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Being a college professor is certainly not the easiest job, especially when there are many students who'd rather be anywhere else in the world than in the classroom. Many professors believe that these students just need some proper motivation, however even they admit that's not always the case. Bored Panda has compiled a list of professor's stories (and a couple of students) who agree that some students are just, well, not that smart.
Scroll below to read these cringe-worthy stories and don't forget to share your opinion in the comments!
Image credits: Wavebreakmedia (not the actual photo)
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
I'm a French Teacher, so I'm not sure if this counts but here goes: everone in the class had a fairly lengthy piece of French homework, and one student put the entire thing in Google translate, but translated it to Spanish.
Michael Hanlon 7 years ago
I had a girl in my high school U.S. History class... “I don’t understand... who won the Industrial Revolution?!” After teacher gawkes at her in silence for quote some time he responds... “The Machines.”
Lazy Panda 7 years ago
Just today I bought something from the store, ripped up the instructions before realizing I needed them but the only parts still legible were in French and Spanish, being bilingual I just decided to read the french ones only to find out that they were also in Spanish!
Tero Rantaruikka 4 years ago
Don't know if a student not being able to tell the difference between French and Spanish says something about the teacher or the student...
RELATED:
#2
This happened in high school. Senior year. Our teacher was talking about the phases of the moon and this girl raised her hand and ask if other countries have moons too. She thought the moon was only for the US.
Kould B 7 years ago
The trouble is it's not just students. It's also the masses. Many of whom can't find the US on a world map. Americans have been re-defining & customising the word 'dumb' for generations.
Dian Ella Lillie 7 years ago
Like N.A.S.A. and F.B.I and C.I.A. instead of NASA and FBI and CIA?
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Leigh Allen 7 years ago
You are correct. They are voting age and we know how that will go.
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Martha Meyer 7 years ago
HOW do people this stupid graduate from elementary school, let alone high school, and end up at uni?!
FuzzyWuzzy 7 years ago
Senior year. Let that settle in your brain for a moment, This isn't just stupid, its horrifying that this child was allowed to even get to senior yr.
Ada Hiestand 2 years ago
Hey!! I'm a very smart American, Einstien was American, wasn't he?
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#3
Not a professor but back when I was in highschool; I was a library aide and I was walking into classrooms distributing some books and I walked into a class with the professor in the middle of an angry lecture on plagiarism because one of the students turned in an essay that started with "In my 25+ years of experience in this field."
Terror from Beyond Space 7 years ago
Maybe the student was just repeating the class for the 25th time.
Nora 7 years ago
I teach college students, and in every class there must be someone who shamelessly plagiarizes. My strategy is to look such a students in the eyes and ask them 'did you write this yourself?'. The usual answer is a yes. Then I choose a word and ask him what does it mean. The student is suddenly thunder-struck.😂😂. Another thing I do is to have the internet evidence ready at hand for such a moment. Students who plagiarize have poor perception and common sense skill, so they believe that teachers are like them. This is why they get shocked when they are exposed.
Kjorn 7 years ago
not only people cheat but they are lazy in that. in my youth people make effort in cheating
Nora 7 years ago
This is the 24/7 cell phone generation. They are so obsessed with social media and selfies, so their brain is numb😆
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#4
A student in my economics class started his final essay with this: “We are all familiar with the country, Africa. Yet at the same time we know little about them. All we know is that it is hot there, African Americans live there and they are really poor. This begs the question, why is Africa that poor?” It was just so jam-packed with stupid I had to stop grading for 24 hours. Edit: For the record, this was indeed a college student.
lakitha tolbert 7 years ago
As an African American, (as anybody really), that was the most hilarious sentence in that whole mess!
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Aud Wey 7 years ago
FYI student: For the last time, Africa IS NOT A country! I won't talk about the rest of the paragraph. *facepalm*
Laugh Fan 7 years ago
When it opened like that it was clear there was little hope!
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Kirsten Mikkelsen 7 years ago
I had a student some years back, who made a presentation about Africa. It went something like this: "It is big and warm and many people starve. Also, there once was a war. I don't know what the capitol of Africa is called." She had spent several weeks preparing this bucket of wisdom...
Cynthia Ford 7 years ago
Oh god. Was it possible to give negative grades?
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Vanessa Court-Payen 7 years ago
That's almost as bad as a fellow college student asking me whether Belgium was in Italy after I told her that I was born there.
Maarten Allegaert 7 years ago
Something similar happend to me. A Brittish person once asked me if Belgium was in the UK.
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Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
Reading those few sentences genuinely made my head hurt...and the realization that there are people in this world who think that sounds intelligent or well-thought-out makes me sad.
lakitha tolbert 7 years ago
It’s not that people are getting dumber. There’s always gonna be a population of really smart kids (people). Theyre also gonna stay pretty smart. The problem is that the ignorant ones (who were always going to be pretty dim, no matter what era)) have gotten louder, and worse!
Load More Replies... #5
I didn’t believe any student was dumb - he/she may only have needed the right motivation. Until I met RJ. RJ was dumb. RJ didn’t realize that the chicken we eat was the same as the animal. RJ was 21 at the time.
Crazy Cow Lady 7 years ago
7% of the adult population in the US thinks that chocolate milk comes from brown cows... We are so disconnected from agriculture and food production.
Caridina Japonica 7 years ago
About ten years ago I was on a toddlers-meet-ocean-project. That meant: prepare a "marine life" box (starfish, crab, shrimp, mussel, a few worms an a small fish (if available), then drive to a booked kindergarden and explain the kids the difference between spongebob's Plankton and real plankton, then drive back and care for your creatures. In one kindergarden I met the cook. He offered me some lunch (flatfish) and I showed and explained him my creatures (including same flatfish in baby size) WHICH HE HAD NEVER SEEN ALIVE BEFORE! Not to say, this kindergarden was only 2 kilometers from the sea where I caught (and later released) these animals.
Hannah McGowen 7 years ago
but the question is HOW don't they know this? WHY don't they know this? I AM CONFUSED? DID THEY NOT LEARN SCHOOL?? (help)
diane a 7 years ago
I despair of kids education these days - they grow up knowing of the world and nature - its all about IT - yet they dont use itfor learning and information - just games
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BREAK YOUr perceptions 7 years ago
i had a friend who didn't know chicken was meat. they thought chicken was its own category of food.
Suzi Gauthier 7 years ago
I can't even COUNT the number of "vegans" I know who eat chicken & fish.
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Tor Rolf Strøm 7 years ago
Uh well.. A lot of people don't know that meat comes from cute animals. And the rest don't want to know.
Elina Kuusisto 7 years ago
We need more environmental/natural resource science in schools for starters. Omg. *SMDH*
Hamlets twin 7 years ago
I can kind of get this one. you live in the city and never really pay attention. All you know is you get food from the grocery store. Yes it is stupid, just understandable stupid.
Michael Chu 5 years ago
Homer: You won't eat meat? What about bacon? Lisa: No! Homer: Ham? Lisa: No! Homer: Pork Chops Lisa: DAD, those are all from the same animal! Homer: Oh, yeah right Lisa...a magical animal.
#6
High School Teacher. Many years ago, I was showing my students clips from Romeo and Juliet. Student stared at the screen in total bewilderment for a few minutes. Then she said, serious as a cancer diagnosis, "How can he be in this movie? He died in Titanic."
Jef Bateman 7 years ago
I went to college with a guy who didn't understand reruns. We were in the dorm lobby and freaked out when the Jeffersons were planning something that he already saw happen. I am not mad at the guy, it must have been hard to go through life like that.
Max Whitaker 7 years ago
Sounds like the student had a dry sense of humor which went over the teacher’s head.
Tomek Bujnik 5 years ago
haha, she's really dumb, she didn't notice, that he has a twinbrother, it was in that movie with musketeers :D
Robert Pettigrew 5 years ago
I had a friend who was standing in line to see Titanic, and a group of kids were in front of him and one of them said, I can't believe it sunk, and one of the other kids said, oh now you've ruined it for me.
