House of Eratosthenes

You have asked me why this happened. I offer the following explanatory theories:

1) You are so dull that you couldn’t find East with the rising sun, a compass, and a praying Arab as visual aids. To call you a lunkhead insults lunks everywhere. If dumb were population, you would be China.

2) Perhaps due to 1), you have mistaken the professor’s advice for a complete proofing/copy editing service. It is not. Showing your professor a draft is not an abdication of your responsibility for the quality of your work.

3) Perhaps due to 2), you have decided that specific, marked instances of mechanical/formatting/syntactical errors are the only times such errors occur in your draft. This is not a wise decision.

4) The various instructions I gave earlier in the semester regarding such niceties as citation form continue to apply, even later in the semester.

5) The initial draft of your paper made me long for the Purgatorial terrace where the eyes of the envious are sewn shut, as that would have kept me from having to read it. As that was not an option, I informed you that your draft “need[ed] a lot of work.” Pursuant to 2), you were the one expected to do said work.

6) My international students (who are non-native speakers) have a finer grasp of elegant expression than you do. You have taken the language of Shakespeare, Milton, Strunk and White and made it read like marbles being poured into a wood chipper.

7) Did I mention that in a game of Jeopardy! against Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, you would still somehow manage to finish fourth?

8 ) Yeeeaaargh!

9) All of the above.

Therefore, I suggest you take the C (which left me wanting to shower after writing it in my gradebook) and be grateful. Also, never darken my classroom again.

Love and sloppy wet kisses,

Prof. M

Ah, the professor who takes his job seriously, meets up with the grown-up man-child who has thus far been able to argue his way into & out of everything. Hilarity ensues, although not from the point of view of the man-child.

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. — allegedly written by an English professor at Ohio University.

7) Did I mention that in a game of Jeopardy! against Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, you would still somehow manage to finish fourth?

Oh, MY. He didn’t, did he? Sacrilege! BLASPHEMER! Banish this man from the HoE, immediately!
- bpenni | 12/09/2010 @ 11:54
Just goes to show. If I want to find extreme cynicism, excessive zeal, militancy, lack of sense of humor, et al…I make a bee line for Palin’s critics. Like for example this guy over here, and dare I say it…maybe that guy over there?

So you’re at the point where you’ll change the subject if her name comes up. Well, you still have your sense of humor. Hang on to it…you’re one step away from slipping over an edge…

But to get back on topic. I do love a good professorial smack-down. Long as it isn’t being directed at me.
- mkfreeberg | 12/09/2010 @ 12:30
That’s the problem with grade inflation right there. I’ve given out a few As in my time, and they are generally A-level papers. Bs are iffy, but Cs…. Cs are the new F. I’ve had entire college-level classes where I’d fail every single student, every single time, if I had my way. I had to stop counting off for spelling and grammar, as even “good” papers — as in, “followed instructions, actually cited sources, didn’t plagiarize, had a somewhat coherent argument” — would often fail if I did that.

Matt Damon is a doofus leftwad, but he had a point in “Good Will Hunting:” these days, you can get a decent college “education” for $1.85 in late charges at the library.
- Severian | 12/09/2010 @ 17:14
The way I see it, if you achieve complete mastery over questions that have ONE right answer to them (generally, that’s math, although it could be English as well) you’re ready to graduate from high school. Then you proceed to “higher education” where you need to use your brain to produce one ADEQUATE answer out of many possible adequate ones…and an infinite selection of wrong ones. Which demands a great deal more out of the professor as well as out of the students. In such an environment, an “A” student would force the professor to do a great deal of original thinking and the entire campus would become a hotbed abuzz with real intellectual energy…exactly the way it used to work.

Now, the college students seem to get ding’d for producing wrong answers. And some of these wrong answers seem to be wrong because the professor personally disagrees with them…”there is a God”…”DDT is an effective agent to use against Malaria”…”Columbus did something good”…add this to grade inflation, and you have a situation where the instructor is challenged no more than the student is, therefore becomes bored, therefore sets a bad example. And, momma & daddy pay some real tuition money so bubbakins can be run through what essentially becomes an extended stint of high school.

But hey at least bubbakins graduates knowing enough to call Sarah Palin a dumbass. And that makes him feel smart which is all that matters, right?
- mkfreeberg | 12/09/2010 @ 17:44
You got that right, buddy! Browse through the comments at ratemyprofessors.com sometime — you’ll find some variation of “just parrot his/her opinions back on the paper and you’ll get an A” on a distressingly large number of evaluations. This is especially true of classes taught by TAs –which, of course, are the majority of all college classes. This is because grad students (in the liberal arts at least) aren’t in grad school to actually learn anything; they’re there to have their biases confirmed (and to learn a new batch of five-dollar words with which to bash whitey, the patriarchy, etc.)

Tempting as it is to blame it all on ivory tower Stalinists, though, parents and students do their part too. Parents feel that writing a tuition check for $40,000 confirms that bubbakins is $40,000 worth of special, and should be graded accordingly. And since bubbakins himself gets to “evaluate” his instructors, and those evaluations help determine continued funding (for TAs) or tenure (for professors), there’s very little incentive to grade anyone down….
- Severian | 12/09/2010 @ 18:39
For what it’s worth, I actually bear no grudge against Gov. Palin; I’d count myself among the undecided — if she’s running against the incumbent, she’ll probably get my vote. But when I’m in academic mode (even, in this case, academic fantasist mode), I try to keep the political references equally offensive.

Prof. M
- Profmondo | 12/10/2010 @ 08:55
Oh, and Severian — we are clearly of the same tribe.
- Profmondo | 12/10/2010 @ 08:57
“…But when I’m in academic mode (even, in this case, academic fantasist mode), I try to keep the political references equally offensive.”

I applaud the sentiment towards nonpartisanship, although I do feel obliged to make an observation (paraphrasing, I think it was, Adlai Stevenson?):

The reason Democrats would find the crack about Joe Biden’s mental acuity offensive is that it is true. The reason Republicans would find the crack about Sarah Palin’s mental acuity offensive is that it is false.

I’ve been out of college for over 15 years, so if standards actually have slipped to the extent you describe, no words exist to describe the depths of my dismay. (And frustration — if I’d been going to university nowadays I could have gotten even better marks than I did for much less effort, it sounds like; I was an anal-retentive perfectionist in punctuation, grammar and style long before university.) Your frustration is well-understood in that case. But I am inclined to wonder if perhaps there’s a touch of “golden age memory” syndrome creeping in here — I try not to be a cynic, but I do believe the proportion of stupidity in human youth, while perpetually high, nonetheless remains mostly a constant.
- Stephen J. | 12/10/2010 @ 09:55
Hang on to it…you’re one step away from slipping over an edge…

That wouldn’t be the same edge you went over some time ago, would it? The one up in the 49th state? 😉
- bpenni | 12/10/2010 @ 10:54
Browse through the comments at ratemyprofessors.com sometime — you’ll find some variation of “just parrot his/her opinions back on the paper and you’ll get an A” on a distressingly large number of evaluations.

Sheez. Most depressing thing I’ve read all week. Other than the tax-cut-rollback thing that is…

I actually bear no grudge against Gov. Palin; I’d count myself among the undecided — if she’s running against the incumbent, she’ll probably get my vote.

Whoops. De-activate death ray…de-activate…where’s the de-activate button on this thing?

The one up in the 49th state?

Anything that makes a Gosselin cry probably makes me smile. Bring it on.
- mkfreeberg | 12/10/2010 @ 12:16

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