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Post by Avril on Dec 4, 2012 10:05:54 GMT -5
You think? So when white collar criminals, authors of textbooks or literary fiction have a university education, detectives, editors and publishers don't?
I think all my editors and publishers have at least got Masters degrees.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Dec 4, 2012 10:58:45 GMT -5
Pigsnortle doesnt haf Masters degree. Just Double Firsts! Heh. Nope, I still dont believe editors & publishers need masters. You just have to be extremely well-read and know all the rules of composition. Detectives dont need Masters either -- they just have to know how to figger out thingies like in CSI.
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Post by Avril on Dec 5, 2012 17:56:34 GMT -5
You know, when I try to read some of my post-grad students' essays, with their erratic grammar, inconsistent spelling, baffling syntax, completely random use of apostrophes, case and other punctuation, I wonder if their education taught or is teaching them anything at all.
Not only do they not seem to understand what they read to the point of being able to summarise or paraphrase it, they don't seem to relate it to practice.
Not all of them, of course, but it's rare to meet a student who can spell or frame a sentence correctly to convey what they mean.
I had an argument the other day over the meaning of the word 'nonplussed', with a student to whom it did not mean 'astonished, astounded, baffled' but indifferent. His argument consisted of saying that he had always meant indifferent, couldn't care less when he said 'nonplussed' and that's how he always saw it used and understood its usage. My comment was that I wanted to understand what he meant, but if his meaning was different to everyone else's I wasn't confident I could always understand without asking him what every other word meant to him. He frowned and rolled his eyes said, 'And your point is...?' not as a real enquiry, but showing that his real intention was derision and disrespect. Point taken. But I was not nonplussed, in either of our meanings. Just. frustrated.
It was a completely useless conversation, without any logic or sense or any idea that I had communicated anything at all. This is a student doing a three year post-grad diploma. He's only one example, but I can think of another handful off the top of my head.
I had to explain to one post-grad student the other day the difference between first, second and third person, and what 'formal' and 'informal' language meant, so he could fulfill, in a re-submission, the requirements of his academic essay assignment.
And then there's the whole area of spell-check, typos and autocorrections that they simply do not pick up to correct between their drafted essay and the final submission.
So, your definition of 'well-read' entails criteria that are not universal. Sometimes I spend more time in an academic essay correcting spelling, grammar, syntax and punctuation than I do reading the argument - and that's if there is a modicum of logical reasoning or even representation of the literature they are supposed to be critiquing, or the practice on which they are supposed to be reflecting.
It may seem ridiculously pedantic to you, but I feel it's indicative of a mindset, an attitude towards information. If your mental health were in the hands of someone who cannot reproduce what he has just heard or read in a meaningful way, pays no attention to details or doesn't notice fine distinctions, would you feel confident?
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Post by PigsnieLite on Dec 5, 2012 18:30:27 GMT -5
LOL, cant figger out the meaning of *nonplussed* eh? I dont know from which dregs your students come from -- but did you say they were all post grad? Eeekers! Is writing a decent essay really so hard? Who knows -- maybe it is hard -- in this Age of Twittur & Facebook & Texting. Its just never come up as an issue in my family because reading & writing properly is just something one does everyday. I kow you cant tell by the way I write in forums, but I assure you: my essays are Dahlias of Cunning & Wit! Heheh. I also write letters -- REAL LETTERS, not EMAIL-- to the relatives. I have to write a different letter in every Christmus card that goes out to every aunt, uncle, ex-professor, soldier of fortune, and Traitor to the Crown. Afterwords, my da or Pigsnit vets them, and if they feel I didnt write enough, they add something roguish in Latin or Esperanto or whutever. Haf you thought of giving up your teaching job? I think I've told you this before, but really, why waste the rest of your Life, reading crappy essays, grading their crappiness and then listening to crappy unappreciative students who dont give a Fuck whut you say anyway? WHY? WHY? WHY? If you need the money, just add another client or two. Believe me, Your blood pressure will thank you.
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Post by Avril on Dec 6, 2012 0:24:26 GMT -5
Sigh. It's only the marking that's so demoralising, when I'm face to face either with how appallingly ineffective I've been as an educator or with how the education system to date in some students' lives has been woefully inadequate, or with the inability of some people to think below the most obvious and not always accurately.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Dec 6, 2012 5:02:52 GMT -5
Hello hello, is there a therapist in there? [PLite knocks on Avrillys woeful head wid a really large hammer.] ITS NOT JUST THE MARKING! ITS THE STUPIDITY! ITS THE BLANK-EYED, SLACK-JAWED LOOK OF STUDENTS WHO DONT GIVE A SHITE! ITS THE AWFUL POINTLESS WAITING FOR AN IMPROVEMENT THAT NEVER COMES!
Dont teach anymore, Avrilly. You'll be better off for it.
Dont know why older peeps never listen to me, tsk tsk tsk. Becuz I'd be the First to abandon these nincompoops. Bleech.
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Post by sunfrog on Dec 6, 2012 13:31:29 GMT -5
I don't know how to feel on this. I think the world needs more teachers, on the other hand, we have google now. However, on the whole, I would say that people are getting dumber and dumber.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Dec 6, 2012 14:40:05 GMT -5
I think peeps are dumber now becuz they read Nothing but whut they find on the internuts. Heaven help them if they open a real live book wid pages & footnotes. Obviously they learn nothing from BIG BANG THEORY..