David Grégoire 5 years ago
And there are the people who didn't know the Titanic was a real ship.
Lisa loves cats 6 years ago
I remember watching this scene in class, my friend mimics the kiss and it was super funny!
#7
I had a student plagiarize on the final exam. It was a take home, essay/short answer exam. They knew to cite any sources, and to put it in their own words. The kicker? This particularly bright bulb plagiarized me. The professor. She tried to pass off MY WORDS as her own.
Gail Rae-Garwood 7 years ago
I had the same experience. When confronted, the student asked, “You’re THAT Gail Rae Rosensfit?” Just how many of us are there?
Avik Ghosh 7 years ago
I have you one beat... my student scanned in my solution in MY HANDWRITING and sent it in with his homework :)
Steven Brownfield 5 years ago
I once had a group of four boys I caught guilty of a strange case of plagiarism. At first, I thought that the first paper I read sounded familiar and too mature a voice for the student, then I saw the same phrases multiple times. I ran it through a plagiarism check and it said that student A copied student B, student B copied C, C copied D, and D copied A. Since this was clearly a bootstrap paradox, I had to hunt down the original source. Found it. It was a review of the book they were assigned written for a blog several years before. The author? Me.
Eli Schwartz 5 years ago
As a professor's assistant I had to grade the final projects of the students, one student was so lazy she copied my project in that same course from a couple of years before (that was kept as an example in the faculty library) word by word. but that was not the worst part, the project had also an Excel spreadsheet, she copied that as well, my name was still showing in the file properties as the author.
Chuck Kassing 5 years ago
Seen that. Had a classmate in group pull that. I tried 3 times explaining that they had to cite sources ( because the group caught them). THe group leader sent a e-mail to the prof. warnin ghim, so it didn't effect our grade. So final paper, we're on deadline., they turn in their part. we throw it through Word to check spelling and grammar, and away it goes.. We get a group e-mail from Proferssor about how thrilled he was we loved his work so much as to put it in the paper, but next time we shouldn't be so lazy as to think he'll notice his own work. With a note at the bottom for the student in question to come see him and the Dept. Head.
Tony Moon 7 years ago
I had a student blatantly looking at her neighbors paper, so badly that I had to move her because she was actually causing her neighbor to feel uncomfortable. Prior to moving her however, I took some photos just in case something happened later and I had to show them.... Needless to say, her father got a lawyer involved when I failed her final exam (she was already at a 59 for the semester), and of course I got a nasty gram from her lawyer... I sent him to my schools legal office and sent them my photos with time stamps and everything..... Never heard from them again.
#8
I once gave a university student a C on a philosophy paper. She looked at me and said, “Do you know who my father is?” To this day, I don’t know who he was, but her grade did not change.
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
"My dad's the inventor of Toaster Strudel, and he will NOT be happy to hear about this."
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Suzi Gauthier 7 years ago
Yes, they should have answered, "Why, don't you?"
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Neal Evans 7 years ago
Maybe she was hoping the teacher would know so she could finally meet the deadbeat
Ben Smith 7 years ago
That person would be so wealthy that their kids would never have to go to college. LoL
Load More Replies... #9
May or may not be dumb, but my friend and I went to her uncle's house which had this piece of paper framed and put on the wall. It was a 0/20 on a true or false quiz. Her uncle was a professor and was just too impressed by such an achievement that he had to put it in his home.
Jef Bateman 7 years ago
Sometimes professors get clever and try to trick students with true-or-false questions. This is why most instructional experts discourage them - students who can spot tricks do better than less-clever students who actually know the material.
Bill Russell 7 years ago
One would have to be absolutely brilliant and VERY well studied to purposely get evry one of them wrong. Yes?
Sophia Cai 7 years ago
Type 0.5^20 in your calculator. That's the probability of getting 0/20. It's almost 0.
Hamlets twin 7 years ago
I know statistically its bound to happen eventually but to actually see it. amazing
Ego 7 years ago
In an AP social studies class I took in high school, one teacher offered to give students a 100% if they answered every single question incorrectly on the tests we took (these were 50+ question tests and this was a difficult AP class), because his logic was that you have to know the right answers to purposely choose the wrong ones. Problem was, if you got even 1 answer right on the test, that would negate the deal, and you'd get like a 1/50. I don't think anyone took him up on that offer.
Sarah Mages 7 years ago
I was told that if you put ALL trues on a test you would at least pass it. I never had the nerve to try …. I had to fall back on actual study.
Load More Replies... #10
One of my students told me he was going to be 21 when he graduated high school. I asked him why. He explained that he ages TWO YEARS every year. He is 15 turning 16 so that is 2 years. He is probably right that he will not graduate HS til age 21, but not for the reason he mentioned lol
Mark Kelly 5 years ago (edited)
I admire his optimism he thinks can even graduate.
Load More Replies... Eulalie Grace 7 years ago
This person is going to graduate ?!?!? I actually feel sorry for this student.
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
Damn. Math has never been my strongest subject, but even I'm not THAT bad at it.
Benjamin D'Montigny 4 years ago
Is it in Korea, when you are born you are considered to be one-year-old, then everyone ages at the same time on New Year, so you could be born a week before New Year, and by next week, you're two years old?
Julian Wendrow 5 years ago
Many students act out to hide insecurities Sure there're some tough misbehaving student but for some or many it's often that their Learning abilities "skill set" is different from the "norm" Sometimes teachers educators should consider that skinning that student's cat likely different than typical student. Gotta find their processing avenues of access to comprehend the knowledge.
Beverley McDonald 5 years ago
it is impossible to "graduate high school". Get a dictionary and learn good grammar. The proper expression is "graduate FROM high school". I see this stated wrongly hundreds of times!! And it is still wrong.
Lukyan Terdal 5 years ago
that's impossible, unless he was in one of those fast aging thingies featured in the second (or fifth, depending on your age) Star Wars movie.
#11
Not a professor, but I worked at my university’s tutoring center while in college. Had one student who was a sports science major and would come in for tutoring for every single class. He had to do this because he was barely literate, as in reading MAYBE on a first-grade level. One of his assignments was to write about an important African-American figure. He asked me what African-American meant. The student was African-American. For the record, I don’t blame him for being dumb. I blame every single teacher he ever had whose responsibility it was to ensure that he was learning, and instead just passed him on so he would be someone else’s problem.
NeverBored 7 years ago
(Insert sarcastic tone, here.) Perhaps the parents of this child are culpable, as well? I mean, I assume they should take a little responsibility for raising their child and - oh, I don't know - teaching him one or two things. For instance, letting him know he's African American would be helpful. Oh well, I'll just add, "tell students what race I think they are," to my lesson plans this weekend. We teachers get paid too much anyway since all we do is play with a bunch of kids for 9 months and kick it all summer. I wonder why more people don't do it.
Agustina Gobbi 7 years ago
Maybe he cosidered himself american, which he is. I mean because of being black he is african and american? My elders came form Italy, ireland, France, Spain and Germany, as the 70% of people that lives in the american continent, who are decendents of europeans that had to leave Europe because of wars and others. So are we european american? Being the only real americans the native ones?
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ispeak catanese 7 years ago
When blaming parents, it's possible they were illiterate, worked 2 jobs or developmentally delayed themselves and never had a chance either. When I worked with developmentally delayed children (and when they're young and haven't acquired the basics of language, even the Deaf fell in to that category in the 90s), our early intervention classes were for the parents and kids. Still remember the mom who was so intellectually disabled, her 3 year old was brighter than she was. She had no options for growth and his would've run out by age 20-24.
Lorraine R 7 years ago
Parents? Maybe. but he could have gone through a series of foster homes, and changed schools when he changed homes.He could have had an undiagnosed learning disability. The adults in his life were clearly not paying attention.
