>in class
>every student has to take turns reading
Is there anything worse than this?
>>7633629
Are you in high school?
>>7633629
How is 8th grade OP
>That meathead who was stuttering and pausing between every word and couldn't pronounce "privacy"
>>7633629
I got a degree as a hs history teacher 11 years ago, and even then you were basically being told that this is the kind of shit you would not get away with anymore in the era of standardized testing and curriculum oversight.
>>7633644
>tfw my school system was ultra liberal and practiced "inclusion" ie literal genetic retards who were to take part in the class.
>tfw making them read (at a first grade level) was more of a mockery than anything else
>>7633646
I would always volunteer to read so I wouldn't have to put up with that bullshit.
>tfw waiting for your crush with the slightly horse and awkward voice who wrote genuinely good prose to speak
those were the days
>>7633751
>tfw she's mega shy but her voice is so soft and sweet and at times it sounds almost melodic
>>7633763
Don't dare respond to me again unless you have something of worth to say
>>7633759
>tfw when you dated you would go to her house and ask her to read you things she wrote as you sat on her bed and played with her kitten
fuck, guys
that was all those days were good for
>>7633768
fuck off, jug pisser
>>7633629
>tfw you scared to read loud because your voice might crack
>teacher keeps telling you to speak louder
>have to read a part of the book that has the word "nigger" in it
>Everyone. reads. like. this.
>You read like a professor and everyone's mad jelly and calls you a nerd
>>7633794
>why do you always try to show off and talk smart anon
>why do u use big words dictionary mouth, you aren't foolin anyone
>>7633812
>Anon..
>You should just stop trying to be funny. No one knows what you're talking about
>>7633791
>not looking forward to this and putting special emphasis on it
>>7633791
>claim that native Americans failures were due to social Darwinism
>outrage everyone except the teacher, who is just happy to have proof that students have blood in their veins
>>7633860
>History class brings up Columbus
>Details how indians would rather commit mass suicide than become spanish slaves
>Muh noble savage
>Muh unspeakable beauty of nature
>Muh empty, soulless husk of a greedy western civillization
>Can't do shit but sneer because you're Swedish and went to a Swedish HS, also you were a Swedish Pussy
>>7633876
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas
To be fair there were people doing the same shit at the same time period.
>>7633876
you haven't experienced true noble savage delusion until you've been to Australia
>>7633890
>Austrian aboriginals
> reading books with naughty words and swears
> everyone breaks down in laughter the first time "shit" is read out aloud
>>7633629
>have to read a racist joke in streetcar named desire
>crack the fuck up when i get to the word nigger
>shame
>>7633629
>read every character in a different voice and give the narrator in a stentorian manner
>>7633629
>not relishing the opportunity to show everyone how deep and beautiful your voice is, how perfect your ear for the rhythm of the prose, how immaculate your knowledge of the meaning and tone of every clause
Though it's a little sad to hear everyone else struggle through it.
>when third year students clearly have no ear for versification
>>7634032
TTTHHHIIISSS
If there's one thing I hate about undergrads, it's how funny they find everything EXCEPT the actual jokes in the reading
>>7633644
I had this exact guy. This. 100%
>>7633812
I once got called out by half the class for using "big words".
"Flora and Fauna"
>>he doesn't knowingly volunteer to read aloud from Finnegans Wake
>>7633890
to be fair, this dude basically exposes every method of child rearing as shit
>speaking in front of the entire class in any capacity
>Classmate refers to Othello as "African-American"
This actually happened to me this week
>>7636140
mindnumbing fåm
>>7633651
Other people probably silently thanked you, anon
>>7633629
>not reading through six pages of Great Expectations in a cockney accent even though you're an American who's never stepped foot in Britain
It's like you guys want to fail
ITT burgerland no 1 in the world for education
>Professor: Maybe we can talk about reading #2. What did you guys think was the main argument?
>Seminar: ....................................