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Post by Avril on Dec 6, 2012 15:56:38 GMT -5
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Post by PigsnieLite on Dec 6, 2012 17:30:44 GMT -5
So is one Brilliant Non-Oztralian student (and a lovely QUEEN fan too, I might add) enough for you to considur your Teaching Life Fulfilled & Validated? WELL?
PS. I recommend that you give her an Alpha+++, get her email so that you might continue your ecstaticoi correspondence, and then retire from teaching Forevah!
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Post by Avril on Dec 6, 2012 19:01:27 GMT -5
"enough for you to considur your Teaching Life Fulfilled & Validated?" Well, no. But it helps. ;D Listening to Queen's Greatest Hits I and II (thanks to Wombat's bottomless library) as I mark the rest... And another one bites the dust..
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Post by PigsnieLite on Dec 6, 2012 19:41:33 GMT -5
My favourite Band of All Time. Pigsnort cannot understand why this band speaketh to my Soul despite all the promiscuous tank top wearing. Expose my lily white English arms to the paying public? Nevah!
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Post by Avril on Dec 6, 2012 20:15:18 GMT -5
I can understand. Does Pigsnie doesn't know that Brian May of Queen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May) 'greatest guitarist of all time' is also an astrophysicist and Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University? (Unless this university is infra dig to Pigsnie... )
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Post by PigsnieLite on Dec 6, 2012 20:36:58 GMT -5
Well, considering his favourite bands (when he wuz still listening to pop music) were TALKING HEADS, ART OF NOISE and a smidge of TEARS FOR FEARS -- who the heck is he to critishize me? Hee. ALthough he did introduce me to FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD whose songs I still consider quite the sonic boom! Yeth, Pigsnit knows about the versatile Brian May. He interviewed him and got me an autographed record, waaahhh! Pigsnits favourite track of many years. He probably jiggled me as a baby to the ear splitting bass line.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Dec 10, 2012 20:43:41 GMT -5
Look at this guy. Smart as a whip, an excellent writur, and he cannot find a job! Incredible. From a Gawker website called HELLO FROMTHE UNDERCLASS which chronicles Tales of the Unemployed. I read every installment.
I'm 31 years old and I'm unemployed. I have a BA, an MA, and an Occupational Certificate. I have $300 in the bank and had to move back in with my parents. And this is all my fault. I grew up thinking I could be anything I wanted to be. I went to college on a scholarship. I got a BA in Philosophy because I enjoyed it. I studied abroad. I went to grad school in England. I got an MA in Political and Social Thought. I didn't get my PhD because the funding wasn't there. I thought it was just another rat race anyway. I got a job at a newspaper that I loved. I got laid off a year later. I started freelance writing and editing. The pittance that brought in got supplemented by a job I took doing fire and water damage restoration and demolition. I pulled up carpet and wood floors dripping with water from bursts pipes and teaming with mold from sitting there until the insurance company could evaluate how much of the cost they could avoid paying to the home owner. Occasionally the pipe that burst would be a sewage pipe. In that case, I'd don a white tie-vac suit with rubber gloves and rubber boots and shovel shit that had been stewing under the Southern sun into a trash bag. Ankle deep in feces I'd remember that I could've joined the army like my dad. I could've been a teacher like him and my mom. My sister went into teaching, another is a nurse and the other is a marine biologist. But I didn't join the army. I didn't go to college to study for a career. I wanted to be something bigger. I wanted to work in politics. I wanted to be a professor. I wanted to be a writer. When my girlfriend got funding to do her PhD I wasn't at all jealous. By then I knew that I'd fucked up. I left my hometown and we moved to her school. I got a retail job selling shoes and took the infrequent opportunities to freelance write or edit. I knew I had to retrain. I went to night school. I got an Occupational Certificate to be a firefighter. I got certified by state and national agencies. I applied to firefighter jobs all over the country. I did physical tests, written tests, and interviews. I was one of hundreds, sometimes thousands to apply. But cities were just as broke as newspapers. There were hiring freezes. The ones that were hiring couldn't afford hire more than only a handful of people. Even with the degrees and certifications I was never one of the top 6 out of 600. I was never anything particularly special. When my girlfriend finished her coursework she was set to go do her research in South Africa. I applied for a life partner visa with a work permit. The only snag was you had to have a job offer to get a work permit. So after months of trying in vain to apply for jobs in her home country I found the same results as I'd found in my own. I was useless. Now she's gone. Unable to pay the rent on my own I had to move back to my hometown to live with my parents. I qualify for EBT. I qualify for unemployment. But I don't dare sign up for those. I don't deserve it. I had every advantage. I had every chance. And I blew it, fair and square. Now it's back to the grind. Now I apply to job after job online. Firefighter jobs, writing jobs, retail, dishwasher, third shift factory floor, they're all the same. It's a deluge of digital failure. It's not much better in the mornings when I make the rounds to the employment agencies. They want to know why I'm in their office with all my education on my knees begging to shovel shit again. Even when something comes along it's only a temporary hire. An extra back to break for big job then a handshake with a ‘best of luck' and its back to the employment office. There's no real success, only stays of execution. In the monotony of online applications, of folding chairs in employment offices, of ‘job seekers create an account and sign in', of pee in this cup so we know you're not on drugs, I'm always balancing a mental equation. When would the pain and suffering and sense of failure felt by my parents if their only son and oldest child off-ed himself outweigh the pain and suffering and sense of failure they feel watching him flail around like a fish on a dock? Like I said, this is all my fault. It was my ego at work. It was my impossible dream. It was my overplayed hand. I took the bait. I got reeled in. And so I wait with bated breath for the moment when the equation finally tips to the other side so I can get off the hook.
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