Magdalina777 7 years ago
How is it possible for someone like that to get into a college?o.O I mean, it may or may not be his fault for not being the sharpest tool in the bunch, but aren't there some kind of entrance tests to pass to ensure a student is indeed capable of studying at the required level?
Laugh Fan 7 years ago
This will probably be contentious but I don't understand why they are called African American anyway. Why is the origin, for some many generations back, relevant any longer? I'm genuinely curious, before I get the usual negative reaction. I'm not American and so honestly don't know. They aren't called African British in the UK for example and we also don't seem to hear Asian American or any other terms like that. Maybe they are but I just haven't heard them as I'm not American. Polite answers will be sincerely welcomed. Thanks.
Ryan-Michele Eagleton 7 years ago
I'm not an expert, but I believe it has a lot to do with the fact that they were brought the U.S. as slaves, and had their histories erased. Most Americans of African descent couldn't tell you which country in Africa their ancestors came from, so most of them claim Africa as a whole, because it's the only thing they can claim. We literally stole their identities, and even though their families might have been here for generations at this point, black people are still struggling to overcome the effects of hundreds of years of slavery, followed by segregation and Jim Crow, and the systemic racism they still face today. Imagine living in a country where your ancestors were forcibly kidnapped and brought from their home country, and even though your family has been here for generations and you were born here, other (white) people still like to tell you to "go back where you came from." Black Americans are still struggling to have an identity that white people didn't force on them.
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DesertTripper 7 years ago
The term African-American is confusing in the first place. It's simply stating that someone is American yet has origins in the continent of Africa. At face value it has nothing to do with race, as a white South African who immigrated to the US could be considered African-American in every sense of the word.
Darren Lewis 4 years ago
Such as Elon Musk...... Technically and factually he is African-American
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#12
I had a student who wrote an art history paper about Leonard Davin Chi. Didn't even run that sucker through a spellcheck or anything. Referred to him as that throughout the entire paper.
BusLady 7 years ago
Right up there with: Sandro Bought the Chili, Paul Seize Ann, Paul Go Again, and Pablo Pick Asso.
diane a 7 years ago
had to share this on the subject of rennaisence art - it was painted around 1500 by Raphael - who wasnt actually a turtle back then la-veleta-...bddb4f.jpg 
diane a 7 years ago
Ok - am going to tell a story here - i was working as a nanny for the son of the chairman of Sotherbies in London in 1980 - their estate in the south of France was gorgeous - i was there for a few months -the floor in the chateux was laid by Picasso - he came by to look at it - just before i was there - the whole Rolling Stones walked down the drivewayand tried to buy it
#13
Happened in the first week of a college anthropology course: Prof: "Let's list a few basic differences between modern humans and animals" Student: "We have a heart beat"
Jon Harris 5 years ago
Ought to pull that prof up on the finer point that humans are part of the animal kingdom. So it's a stupid question, unless you insert "other" before animals.
Suzanne Haigh 4 years ago
These just show what uneducated people not only attend colleges and universities but obtain qualifications in America. In other countries they have to learn things to achieve degrees etc.
#14
One of my husband's colleagues said a kid came up to him after an exam and said, "I didn't know the answers to the questions you asked on the test, so I made up my own questions and answered them." The professor said, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and when I go to lunch, I'm going to tell all my friends."
Tesa Guevara 7 years ago
that kid mayjust have a bright future in creative honesty and truly thinking through outside the box.
Barbara Meyer 7 years ago
I sort of did this. I said I didn't know enough about a particular historical figure to write about him so wrote about a different one. Passed the test.
Lynne Hales 4 years ago
Well with a Professor who ridicules like that what chance did the student have ?Maybe he could have eaten his lunch with the student and found out more of what he hadn't understood so that he could help him or indeed change his teaching style to make his lessons more easily understood .
#15
I had a student this year who plagiarised in an assignment ABOUT plagiarism... This included copy-pasting the definition of plagiarism from Wikipedia.
Cosmin Ionascu 7 years ago
Well, to be honest, on the last part, you don't reinvent the definition of something.
Momom0 7 years ago
I honestly think your assignment is b******t then. Not you, definitely not you, but whoever came up with your assignment and made you give it to the students... So what if he did that? If he copied the definition of a word from a dictionary, it's plagiarism? So what is he supposed to do? come up with his own definition? overwrite what the dictionary says?
Julie Patel 5 years ago (edited)
I agree. I mean, come on. He could have just sourced WIkipedia, though. To be fair, I've been accused and caught plagarizing and that really doesn't affect your life too much. It's not like you can go to jail for it.
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Neill Powell 7 years ago
Well played, student, I would give that a single-shot A+, and then and F if they ever did it again.
#16
One student asking the difference between psychopath and psychologist, in criminology class.
Fuzzy Duckling 7 years ago
Maybe they were being glib, I've met some psychologists that make me wonder the same thing.
#17
I am not a professor, but I watched one facepalm after my classmate said this: "Ugh! I don't even know what a verb IS!" This was in an advanced linguistics course for would-be English teachers.
Nicky OldfieldDesciple 7 years ago
I remember having to go into an higher level teacher's classroom once in Secondary (High) school to give her a message from the teacher I just had. She had a notebook on her desk that I knew was her's as it had her name on the front. She opened it to rip a page out of it to write a reply and on one of the first pages I saw as she opened the book she had written down so she could remember the meaning of Adverb, Verb Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Preposition, Interjection etc, as well as the difference between affect and effect and other basic rules English of grammar. This woman was teaching higher level 17 and 18 year olds and had to use cheat sheets to help herself to know the the grammar I was taught in Primary (elementary) school. When I asked her why did she need to write all that stuff down her curt reply "who has the time to remember those things?" Thank God I had a different teacher than her when I was doing my leaving exams.
Sandy Hale 7 years ago
I worked in K-12 and college for many years and some teachers are so stupid it's really scary.
Lily Robertson 7 years ago
The teacher should have offered an example. Something like, pointing towards the door and saying, "Go!"
#18
I'm late and not a professor, but I share this one any chance I get. 10th grade, I had a girl in my class ask the teacher how long it would take for a submarine to travel from the Florida to California... going underneath the country.
Tarmin Slingerfinger 7 years ago
To be fair, assuming that there is water underneath all the continents if you've never heard of layer theory is not far-fetched nor stupid. Maybe surprising that she didn't know, but not that stupid.
Michael Hanlon 7 years ago
I had a girl in my high school U.S. History class... “I don’t understand... who won the Industrial Revolution?!” After teacher gawkes at her in silence for quote some time he responds... “The Machines.”
Stannous Flouride 7 years ago
I doubt she was aware of H.G. Wells but several of his books come pretty close to that idea.
Caroline Driver 7 years ago
Tell her it has to go down to the molten layer of the earth and then it can cut through that, that'll satisfy her
#19
Had a kid skip my class every day. I had a working discussion section one day every other week where the students would work on one of the homework assignments together in groups -- the kid would show up during the last 10 minutes of class to join a group and put his name on an assignment. Only time I ever saw him. So I gave him a 0 for all group work and a 0 for participation (basically just some free points because I'd randomly call on people to talk about the readings) After he gets his grade, he wants to argue about the fact that I punished him even though I said I wasn't going to take attendance. No, motherfu*ker -- I'm punishing you because you didn't do shit, and you tried to scam off of other kids that did.
Paul K. Johnson 7 years ago
Unfortunately the world is full of people who want to be in charge but got there using methods like this. All they cared about was getting ahead but never did any of the work to get there on their merits. Instead they game the system. And when you have to work with people like this they do the exact same thing. If you have the misfortune to have one as your boss then good luck.