>Professor: .............................................
>Seminar: ...............
>Professor: ..................okay, maybe we can talk about reading #3. What did you think was the main argument?
>Seminar: .............................
>Someone, eventually, with a nervous voice: Umm, I just thought like, [stupid shit that has nothing to do with reading].
>repeat above, every class, for eternity
HOW THE FUCK DO THEY KEEP DOING IT
YOU'VE BEEN TRYING THIS METHOD TO GET PEOPLE TO TALK FOR 30 FUCKING YEARS
COME UP WIHT A NEW METHOD
>>7636140
Moor's last sigh :/
>>7637689
I feel you, but what alternative do you propose? There's no place for discussion in a group of people who didn't even read a text.
>>7636140
>>7637689
I know this feel, but every time it's more like
>Professor: So what do you guys think (poet) is doing here?
>Professor: Not you, anon, let's give someone else a chance.
>Seminar: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>Modern Philosophy class
>professor outlining the church's position in order to set-up Descartes' Meditations
>all pretty straight forward stuff
>prof pauses after every slide to ask if anyone has some questions
>expecting either to ask for clarification or to poke holes in the argument
>there's no argument to begin with since its the damn church
>prof flips out after 15 minutes and calls us all immature babies for wasting our time not "grappling with the material"
>next class, fire alarm test two minutes after lecture stars
>every student goes home although the test only takes 15 minutes and its a 90 minute lecture
>get called babies again at next lecture
University is fun everyone
>>7637853
This feel.
My life.
>>7637890
My struggle
>>7637892
My knausgger
Late college I got to the point where I would instantly blurt out answers. Got out of a couple classes 15 mins + early cos the teacher ran out of material so fast.
>>7637689
why don't you just man up and say something? 9/10 you'll end up being correct. most kids in the class haven't done the reading and you'll look good for participating in class.
>>7637689
>>7637696
>>7637853
This is the experience of every seminar I've been it. And when there's one or two people who are the only ones who contribute, answering every question, it seems to make everyone else clam up even more.
I really get the impression there's a kind of anti-intellectualism among a lot of students (and not just undergrad - this is at masters level). Most don't want to contribute or really engage, and the few who do mark themselves out as nerds or show-offs. I find this stifling, and there's only so much I can take before I just keep quiet too because I don't want to be 'that guy'. Even though I know I'd rather be that guy than someone who gets nothing out of the seminar.
>>7637923
You look like a douche if you do it over and over and over again and there are only like 5-10 people in the class.
>>7637930
Damn, brother from another mother. MA here too, talking about seminars too, and just posted >>7637931
Seminars really are torture 98% of the time. It is NEVER this free-wheeling Rankean ideazone like it's supposed to be. It's either dead silent and torturous to sit through, or it has a handful of overly confident people who don't realize how stupid they look but spend the whole time talking.
Sometimes I think about the fact that I have to sit through another few hundred hours of these fucking things and I want to shoot myself.
Another favourite that happens about every sixteen seconds:
>Professor: So did you like the article?
>Class: ................................
>Finally, "that guy": I thought it was badly written and his main thesis is dumb!
>Professor: Can you elaborate on that?
>That guy: [summation of thesis that is completely wrong, not even wrong in interpreting its main conclusion but so wrong it's like he couldn't even wrap his brain around the initial premise]
>Professor: YEAH, OR UH, MORE LIKE.. [correct summary of article]
>That guy: Yeah, that's what I mean!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
THEY TOLD ME GRAD SCHOOL WOULD BE BETTER
A repeated scenario in my public commuter school hell:
>35 year old woman with a rolling backpack, a cane, and a workman's comp check enrolls in school for some later-in-life enrichment
>sits dead center in the front of the class
>informs us and the professor with her 'life experience' and 'adult wisdom' including: working in an unskilled position for minimum pay; having multiple children when she shouldn't have; going upside down on her mortgage, car payment, and multiple credit cards; failing to read a single book in the past twenty years; eating fast food
>when software or interaction with a website is involved, "I can't find the link." "I bought the wrong version." "I can't remember my password." "I think there's a bug in the Apple version, it won't load." "Well I called the help desk and they didn't know what they were talking about."
