grades. No more stacks of exams on a table at the beginning/end of class, or left outside of offices, for people to sift through -- he had to give up instructional time to individually hand them back, which amounted to 15-20 min in big lecture courses. Which is the more asinine - profs having to cut out curriculum to allow time for an overly-PC mandate, or expecting students to adapt their schedule and sacrifice 5-10 min if they genuinely care to see their grade and feedback?

My university had a similar policy, but it was hit or miss whether the professors followed it. Many still maintained a stack of assignments outside their office and put a stack of exams at the front of the class.

[qbtacoma]

Have you ever considered it might be people making assumptions about me, assuming everyone online is culturally similar enough to correctly assume hidden meanings in posts? I think that is a possibility, but more likely people (as is often the case) just have a natural dislike for anyone who acts, thinks, or communicates differently - after all, people can be very "clan" oriented (proud of their family, race, nation, gender, football team, sexuality etc. etc. etc.) Also, I consider online connections as a chance to debate, discuss, learn, etc., possibly joke around, if the people are of a similar enough culture as to not assume that people are, um... I don't even know what you assume about me, you haven't really said.

I am starting to get the impression that this site is very "clickish" though, so I do try lately to avoid my usual button pushing statements.

So...which is it? Are we on GradCafe a clique, or do we not like getting our buttons pushed? That's the thing, though - this comment shows that you realize some of your statements are designed to get a rise out of people, and then you are surprised when people get annoyed.

[ktel]

Have you ever considered it might be people making assumptions about me, assuming everyone online is culturally similar enough to correctly assume hidden meanings in posts? I think that is a possibility, but more likely people (as is often the case) just have a natural dislike for anyone who acts, thinks, or communicates differently - after all, people can be very "clan" oriented (proud of their family, race, nation, gender, football team, sexuality etc. etc. etc.) Also, I consider online connections as a chance to debate, discuss, learn, etc., possibly joke around, if the people are of a similar enough culture as to not assume that people are, um... I don't even know what you assume about me, you haven't really said.

I am starting to get the impression that this site is very "clickish" though, so I do try lately to avoid my usual button pushing statements.

I don't know how "clan"-like the GradCafe can be, as I really know quite little about the demographics of most of the individuals, except perhaps their approximate age and field of study,

I don't think you really are as different as you like to say you are. While a lot of your posts are antagonistic, lately I have seen many of your posts change in tone in what appears is an attempt to reach out. It's evident you are struggling with many of the social aspects of grad school, which I think could only be solved by reflecting on yourself and your interactions with those at school.

[Loimographia]

I'd just like to peep up in favor of a few of the undergrads who never picked up their papers. At least in my experience, the reason I never picked up final papers was because I simply never knew it was an option: until my senior year, profs/TA's never even told the class about picking up final papers, I assumed that they were simply marked with a letter grade and filed in some cabinet for records, and weren't available to undergrads unless they wanted to contest their overall grades. Then, when I did at last try to pick up a paper the following semester, the professor had lost it I know this probably isn't the case for everyone (mandarin, you in particular seem to have gone out of your way to try to help students, admirably) and sheer ignorance isn't entirely defensible, but it may explain at least some of the lazier students...

[ktel]

I also seem to recall that we actually weren't allowed to take home our final exams. We could look at them in our profs office, but not take them home.

[OH YEAH]

Surely, you have some sort of point to make since you are posting on this forum. When you fail to be polite, your point is obscured. By conforming to social norms, you can quickly come to enough of an understanding with other humans such that communicating your point is possible. By not conforming to social norms--i.e., being unnecessarily confrontational as you have been in this thread--it is much more difficult to make your point, because you have to "figure out" the other person.

Pick and choose your battles carefully. Is your point really to expose thegradcafe as a clique? Is your point to let us know how you make friends with people ("I am a very long-term friendship oriented person.")? If so, stop trolling. If not, you are doing a poor job communicating with us, and you should reevaluate your philosophy.

Edited November 21, 2011 by OH YEAH

[ktel]

Aaron,

You are certainly not clueless as to the way you come across, and therefore the responses shouldn't be unpredictible to you. I have noticed you have begun to take on 2 distinct tones when posting here, one generates heated responses, and the other generates much more helpful responses. If you are able to figure this out, it seems you have figured us out.

[fuzzylogician]

I actually considered asking the community if there is rhyme or reason to the downvotes, but decided it would generate too many down votes haha. I really can't guess as to which posts will receive the down votes in general. For instance, in this thread alone, 2 of my posts have 6 or 7 negative votes and the rest are fairly neutral. Go figure. I am always in suspense when I open a thread with a response, waiting to find out if people will legitimately respond or just get mad. :-/

So yes, I can easily see the responses, but I can't predict ahead of time which way it will go.

Let me help, then.

This post:

"Honestly, I never went to pick up graded anything. I felt like it is the TA or professors job to return graded assignments. It actually REALLY pisses me off when they tell us to "go pick it up". In undergrad, I had no clue where their office was, and wasn't about to spend precious study time figuring it out and picking up an old assignment, but I still want to know what grade I got! Usually someone would pick mine up for me though. Also, most of the time I knew what I was doing just as well as the TA anyway. Nevertheless, I personally love comments, as it means whoever graded it actually read it. I know I'm not in kindergarden, but I still like to see the "Good job!" on a 105/100 exam. :-)"

is unhelpful.