Rebecca Rogers 7 years ago
There was a girl that I had 3 classes with one semester. She skipped a lot. Now, all of the professors said that they don't take attendance, but that learning stuff was on us. It was college, after all. One day towards the end of the semester, she was complaining to me about doing poorly in these classes. I said looked at her and said, "not to be mean, but, I don't know, try going to class. You skip all the time. I rarely miss, and I have A's in all of the classes that you're struggling in. They're not hard classes. Just show up." She stopped talking to me after that
Jessica Mynott 7 years ago
I once worked with a lady who hated bees when I asked her why she hated them she told me it was because they eat flowers o.o not pollinate them but ... eat them I told her that's not what bees do and she refused to believe me :/
joker online 7 years ago
I know some students who do this.. they even place their name at the top so the teacher would think they are the leader.
Julie Patel 5 years ago
Yeah and they don't work with other members of their team.
Load More Replies... Grumble O'Pug 7 years ago
Sadly if more teachers/professors did this, group work wouldn't be such a chore.
Julie Patel 5 years ago
Yes but group members also have to work together and be fair to the other members. There are tons of people who don't want to work with members who have difficulties.
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Carol Emory 7 years ago
We were paired up for oral presentations in our Current Issues class in college. Our topic was the IRA and terrorism. I'd set up meetings with fellow students doing similar topics, she'd show up for five minutes and leave to "get dinner." I'd set up meetings with her at coffee shops, she'd come in, get a coffee, look over my notes and leave. So when the day came for us to do our presentation, I talked to the prof before class. He said..no problem..just don't tell her what grade you get. We do our presentation and the professor starts asking us questions. I answer ever one precisely, she floundered on all of hers. I got an A. She comes to me after class and says "Can you believe he gave us a C on that?" I just nodded "Uh huh..it's terrible."
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
Reminds me of a group project I did in high school. We had to create a country for the geography class we were in. My teammates helped name the place, and that was pretty much it. We had to do certain mini-assignments for points, each one being worth a few points; the goal was to have a certain number of points by the end of the project period, which was a few weeks long because we worked on it in-between other lessons. I begged my team to help me since we needed that point goal to pass, and they basically acted like I wasn't there. I ended up doing all of the point assignments we needed done by myself, and the m***********s tried to share credit. The only thing that kept them from getting any was the fact that when it came time to present our country to the class, I was the only one who knew s**t about our country, and thus was the only one with anything to say. I got full credit and they failed. It was such an amazing feeling.
Kirsten Kerkhof 7 years ago
I give my students the option of giving bonus-malus points to their group mates. I will grade the group assignment (e.g. 70%) to count for all members of that group. Unless they want to give extra bonus points to a particular member for having done extra work (happens fairly often) of malus points if one or more group members slacked off (I can veto that though, to prevent malice). It's a good system that grew from my own college days when I hated it when slackers profited from other students' efforts.
#20
My mom isn’t a professor, but she sometimes supervises college students who study under her in a practicum setting. She was on a home visit with a student once (she’s a social worker), and the family was showing my mom and the student around their farm. The matriarch of the family was gathering chicken eggs and commented on how small some of them were. The student suggested placing them back in the hen’s nest so that they would have more time to grow. This senior in college thought that eggs grow bigger the longer they can remain in the nest, like vegetables or something. This is also in a very rural place where probably half the population has some kind of farm or livestock.
Shari H 7 years ago
My uncle once dated a woman that would not eat our farm fresh eggs because "they came out of a chicken", but she would eat eggs from the grocery store because "they came from the factory".
Susan Callihan 7 years ago
I once met a woman who didn't know potatoes come out of the ground. She thought they came from the supermarket.
Claire Hoyt 7 years ago
I'm from a town that has a lot of farms, and thankfully I've yet to meet anyone that stupid. However, I do have the story of the kid who thought calves were born in eggs. His mother (An overprotective woman) Would never let him watch the animal births. He was 16.
Cherié Terblanche 7 years ago
I had a friend in high school who couldn't understand how one of twins could be born before the other. She thought they came out at the exact same time. I had to ask her what type of heavy duty vagina she thinks she has. Facepalm for days.
Amaranthim Talon 7 years ago
"A lady was picking through the frozen turkeys at the grocery store, but couldn’t find one big enough for her family. She asked a stock boy, “Do these turkeys get any bigger?” “No, ma’am. They’re dead.”"
Linda Buchzeiger 5 years ago
My son, back when he was in HS, worked after school at one of the local supermarkets. They put him in Dairy stocking milk. A woman came up and asked him if the milk was fresh. He replied, “do you see any cows?” She complained to management and he was fired for being sarcastic. He walked next-door and got a job at Gags and Games
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#21
I teach a class on the history of Psychology. When covering the chapter on behaviorism, and discussing the ideas of its founder, John Watson, who was a determinist (did not believe in free will) - a student asked me in the middle of class that if he was a determinist, why did he advocate free will in the Sherlock Holmes book? I was really taken aback by that one.
glowworm2 7 years ago
Not entirely stupid, the actual Sherlock Holmes character's first name actually is John.
Giovanni Mahoney 6 years ago (edited)
Sherlock is real :(... Don’t ruin the fantasy
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#22
I wouldn't say dumb, but definitely baffling and annoying. She had somehow gotten all the way to college still believing that weirdly and creepily exaggerated coy-little-girl flirting would get her what she wanted, including with female faculty. It was cringey to see in action - literally tilting her head to the side, playing with her hair, pivoting her leg back and forth mannerisms, combined with semi-childish speech patterns while glancing up through her eyelashes. Definitely "I'm only talking to this one in front of witnesses" territory. She told me that she was reading and studying every night and still not making progress on tests and needed help. I explained how to make written study materials to help her absorb information better. She said she'd done that and reviewed the materials regularly, but still wasn't seeing results. Genuinely concerned and puzzled, I asked her to bring me her materials next class period and we'd go over them to make sure they were accurate and useful. She agreed. Next class period rolls around. She announces, with even more exaggerated mannerisms, that wouldn't you know it - she was so frustrated with her score on her last test (returned before our earlier conversation) that she'd thrown her study materials into the trash in a fit of anger and they were all gone. Almost as if they had never existed. I looked her in the eye and said, "I think you should consider, then, that self-discipline may be playing a role in your grades in my class." She huffed and pouted in outrage, and I never saw her again. What makes me sad is that clearly someone, almost certainly her family, had taught her that these behaviors worked. No one sticks to a behavior that strongly unless she has had success with it.
Nikki D 7 years ago
I don't understand what the leg pivot thing is supposed to be. And you'd be surprised how often that ridiculous trash DOES work.
Cynthia Ford 7 years ago
Turning the knee in towards the other leg in an attempt to look vulnerable and less threatening.
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Caroline Driver 7 years ago
Would have been interesting to meet her mother at a parent's evening...
Bobbi Newell 7 years ago
Girls will pull c**p like that as long as they're allowed to get away with it. You're probably the first person who's ever called her out on it.
Carol Williams 7 years ago
It usually works with most males...unfortunately for her, you're a real adult...
Sandy Hale 7 years ago
I love your remark -- Definitely "I'm only talking to this one in front of witnesses" territory." -- especially true if you are male!
Raphael Terranus 5 years ago
Ye Gods!! Sounds like the beginning of every porn teacher/student video ever made!
Karen Silver 5 years ago
People do what they do to survive as children and often continue it to adulthood. All that cutie stuff was a defense. Tragic in a way.
Rick Barrett-Olson 1 year ago
College profs should not be using 'cringey'. He lost some credibility himself there.
#23
Not a prof but we had a creative writing assignment where we were given a piece of paper with a list of 5 unusual words to use in a poem. I read my poem, which used all the words, and a girl went on an angry rant over the fact that I had used a bunch of obscure words that she didn't understand.
arjelio mas 7 years ago
Allie - I'm comforted to know this obscure concept didn't get by you. Thanks for helping me understand this difficult post.