>"What is the format of the exam?" "Will this be on the exam?"
>>7633791
my favorite part
>>7633629
>in class
>reading a play
>everyone gets a roll but you
>forced to listen to kids dryly read play words with no sense of emphasis for over a week
>>7637948
I just don't understand. Why are these people there? Why do a masters if you're not going to engage? I've even heard my classmates say they didn't read something because they don't have to do an exam for that class. For anti-intellectualism to be this widespread in a university, of all places, just stuns me.
I feel so sorry for the lecturers, but I also feel a kind of respect (or maybe sadness?) that they still go into every seminar enthusiastically trying to get some kind of response from a class full of zombies.
>>7637979
the majority of college students are just there for the degree
>>7637979
I don't even mind the anti-intellectuals because they are at least honest and self-aware.
What gets me is how many of the people who think they are brilliant are just retards. They fundamentally do not know how little they know, so they assume it's a SHITLOAD.
It's impossible to find one person in the grad program who isn't simultaneously a) cocky as shit about being a superior intellectual motherfucker, and b) happily, willfully underread, to the point of not reading anything off the beaten path of what is strictly required.
I don't understand why so many people are content to be middling nobody entry level pseudo-academics. No one is impressed. There are fifty billion of us.
>In class
>Professor asks a question
>Be known as the guy in >>7637853's post
>Raise hand
>"Yes, anon?"
>Answer question
>Professor informs you that you're wrong
>One of the few times you've incorrectly answered a question
>Spiral into a whirl of self-loathing and doubt, beginning to think that you've lived your entire life as a fraud.
How do I stop this? Every time I make a mistake or incorrectly answer a question my self-hatred takes hold of me and I can't help but have horrible negative thoughts for the rest of the day.
>>7639332
>you're super antisocial
>Know the answer to every question
>the most you ever do contribute is to whisper the answer to the person next to you so they can say it
>one time you think of the answer and it turns out to be wrong
>no one knew
>those rare occasions serve as constant reminders to why you act this way
>tfw you have no plans to change this behavior
>>7639385
>take a creative writing course
>mfw the professor forces everybody to read their work aloud.
>>7639332
You ask questions in order to have someone recognize your knowledge.
Ask questions in order to learn.
>>7633860
t b h
>>7639332
Remember that you are not as coward as the rest. Being brave enough to speak your mind, even when you are expose to ridicule, is being right, even when wrong.
>>7633860
>>7633860
Although t b h having blood in your veins isn't all that necessary. All you need to know is that, when you're dealing with people who don't understand why they're saying what they're saying, you don't actually have to have their politics; you just have to smell like their politics. I've talked in Anthropology tutorials and essentially recommended recolonisation, but nobody objected because I said in a 'left' way.
(Particularly, in this example, I made the claim that a lot of Papua New Guinea's medical eccentricities were due to scarcity and international inattention, rather than pure cultural idiosyncrasy, and that until the New Guineans were assisted in creating their own wealth and their own stable culture, most of what we were studying was sociological, was just the effects of poverty, rather than the New Guineans' own culture; which was yet to actualise materially, but as we've seen actualised cultures, and can perhaps notice some consistencies between them, isn't it evident that there are specific worker-to-worker-type mobilisations possible here? As in, certain mobilisations we know will work?)
Which means: Their culture's inferior. We should teach them ours.