- It shows immaturity in that you are making excuses for not knowing thinks that should be obviously clear. I bet the course syllabus lists the professor and TA's office and that they would tell you if you emailed them and asked.

- That you value your time above that of others and that you have your priorities all wrong. If you spend your entire time studying then there is something wrong with your study-techniques. You value your own learning skills more than the comments you might get from more experienced teachers on any assignment. If you can do it all yourself, why go to school in the first place? And if not, you may want to be more respectful of others' time and thoughts. Your attitude towards learning, as it emerges from this post, is completely counterproductive.

- That you have a condescending attitude toward your teachers. You think you know more than they do and you don't have a high opinion of the time they spend reading your work and commenting on it.

- And you unnecessarily bragged about your high grades. That didn't add anything substantive to the comment.

So what have we learned from your post? You can do it all yourself, and the TAs waste your time. No wonder you got down-voted.

[OH YEAH]

I imagine you also got downvoted because the members of this forum are or have been TAs. I'm a TA, and I found your post fairly offensive. It is enough of a struggle to fit meeting with students, grading assignments, and sometimes giving lectures along with my regular research load (no, it doesn't get lighter), the class I am taking, and my family. On top of this, I have to hunt down people and give them their assignments--perhaps just to be told "thanks for grading my assignment, but I actually know just as much about this as you do!"? As if TAs care about demonstrating their superiority over those who take the course. How petty and immature.

Edited November 22, 2011 by OH YEAH

[fuzzylogician]

Listen, I don't think it's worth my time or energy to reply to each of your points. You're clearly just not getting it.

I will reply to the one place where you said that what I wrote was "untrue" and quote your earlier post (again): "Also, most of the time I knew what I was doing just as well as the TA anyway." I find that, and your general attitudes towards TAs, disrespectful, for the reasons that OH YEAH specified.

One other general point: you now seem to express high(er) opinions of your professors, but still not of your peers. I don't know what kind of program you are in but I, at least, learn the most from my peers. My professors have the perspective and experience but my peers are the ones who I spend the most time with, and they are the ones who have fresh and exciting ideas. It would be a serious loss if I only interacted with my books and my professors and not with my peers. They are the ones who listen to my ideas that go no where, who help me out when I'm stuck, who read my drafts and comment on my (practice-)practice talks. They help me sort things in my head so that I can talk to my professors after having thought through my problems, and that way I can get better-targeted help from my professors. Your attitude is making it impossible for you to make the most out of your graduate school experience, just because you value some people less than others. ---- I assure you: they can tell, and they do not appreciate it.

Consider this, maybe, as my last contribution to this thread: this is not high school. There are no cliques and we are not out to get you, despite your rhetoric. Other posters have expressed opinion similar to your without being down-voted. Since--again--we have nothing against you, maybe it's time you considered that the way you express yourself is offensive to others. Your view that "everyone has to agree" here or that we are being "childish" is both wrong and unhelpful. Read other posts on this board and you'll find plenty of disagreement. But there are acceptable ways of expressing opinions in a society and there are less acceptable ways. If you consistently use less acceptable ways, don't be surprised if you get called out on it.

[ktel]

It seems a lot of people on here dislike whenever anyone mentions something above some generic average. Above average on the GRE? Best not mention it. Good grade? Keep it to yourself. Good school? Be careful what you say. Good house? A lot of money? Little debt? Happy family? Don't have to study for the GRE? Spend less than average time on something (like, say, an SOP)? All these things are off limits.

This is particularly untrue. I know I personally have expressed opinions somewhat similar to yours, but stated them in a different way, and thus got a different response.

[Sigaba]

Entire post.

Just because you say you have integrity doesn't make it so.

[fuzzylogician]

Aside from the fact that you disregarded my long reply (it's probably for the best anyway, since you have your mind made up),

<snip>

As for the second paragraph, are you blatantly admitting to be biased against the same content based on how blunt or how watered down it is?

<snip>

If having integrity causes me to step on a few toes in grad school, so be it. I would rather find out early if my program is full of political bullshit or values honesty and integrity.

Sigh.

I don't work for you and I don't have to address each of your points individually.

Yes, I "admit" to caring about how arguments are delivered. Are really so naive that you believe that you can say whatever you want, however you want? That you speak The Truth and that you are therefore allowed to be as rude and condescending as you like with no consequence? Or is it not naivete but self-importance? Either way, it's not very appealing. I usually take care to write thoughtful replies to even highly suspicious posts when I believe that other board users could benefit from the conversation. Unfortunately, your accusations and your tone, as well as the very fact that you clearly do not intend to take what any of us write to heart, make this an unproductive endeavor. We are trying to tell you that you give off an unfavorable impression. We address not only direct quotations--and even when we do you find ways to twist what you said around and go back on clear statements--we tell you what we understand from what you write. You may not like it, but the proper reaction is not to deny everything and blame everyone else but to try and think why this is so. If one person tells you you're drunk, she may be wrong. But if ten different people who don't know each other tell you you're drunk, maybe you should go lay down.