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Donna Leske 5 years ago
I have a friend that I'd played dozens of Boggle games with. There was usually some tension, I'd win 75-80% of the games but not 100%! Then one day in a fit of rage he said "I'm not playing if you use words I DON'T KNOW!" We never played again, and never will. The word that pushed him over the edge was slub.
Stannous Flouride 7 years ago
I'm guessing that 'obscure' may have been one of them. The poor girl may have been raised where she was mocked or otherwise embarrassed for not knowing things and never learned to look things up or ask. I think the smarter you are the more likely you are to ask when you hear a phrase or word that's alien to you.
#24
Not a professor, but someone in my class asked, "After a C-section, do they put the baby back in?"
#25
A friend was substitute teaching a high school math class and was to proctor a test for the students. At one point during the test a student got up to ask if he knew what 8 x 7 was, but before he could respond another student said " sit down....he doesn't know the answer to that....he's a substitute teacher not a math teacher."
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
I'm at a loss for words...There is no sane way to react to this level of stupidity.
Martha Murphy 4 years ago
I was a substitute teacher in a high school physics class. I had never taken physics. Students were to write answers to the questions at the end of a chapter in the textbook. One question asked how fast the earth turns on its axis. The students didn't know how to figure it out, so I told suggested they look up the circumference of the earth in miles, divide it by 24, and write the answer in miles per hour. They didn't believe me, so I sent one of them across the hall to ask the chemistry teacher, who said the same thing.
Erik Jacobs 5 years ago
Wrong. Everyone knows the answer is 42. 42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything...
Load More Replies... Momom0 7 years ago
In an angry retort, the substitute teacher yells, "IT'S 58! I KNOW WHAT IT IS! I'M NOT STUPID!" The students wink at each other,"I was taunting you so that you'd tell us in an effort to prove that you know it. Otherwise you would never have told us!" Substitute teacher, "twist! I knew your cunning little trick so I yelled the wrong answer."
#26
Not a professor, but I was helping out a younger friend’s classmate revise for his O-level (15-16 year olds) maths exam. He had some past papers with him, so I looked through them and got him started with a simple problem to try and gauge how much he knew. The question provided some measurements in millimetres, asked you to do some basic number crunching, and finally provide the answer in metres. He attempted it for a few minutes, but didn’t cover any ground, so he asked for help. I then went through the number crunching with him step by step and prompted him to do the final conversion to metres thinking it would be trivial. He stared at me blankly. Me: “How many millimetres are there in a metre?” Student: “I don’t know.” Me: “What does ‘milli’ mean?” Student: “...” I take out his foot ruler and place it in front of him. Me: “Show me a millimetre on this ruler.” No response. Me: “What do the lines represent?” He gives me some bullshit answer that makes no sense. Me: “Have you never used a ruler before!?” I then proceed to explain to him what the millimetre and centimetre marks on the ruler are. I also explain to him that they are 1/1000 and 1/100 of a metre respectively and that the words “milli” and “centi” imply as much. Me: “Okay, now that you know what these are and what proportion of a metre they are, can you show me how large a metre is approximately?” I expected him to stretch his arms out and just say “about this much”. Student: “Umm... from here to [nearby shopping mall]?” I just stared at him in disbelief. I was honestly shocked. The shopping mall he referred to was at least 1-2 kilometres away. His exam was in 3 days. How did he even make it this far in school?
Pollypocket81 7 years ago
Is it just me feeling bad for these kids! Of course something is simple when you know and understand it. Are they afraid to ask for help in class, or are their "teachers" not bothering to check in with them!! ...Either way it makes me sad to think that there are kids out there who are having these problems. They clearly have learning difficulties.
Mhor 7 years ago
My nephew was failing maths at the private school he went to. Hated maths, would cry when trying to do the homework. His family moved from a city to a country town and he started going to a public school. He started getting A's for maths within 1 semester of being there. It seems he would never ask for help as he was too embarrassed about not understanding (he is only 12-13 at this time), his new maths teacher worked that out within weeks and could see when he was struggling and would always go up to him when they were working on things and have a small one on one conversation to help him work it out. He doesn't have any learning difficulties, he didn't want to look stupid in front of the class. His family didn't know what was why he was struggling so much at school. It took a teacher who was able to see and connect with him in a way his past teachers hadn't.
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Jaded Queen 7 years ago
(Assuming he doesn't have a learning disability and didnt come from a completely illiterate family) and they say every life is sacred and must be just left on Earth to procreate dumb s**t. I mean seriously I had difficulty with things too we all do ,and I asked people or more than often I hit books I hit them hard, coz I didn't liked not knowing. I just didn't. And now with internet it's just not an excuse. I forget so many basic things but I quickly read them on net.this is just too much. I mean what does his parents do!
Brent Wambold 5 years ago
This is not unbelievable - I have kids every day who not only couldn't answer this question, they would have a hard time finding 1/2, 1/4, 1/8th inch marks on a ruler... You can explain some skills and concepts to some students 100 times and they still don't understand how to use them, because they don't care.. "I'm going to marry money and hire someone to figure that out for me"
Lukyan Terdal 5 years ago
one thousand, a factor of one thousandth, the REALLY small lines, millimeters, probably not, and 1.09361 yards, in that order.
Bianca Du Toit 7 years ago
What the heck?? What have his teachers been teaching him?? I'm sorry, this is not a question of the kid being dumb, even if he could possibly have had a learning disability.
TimmiLynn Johnson 4 years ago
I had a hard time with math. A really hard time. I had to take an advanced math class before I could enroll in college because I scored so low. Anyway. I had a tutor and we realized that I just wasn't understanding the reasoning behind any of the math. I knew what to do in most cases but I didn't understand the why. My grades went way up after that. And he didn't treat me like I was dumb either. He just helped me understand.
TimmiLynn Johnson 4 years ago
And since I struggled with math I then had anxiety about it which made me struggle more. I did well in every other class.
Load More Replies... #27
When my mom was a history teacher at a local high school, they went on a trip to Spain. One girl, let's call her Megan, was not quite a clever student. They went to a restaurant to eat and Megan was looking at the menu. She was frowning the whole time and made some "hmm, hmm" noises and looked like she was struggling with the language. My mom told her there was an English menu on the other page, because she didn't understand Spanish. 3 minutes later she still looked confused. My mom asked her what was wrong. Megan then ask my mom why the English language was so different than they learned at school. Megan didn't understand a word. My mom looked at her menu, went quiet for a second and told megan she was reading the German menu.
All With Heart 7 years ago
What pains me is that she didn't know that German was obviously a different language. I mean, Klassischer Kartoffelsalat does not sound anything like English.
That Fat Mouse 7 years ago
On a serious note, how is "Klassischer Kartoffelsalat" said?
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Paula Marshall 7 years ago
This is what we are raising in the US. Sheltered, cloistered, fenced in, close-minded.
Monette Mestas 7 years ago
To be fair, a lot of German words are similar to English words, especially food, like Milch, Butter, Salat, Limonade, Steak, Fisch.... so perhaps she saw a few that she recognized or were close and thought it was some sort of dialect?
Eulalie Grace 7 years ago
Hey - my Uncle from Landau an der Isar makes a mean klassischer kartoffelsalat !
#28
Actually one of the smarter kids in my class. Ethics, awareness of social norms...not so much. He sent me an email after the semester ended, asking if I'd mind telling my next semester class that his digital textbook was available for sale. Oh, and that it's a PDF so if multiple people want it, he can sell them all copies. I responded that I admire his entrepreneurial spirit, but it probably wasn't a good idea to solicit his professor's help in starting a piracy-based book selling business.
- H I D D E N - 7 years ago
I did this in college, I had a professor who was really proud that I had found the book online. He encouraged my classmates to buy the PDF book from me instead of the bookstore, to save them money.
- H I D D E N - 7 years ago
For those who don't know - in the US, text books are STUPID expensive.