>sitting in lecture about Plato's Crito
>girl talks about how Socrates should have escaped and gone to another city
>says he should have done it to reach more people and so his teachings would be passed on instead of dying with him
>professor says "yeah, well, uh maybe"
This is a catholic university as well
>next week we read the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity
>same girl and a guy ask the professor why she didnt lie to get away
>girl starts talking about how it would have been "more tactical" if all the christians ran and hid then overthrew the government instead of confessing
I don't understand these people they have no idea that some people value integrity over their lives, while they go to a catholic university
>always tempted to ask whether they have anything that they think is worth dying for
> too scared that they might think I'm being confrontational
>tfw the professor asks a question, no one raises their hand and then he looks at you pleading to put him out of his misery
>tfw you take pity and blurt out your answer as fast as you can and your face gets red because he arranges the desks in a circle and everyone looks at you including the cuties and you know your face is red and they know it too and your face just gets redder
>professor says good answer and you feel even more embarrassed
>>7639576
What is a 'catholic university'?
>>7639590
A university with a catholic mission, usually founded by nuns, or an order of monks. They are ABET accredited. IE Georgetown, BC, Fordham, any one named after a religious figure. All the ones I've been to make some varying effort to involve students in the community and service opputunities
>>7639612
Why would you go to a catholic university rather than a secular university?
>>7633646
I was like that as a kid. Why are you an asshole guy
>>7639422
>want to write creatively
>plan to publish book for billions of people to read
>can't read it out loud to a bunch of strangers
Breaking the ego is a part of the process of improvement.
>>7634702
Where you went for undergrad is that immature? Fuck. We got past that by junior year in high school.
>>7639629
easy scholarships
god is great
catholic cuties
been in catholic school my whole life so religious studies courses are easy
no discernable difference in education
Do you think there are legitimate differences between catholic and secular universities? Honest question
>>7639635
How late into your childhood? If you were raised so badly that you were doing this into late high school, then I would feel reduced by having to sit in the same class as you.
>>7639641
Breaking the ego in order to become famous sounds like cutting off one's dick in order to get laid.
>>7637953
>get chosen for lead role
>you're the only one who puts emphasis into/"acts"
>get chosen to read aloud each text for the rest of the semester
this wasn't a blessing
>>7637689
>>7637853
>>7637865
>>7637930
>>7637948
>>7637979
>>7638269
Holy fuck, my mind is fucking blown. Have I just been extraordinarily lucky with where I've been to school?
I understand this is all purely anecdotal, but undergrad and graduate levels being this full of absolute useless students is almost unbelievable. My lower level undergrad classes needed some coaxing along, but by the time I was taking junior level courses discussion would come fairly naturally, though there were some more quiet moments. But there were always at least a FEW of us willing to talk.
At the graduate level, I have yet to encounter this sort of shit. Whether the class is 1 1/2 or 3 hours, there is steady discussion in between the points the professor makes, and people volunteer information. There's none of this sullenly sitting, not even trying to apply themselves. There is lively discussion. Is the state of academia this bad in general, or did you guys all go to the shittiest schools possible?
>>7633629
>Grow up without going to school
>8-year-olds have more formal schooling than me
>Volunteer to read for 5th graders
>Get to choose book
>Tfw I pick Faulkner
>>7639731
>tfw Faulkner is not a book
>be 11
>be dyslexic
>I can read but not out loud and will go slower than peers
>Always get asked to read out in class
>Teachers always patronizing me after I've spent 10 minutes trying to read a few sentences
>Made to take books home aimed for kids half my age
one time I didn't read the book because I decided to try and read the Hobbit instead, they just assumed the book was to hard and made me read it in school with a support staff, bitch couldn't even pronounce half the words herself.
>>7633629
FUCK. I hate this. In my english class(college) my fucking teacher makes us do that and then show something that goes along with it. Fucking makes me cringe. this one weebo did a essay on The guy who made DandD and he dressed up in his cosplay outfit he plays in. thing had such bad armpit stains.
I did mine on the mass immigration of refugees to germany and brought in a nazi flag. I said this needed to happen again. (the class is mostly guys, so i got a few giggles m8.)
>>7633629
Storytime. Not a great story or anything, but it fits.