Lastly, I doubt it's integrity that makes you step on toes. Your mightier-than-thou attitude is not integrity, it's simply a refusal to play by the very basic social rules of academia and of adult life in general. The only person who will suffer is you.

[mandarin.orange]

There is much I could say, but am going to have to decline from framing a thoughtful reply in the immediate future...too many looming deadlines.

Here is one thing that sums up my initial reaction to the day's activity on this topic quite well:

[fuzzylogician]

I have reached my quota of positive votes for the day. I'll have to back tomorrow (sorry fuzzylogician).

I don't know if this is a genuine post or a sarcastic one. But regardless, let me say something more productive and that may be of more interest to other readers as well.

I am a linguist. In fact, my research centers around the area of sentence meaning (or semantics). Word choices (or lexical semantics) is an interesting field onto itself but it's outside my area of expertise so I won't comment on it any further. Logical entailments from sentences are also truly(!) fascinating. But beyond them there are other aspects of meaning that deserve attention as well -- and that is studied in the fields of pragmatics and discourse.

Sentences can have presuppositions and (defeasible) implicatures.

For example, if I tell you that I solved most of the problems on the quiz you are licensed to draw the conclusion that I didn't solve all of the problems correctly, even though my statement is entirely consistent with that state of affairs. Likewise, if I tell you that I have two brothers, you are licensed to infer that I have *exactly* two brothers, even though my statement is consistent with my having three or more brothers.

Singular definite descriptions like "the president" presuppose the existence of a unique referent that they can pick out in the discourse. That's why "the king of France is bald" is a weird sentence - not true but not quite false, it's infelicitous (there is no king of France) and likewise "you have to read the other thread on this board!" is strange (there is more than one other thread on the board). But if I told you sorry it took me so long to reply, I had to go pick up my brother at the airport, listeners and readers seem happy to accommodate the fact that I have a brother (possibly more than one, in fact) without protest even if they didn't know this fact before.

I can utter a generic statement like all owls hunt mice and you'll accept it as true even though what it entails is clearly false - there can be baby owls and very old owls that don't hunt at all, and sick owls or wounded owls - in fact, it can turn out that only half of all the owls hunt mice and you'll still think what I said was true. Similarly you'll agree that chicken lay eggs, even though it is at most true of half of all chickens even in the unlikely scenario that there are no exceptions among the hens, just because roosters don't lay any kind of egg at all.

Speakers report that they perceive differences between the following pairs of sentences: a triangle has at least three sides and a triangle has more than two sides, and also a triangle has at most three sides and a triangle has less than four sides -- even though these pairs are truth-conditionally equivalent (=they are true in exactly the same cases), and true (=every triangle meets the description in all four sentences, according to the mathematical definition of a triangle). These differences, then, have something interesting to do with the form of the number-words that are used in these sentences.

If I ask you can you pass the salt? or do you know what time it is?, you are being uncooperative if you just answer yes!. You understand very well that I want you to perform a certain action, even though my literal question was just yes/no.

The point of this tangent, beside my fascination with my own research field, is this: your request that we address only the literal meaning of your words and their logical entailments, but not anything beyond (in your words, distrusting what you explicitly say in favor of assumptions that are based on our own personal experiences), amounts to nothing more than insisting that can you pass the salt must be answered with yes!, else we are over-interpreting and putting words in your mouth that you did not utter. Competent speakers of any natural language use it to convey much more than just literal meaning, and whats more--they expect cooperative conversation partners to understand more than just the literal meaning as well; it's simply an integral part of language use. But you insist that a triangle has at least three sides! -- it's mathematically true, your integrity forces you to defend this position and you expect others to ignore the form of your argument, even though they tell you that there is something wrong with this formulation and you'll get your point across much easier and clearer if you instead said that a triangle has more than two sides. Alas, we are not machines, and form does matter (happily for us, linguists!).

Edit: this is my 1,500th post on this board...and I am very happy that it turned out this way, with a post that's mostly about interesting observations in my field and not about other petty things.

Edited November 22, 2011 by fuzzylogician

[Genomic Repairman]

Is this kid a troll or really just this hapless? I pray for the former and not the latter.

[Two Espressos]

Is this kid a troll or really just this hapless? I pray for the former and not the latter.

I'm pretty sure it's the latter, unfortunately.

[Sigaba]

Is this kid a troll or really just this hapless? I pray for the former and not the latter.

Are the two categories mutually exclusive? (MOO, he's provided comments about his personal life that support both conclusions.)

IMO, the bottom line is that having identified a major gap in his skill set (the ability to research), he's spent all this time proving his critics right rather than focusing on the aforementioned gap.

The shame of it all is that he could have learned a lot reading posts offered by Eigen, ktel, OH YEAH, and fuzzylogician. Instead, it is more likely that he'll remain determined to not fix what is clearly broken.

Hopefully, someone at Stanford will take pity on the guy and give him what he clearly needs--a metaphorical (if not actual) trip to a wood shed and then some mentoring.