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Emma Vink 7 years ago
Text books are one thing, but I'll do you one better: I'm a TA for second year sociology students and we put the class lecture slides online for students. We do not put the notes of whatever the lecturer has explained, questions answered, etc. online specifically to benefit students who attend classes. With this system, there will obviously be some black-market like activity involved... However...one JEM of a student advertised her unethical sale of class notes on the OFFICIAL university Web portal. I was administrating/monotoring/developing the online content for our second year Soc page and couldn't resist commenting on her post with the advertisement. "Please note that the student you have unethically bought class notes from was already failing the subject modules before this advertisemrnt was posted. She will now likely be suspended or expelled from the university. If you have answered her advertisement on this portal, please note that we can track that online activity too..."
Taras O 7 years ago
I brought all my used/slightly-used books to the re-sale event my college was holding. They wouldn't take any of them back even though they were still selling the exact same copies. So I came back with a foldout chair, set up shop infront of the event, and sold all my books to the students directly.
Peter Bradley 5 years ago
Why not? Prof could make some money, even if selling the books for a 10th of what they gouge students for.
#29
As a GA teaching freshman English, I had a couple instances of cheating that left me speechless. First, my university uses an online plagiarism checker and the students know this. With one student, over half of his essay was copied from a website. He looked genuinely shocked when I called him out on it, and then told me that his mother wrote the paper for him. I explained that his mother writing his paper was also cheating. Then he asked if he could get credit for the half that wasn't from a website. Another time, the students had to analyze a movie showing how it used the Hero's Journey as plot structure. This was an easy assignment seeing as how nearly every modern movie uses this structure. The student copied the Wikipedia summary of Aladdin word for word, and he denied doing it. He argued it was a coincidence that his entire essay was the exact same as Wikipedia's.
Chris Maxfield 7 years ago
That requires at least a dozen monkeys and an infinite number of manual typewriters.
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Ruth Beaty 7 years ago
You know, I don't get some of these people. I was accused by a slightly senile teacher of copying a book report I wrote in 7th grade, way back in the dark ages of the 60's. I hadn't, and had been careful to use proper grammar, etc. The really sad thing was the teacher had also had my father in the same grade and thought he could do no wrong. She didn't like me and just assumed I couldn't write a proper book report. Never did figure that one out.
Julie Amador 5 years ago
I admit to using Cliff Notes to write papers during summer school in college one year. I am a slow reader and we had to read a book and write a 4 page essay every 3 days. It usually takes me about a week to read a 300 page book. I should have dropped the class. I think we had 13 essays in that summer session. It really made my life hell.
#30
History. Prof. is talking about some expedition or something and mentions Antarctica, is standing in front of a world map. Girl raises her hand. Asks, "excuse me, but where IS Antarctica?" Prof. stands there unable to answer for a few seconds, then raises his arm to the map and goes, "right heeeeeereeeeeeee!" While running his hand under Antarctica and making exaggerated Vanna White motions. Girl goes, "oh, ok!" I was a little scared. More for the professor. He had that, "I am severely underpaid" expression.
BREAK YOUr perceptions 7 years ago
and people wonder why some believe the earth is still flat.
Joannie Goulet 7 years ago
The Earth was never flat. It can't "still" be flat.
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Ryan-Michele Eagleton 7 years ago
In my intro to astrology class in college, someone asked how water doesn't fall off the bottom of the earth. There was some laughter because people thought it was a joke - and then we all realized it wasn't, and the silence became deafening. Also had a young woman (A WOMAN, mind you - it bears repeating) who did not understand why women had periods. When the professor explained it, she looked shocked. I live in Texas and am a very vocal advocate for fact-based sex ed in our schools... but I'm not holding my breath. Stuff like that is unfortunately way too common around here.
Sarah Waterfield 5 years ago
She later answered the test question "Where on Earth is Antarctica?" with 'on my history teacher's wall'
#31
Not a professor. In the midst of an English Renaissance Literature course, one of my fellow students raised her hand: “Dr. [Professor]? I am just so...like, how did these people survive without Wally World?” She meant WalMart. She wanted to know how Renaissance-era people survived without WalMart. Our professor stared at her for a couple seconds, and then moved on with his lecture as if he hadn’t heard.
Brent Wambold 5 years ago
How about those of us alive today who lived 35 years before getting a Walmart in town and today still has to drive 35 miles to get to one
Andreas Larsen 5 years ago (edited)
Well had it been anthropology, it would have been a legit question.
#32
Not a professor. Heard some arguing from the chemistry class with some one shouting "but Mercury is a planet! How can can there be two Mercurys?"
Alia Ris 7 years ago
Wow. That kid's brain must be blew up when he found out about the Roman god and the Sailor Mercury...
Csilla Kaszas 4 years ago
Imagine Joe's astonishment, when he learns that the new transfer student's name is also Joe. *insert appropriate sound effect*
BarryAllenTheFlash 7 years ago
This is our future generation, the one that"s supposed to put us on Mars. I'm scared
#33
I don't know if this qualifies as dumb or is closer to stupid, but...I had a student who didn't show up for class regularly, and her grade was going to be a C, maybe a D depending on her final exam. What made her dumb, however, was how she tried to cheat on the final exam. She reached down into her bag and took out her phone, put it on the desk, typed something into it, looked at the test, looked at her phone, looked back at her test, rechecked her phone, then answered whatever question she was looking up. Just to make sure, I let her do it one more time. I was watching her THE WHOLE TIME, and she was completely oblivious to it. She got an F.
Abhijeet Singh 7 years ago
When I was in 9th grade and was answering science exam they let out all other grade students(in my school they mixup students of 5th to 9th grade) and we were still answering as we had more 30 mins left. The teacher who was substituting us happened to be new. During the commotion someone started asking someone started asking answers from another person across the hall. Then everyone started asking each other at their normal voice in front of the teacher. And she did nothing but see all this.
Lukyan Terdal 5 years ago
I'll ignore the spelling mistake, just this once.
Load More Replies... Carol Williams 7 years ago
In my HS French class an idiot in the front row had a cheat sheet on his lap. Our desks were open, so everyone could see. Teacher did nothing at the time. I asked the next day why she didn't do anything, since it has been quite obvious she saw him. She said, "he's so bad at it I was sure he'd fail even with a cheat sheet...and he did"...
Henry Saravia-Melara 5 years ago
Not sure why you are giving her letters on test.like,you finished the exam,here's a A.
David Herron 7 years ago
When I was teaching International Relations at a men's college, one of my students did not show up for the mid-term, which was scheduled right after the spring break.. When he appeared the following week with a fantastic tan, , he asked me when he could make up the mid-term. My response was, "you had better have a good excuse." to which he responded, "My doctor told me to get more rays." I laughed so hard that I forgot that I had a meeting with the Dean!!!
Steffi Keenan 7 years ago
but that's the kind of skill you need unless you plan to do a lot of writing...
#34
Not a professor but in my psychology class there was this one girl that would ask questions every three minutes, not the good questions either you know? like the ones where the teacher didn't full on explain things or anything that would make the discussion better just the type of dumb questions where the teacher had literally said what she was asking about two minutes ago. Anyways, we were viewing a map of cultural stereotypes and in Mexico it said "Maids and Gardeners" (which, okay, fair enough, its just a stereotype) but this girl legit looks at it, looks at the teacher and says: "That doesn't make any sense because Mexicans don't have gardens. How can they have gardeners?" As a student, I rolled my eyes. As a Mexican, I burst out laughing. jfc, I can't even be mad, I know she's not racist, she's just ignorant as hell.
Amaranthim Talon 7 years ago
I have a question- what the actual eff is a "map of cultural stereotypes"? I mean- by making such a map, are they not giving it some sort weight? Importance? How does even having that thing help to erase stereotypes?