>My last semester as an English major in a non-Anglo country
>Classes + dissertation will be brutal, so I need at least one easy class where I can do nothing and have an A in the pocket.
>This old fart is set to "teach" a "seminar" on William Trevor.
>I know from experience that all of his classes are just students taking turns reading the text, with him interrupting every 2 minutes to make an asinine comment and stroke his own ego.
>At the end of the semester he asks for a 3-to-5-page paper. 3-to-fucking-5. That's it.
>I sign up.
>Remember this is a non-Anglo country, so in addition to the class being mind-numbingly boring, 90% of these people have terrible accents.
>They fuck up any word above the reading level of a 12-year-old.
>Somehow make it through without jumping from the tower (class was taught in a 7th floor).
>Let's write the fucking paper.
>Have to write it on a busy weekend, so don't give a shit, pull some crap involving the Arthurian Fisher King and infertility out of my ass and be done with it.
>He publishes the grades like a month later.
>My grade is DNP.
>Write him an e-mail telling him I think there's been a mistake.
>He writes back saying he thinks my work is plagiarized because my English is too good.
>In 6 months he never even listened to me speak English in my own words because he's the only one who gets to actually say something in class, but yeah, he made that call.
>I deny it, but he doesn't write back.
>Go to the department's office to try and get it sorted out.
>A teacher, who also works at the department, calls me into his office so I can explain.
>As soon as I tell him, he gets this weird smirk on his face.
>Tells me: "I took his class 20 years ago. He did the same thing to me."
>This son of a bitch has been pulling the same dick move for over 20 years and he can't be fired because of tenure, and because he's a semi-famous author.
>My gf had read his most famous book, btw. It's shit.
>The guy at the department tells me that he'll take care of everything, and he does.
>Old fart writes back after another month, telling me I should appreciate the humility that he showed in changing my grade, and that I shouldn't "flaunt my talents" as much in the future, lest this happens again.
How do these people live with themselves, /lit/? The only bright side was that I got to read William Trevor. Fantastic author.
>>7639521
Teach high school or community college for a couple of years and you will love any student with blood in his veins even if he's a retard.
It gets really dull when everyone in your class is just there to either kiss your ass, hate you, or simply doesn't want to get noticed and just wants a C to pass
>>7639576
I went to a university densely populated with extreme Catholic girls with daddy issues. I can second your post.
Literature classes were hell.
>>7639332
Couch your words. If you're uncertain when you answer say "I'm not completely sure, but is it blablahblah?"
This prevents you from being pretentious.
>reading Shakespeare
>plebs pause in between every line
>>7633629
>ignore them and read ahead of the class
>teacher catches you and yells at you for not "participating" with the class
>Seminar on the break-up of Yugoslavia
>every student has to do a presentation on an assigned topic
>one girl talking about Croatian interests in Bosnia uses a poster to illustrate a slide
>teacher: ”this poster is from World War 2.”
>student: “…oh….but I don’t speak Croatian…”
>poster’s main feature is a massive SS logo and the text “veliki vodje ADOLF HITLER”
>every presentation on humanitarian intervention in Kosovo begins in 1389
>traces every twist and turn in history since then
>ten minutes later finally gets to 1999
>people take ten minutes out of their presentations to show us videos on Youtube (one person even used a video from Three Minute History)
>presentation on Yugonostalgia uses three different socialist-era patriotic songs with the presenter reading out all the lyrics for every one
>lecturer is a world-renowned expert on the topic who has to sit through this every year
>>7639649
I did a few months in a Catholic uni in the Netherlands, but ther was nothing particularly catholic about it (apart from a staue of Erasmus outside the Library), a lot of the students were non catholics as well
>>7639657
You get famous through demonstrating some sort of talent. You can't be famous if your ego is too big to allow you to show something that may fail.
I'm in grade 12 english at the moment. There will probably be a novel study project. I think I'll do finnegans wake because why not