Karen Drucks 7 years ago
hey, at least she didn't say they were all rapists and criminals........
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
What? No, seriously, what? Where in the hell does a person even get the incentive to think soemthing like that? Good god...
#35
I teach computer engineering at a community college. One of my courses last term had a project component, where every student had a unique project. I posted my own project as an example. (I enrolled in a similar course a few years ago as a professional development activity.) One student handed in my project, after taking my name off, of course. My feedback included “At what point did you convince yourself that I wouldn’t recognize my own code?” His final grade ... well below 50.
Yuval Yosub 7 years ago
What, they couldn't be botherd to changethe names of constants and the like?
#36
In freshman year a girl asked my history teacher if George Washington or Thomas Jefferson invented the lightbulb. In sophomore year a girl asked if Spain was in the US and the guy behind her said "We don't need to know this! We're American!" I live in the midwest
Caroline Espenschied 7 years ago
Kids like this guy make me (european) really, really afraid of the average american people...
Julia NotMyLastname 7 years ago
I promise we aren't ALL idiots. Just most of us :)
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ispeak catanese 7 years ago
Lived in Puerto Rico, an island colony of the U.S. In high school, we exchanged letters with students from upstate New York. Their questions were SO basic, probably because they were all brought up to believe they lived in the most advanced, super duper country of the world. One of my classmates decided to respond in kind, telling them we rode to school in carts pulled by oxen and everyone took turns wearing one pair of shoes, etc. It was hilarious: sarcasm was lost on them. Oh, and by the way, we had to correspond in English and so did they. It was a good way to keep them stuck in their own little world while we practiced creative writing in a 2nd language.
Teresa Taylor 7 years ago
Excellent point!! Americans are the inbreds of the world. We, as a culture, don’t like or accept foreigners, foreign languages, foreign cultures, “differences” or anything not like us. It’s evident in the myriad numbers of people crying, “This is America, speak English.” It is evident in the myriad numbers of Americans that laugh at and make fun of people with accents. However, what those Americans don’t get, is that person they’re laughing at, can speak another language. Look at Melania Trump, while you are making fun of her accent and life choices, remember that chick can speak five languages PLUS English. She is the first First Lady of the US that can do so. She represents this nation gracefully and graciously to foreign nations because she can communicate with ease to their leaders and spouses during functions in their own languages. That’s an asset.
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rai mei 7 years ago
I'm from the Philippines and I'm shocked that students from USA, which is a first-world country, are like this. There are also so many dumb/stupid people in our country but they are like that only because of poverty and are not able to go to school when they're supposed to (they need to prioritize food over education for survival). Even people from the backwaters understand simple English, simple geography, simple math and simple knowledge about the world (they know about America, China, other Asians, Africans) due to television.
Priscilla Limoli 5 years ago
I'm Italian but I moved to CA few years ago and I enrolled in a community college. One of my classmates asked me why my English pronunciation was not perfect, so I told her: "I'm Italian, I have a strong accent, I know... but what's the problem with that?" and she looked at me very very confused and surprised, so I kept telling her it was fine to have different accents :D and then she told me: "yes, I know, that's not a problem but I don't understand why yours is not like mine, since Italy is in the US"... excuse me, what? She believed - and still believes - that Italy is in the US. She thought that Europe is just a synonym of Germany. I tried to explain some geography but... :D
Jennifer Sacrison 7 years ago
Teacher asked who discovered electricity and a girl says...Bill Clinton!!!
Karen Drucks 7 years ago
Back when I was a kid, a co-worker RN, asked my mom, a Norwegian immigrant, where was Vietnam, her son was sent there to fight.... \
Aragorn II Elessar 5 years ago
I’m born and lived most of my life in Arizona, moved to Minnesota recently, I was looking at a map of the US with my mom, she pointed to Oregon and asked “Is this Arizona?”
Alice Kraatz 6 years ago
A few days ago, something like this happened in my HONORS modern american history course. We had just begun to cover WWI when this one girl raised her hand and asked, completely seriously, "Wasn't there a World War III?"
#37
I’m not a professor, but I studied modern languages at university and met a girl who had managed to spend an entire year abroad (a compulsory part of the course) living in the country where her language was spoken, working at a job with local people, and sharing a flat with three local people, and after the year was up her language skills had not improved one jot, and her flatmates had to talk to her in English because she couldn’t understand them otherwise. I mean, I fully appreciate that some people find it much harder than others to learn a foreign language, that’s not actually the part I find dumb. The dumb part is getting into £30K of debt and spending 4 years of her life on a degree, then putting absolutely zero effort into actually learning the thing you’re paying to learn. Actually, to be that bad at the language after a full year you’d have to make an active effort to avoid it, never turn on a television or pick up a magazine, spend all your time in English and Irish themed pubs and ignore anyone who tried to talk to you.
Scott Tepper 7 years ago
I know this story is true. I experienced something similar, but in France. We were a group of French students from several different schools. Had studied French all throughout High School. Our trip was to spend a couple of weeks with host families and then go on as a group to Paris. While we were staying with the French families, we (the American students) got together for some excursion. We shared stories of how things were going with our host families. All the stories were positive except for one girl. She said she couldn't understand anything that the family said during meals, and she was frustrated that they wouldn't speak English to her. I was embarrassed that her French family now had this girl as a representative of how self-involved and ignorant Americans could be.
Cora Thiemann 7 years ago
I was one of this girl's roommates. And I could tell you what she was doing. Btw, the one I lived with knew even less at the end of the year.
Sarah Tate 4 years ago
My brother is like this. He even went to Guatemala to study at a special language school and the idiot still can't speak any Spanish. I on the other hand, learned Spanish from classes in public school and college and am fairly proficient. I think he was just using his travels as vacations instead of trying to actually learn a new language.
Lyn Ashurst 5 years ago
I had to read this twice because I couldn't believe it. What a waste of time and money.
Daniel Andersson 7 years ago
Accually; if/ when English or American people comes to Sweden, we tend to speak to them in English all the time, which gives most English/ Americans NO chance to learn Swedish... 😜 It's how we roll back here... 😋 We don't teach our pressious language to ANYBODY! 😂
Bradley Roon 7 years ago
When i grew up a common saying was "Don't make anything idiot-proof, they will just build a better idiot."
Signe Manat Hansen 4 years ago
I lived in Madrid for 5 months. The only language spoken at my job was english and I had an irish flatmate. I still managed to get semi-fluent in Spanish.
Emm Bee 5 years ago
I went to Ireland for a year as an exchange student and my native language isn’t English. In my host family there was a guy who was the same age as me (~17) and he was from Spain. He didn’t know a word in English and was struggling to understand a thing anybody said. He found a group of other Spanish exchange students, decided to hang out with them, and only with them, and after a year he still didn’t understand a single word of English. What a waste of time and money.
#38
I was invigilating a 2hr exam once where students had been given very strong hints about the two essay questions beforehand. A student bustled-in making an incredible racket an hour late. Handed his completed essays in 10 minutes later, written on completely different paper to the stuff given out during the exam, and smirked and waved to everyone as he left. His lecturer marked it anyway and gave him 0% for both - essentially failing him - as the student had answered completely the wrong questions despite the hints, and he figured reporting the student for cheating was 'too much paperwork'. The student appealed the score, threatened the department head when the 0% was upheld, and was expelled.
Claire Silverman 7 years ago
apart from that's a special level of stupid?
Load More Replies... Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
The fact that he cheated int eh first place makes him stupid. The fact he cheated in such a p**s-poor manner makes him a complete idiot. But having the balls to then threaten the head of the department for not changing the grade? IT takes a very special kind of person to be THAT much of an imbecile.
Hamlets twin 7 years ago
Thanks for showing me a new word :) Never heard of 'invigilating' before.
Chris Maxfield 7 years ago
I assume it's like proctoring, but who knows? A new one for me, too.
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Charlotte Ayers 7 years ago
The student's hubris aside, I love that I learned a new word: invigilate.
#39
I had a student who tried to argue that plagiarism wasn't real after ganking the text of a one page paper on velociraptors straight from a top Google search result for them. "But if you read something, then you're just taking the knowledge and thumping it back into a word processor, what's the difference?" She was a criminal justice major.
maggiemoonbeam 7 years ago
I'd bet Public Defender. What client would pay her? What firm would take her?
Load More Replies... Ryan-Michele Eagleton 7 years ago
Gonna throw out a random opinion here... stuff like this is a direct result of public schools literally expecting students to just regurgitate information they've been spoon fed. I'm sure there are exceptions, but my entire experience in public school was teachers holding our hands walking us through the simplest stuff and never demanding much in the way of critical thinking or analysis. College was a huge wake-up call for me, because in 12 years of public school, I never learned how to LEARN. Can't really fault her for thinking that just repeating what she's read is what an essay is, when she likely got straight A's for that b.s. in high school - just like I did.
Jace 7 years ago
Agreed. I think i developed critical thinking skills because i had learning disabilities and school failed me big time, resulting in me being a minor rebel against s****y teachers and systems. I had a sociopath for a 9th-grade English teacher who always said she was preparing us for "the real world" (what, college? Yeah, college prep in 9th grade). i went back to business curricula for 10th through 12th, with teachers that weren't full of arrogant shite. When i went to college, it was way more sane, reasonable, and rational than any s**t i dealt with in my 12 years of general education. We were treated like people, some instructors actually cared to TEACH, and we had more control over what courses we were subjected to. I actually started to find learning pleasant.
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borklaser 7 years ago
I want to know why she was writing about velocirapters in the first place
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
And before anyone says anything, yes, I am aware that despite them being cool, they have nothing to do with the subject the student was studying, hence asking why she would be writing about them. It's called a joke.
Load More Replies... Lukyan Terdal 5 years ago
the the difference is that, in that case, you wouldn't be stealing someone else's content and claiming it as your own
#40
Not a professor, but a high school math teacher. I had a student who answered a FaceTime call during the final exam. I just took her phone, told the person on the other end “Not a smart idea” and hung up on him. I let her continue the test. Then I caught her cheating off the guy next to her twice, so I failed her. And if that wasn’t enough, during the next period’s final exam, she burst into the room on her phone yelling, “‘Sup Mr. AlwaysShamo!” I just yelled “Go away!” and she left. Kid was so self-absorbed and clueless.
cinderelly 0f sPiRiTlAnD 5 years ago
always Shamo is probably a filler name to not give personal info
Naomi Armitage 7 years ago
"during the NEXT period's final exam"... that tells me she walked into a class she wasn't supposed to be in, taught by the teacher who's exam she just flunked.
phil blanque 7 years ago
Whoa!!! You mean there are correct answers and incorrect answers to the same question? Why didn't anyone tell me that before?
#41
When I was working as a graduate assistant, the Dean of the graduate school where I worked was reviewing the capstone projects of two police officers who were about to graduate with Master's Degrees in Criminal Justice. She quickly discovered that they had plagiarized. She figured this out because when she opened the electronic documents, there was a significant amount of text that was hyperlinked. The links brought her to Wikipedia.
Wibbi 7 years ago
a colleague once caught two students plagiarizing their term papers. they did it by taking a published paper copied the first part of the first sentence and added the second part of the second sentence. the whole thing didn't make any sense at all... plus the students didn't want to accept it and started crying in her office because they said it wasn't their mistake...
#42
My wife teaches public speaking. The first speech in that class is just a simple narrative speech. Tell a story from your life. She had a freshman tell the class about a time he helped his boss in high school kidnap the boss's child after he had lost a custody battle. The student clearly thought the story would make him look cool and badass. Everyone in the class was horrified.
Sharon Vaughn 7 years ago
It's a matter of point of view. He saw himself as a hero not realizing kidnapping is a federal offense.
HelluvaHedgehogAlien 2 years ago
From four years later: HOW DID YOU AVOID THE CENSOR FAIRIES
Load More Replies... Grumble O'Pug 7 years ago
For kidnapping? We are talking the F word, so I imagine as a high school kid he's living within the statute period in which he could be charged.
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#43
In an international relations class: Teacher: Can anyone name a country in the Middle East where people don't consider themselves Arab? Student: Saudi Arabia. The worst part? He was Persian.
Taya Chroma 7 years ago
Reading the comments it seems that most people commenting don't even realize that the answer is Iran. That's why it's the worst part. Sorry for the "mensplaining" to those who got it.
Bradley Roon 7 years ago
Well America isn't the only country with idiots. Nor are students the only fools. Had a sergeant in the army (US - 'Nam era) who wanted us to go to war with China because there "were plenty" and most of us young soldiers did not have our COMBAT infantryman's embroidered badge. Just the infantryman's badge. He sent a letter to Prez Nixon requesting nuclear capability ON THE PLATOON LEVEL!!! NOT a good combination...
phil blanque 7 years ago
Ahhh...a stupid teacher. If you are Arabic, it is because that is your language. It is not a national or religious affiliation. There are Arabic Jews, Arabic Christians, Arabic Muslims.
#44
I'm not a professor, but I did grade exams, homework (mainly worksheets), and some papers for a few professors back in college. Hands down, the dumbest student I ever saw was one who turned in a photocopy of his friend's homework. Yes, a straight-up, minimally edited Xerox. He had made the tiiiiiiiniest effort to trace over the first few answers in pen, but had stopped well before the end of the first page. Of a 5-plus page worksheet. The best part was that his friend's name was still clearly visible on the first page of the worksheet. This guy hadn't even bothered to obscure it -- he just put a SINGLE LINE through it and wrote his own name next to it.
Smoofy 7 years ago
If you're gonna cheat at least do it right. I mean, don't cheat in the first place obviously, but if you ARE gonna cheat, do it right.
Wulfur 7 years ago
As Ryan Higa put it, if you cheat well and get away with with it you [kind of] deserve it. But if you don't it's just so much worse.
Load More Replies... Momom0 7 years ago
For every single homework, I ALWAYS implement my perfect plan: plan A. Start early and finish early. plan B. If I can't start early, I recruit friends, and make it a group work, which saves a lot of time. plan C. Recruit friends, person A does three questions which the group copies, person B does the next three question which the group copies.. and so on. Plan D. If ABSOLUTELY NO TIME to do it. Reserve at least three hours to not copy the homework, but EDIT the copy!
Carol Emory 7 years ago
I earlier mentioned a presentation in which the girl I was paired with did no work. So fast forward to my statistics class and there is the same girl. We were typing up a research paper in the computer lab when another girl, whom I totally trust, asked if she could get a copy of my paper because she was having a hard time explaining her results. This earlier girl says "can I get one too, I'm having the same issue." Reluctantly I gave her one, but then messaged the professor about her asking for it and that I was afraid she'd turn my work in saying it was hers. The day the report was due and I walk into the professors office to see his TA holding up her paper..word for word mine. I got an A on my paper, she was expelled.
Joyce Lyle 7 years ago
Why not? One idiot tried to purchase beer with an altered ID where I work. How was it altered? With white-out. And that was not even the worst fake ID I have seen.
#45
I’m not a professor, but a brother in my fraternity won the “most likely to be serving fries at McDonald’s” superlative at the end of the year. He genuinely thought he earned the award because he liked french fries so much.
BusLady 7 years ago
No, He was one of those "Do you know who my Father is?" types.
Load More Replies... Susan Gardner 7 years ago
Why do people keep starting with "I'm not a professor." We don't care, just tell the darn story lol
Hamlets twin 7 years ago
Is it wrong I like this kid? I mean, he liked the award, he'd probably love to work at McDonald's!
Paula Marshall 7 years ago
Stop insulting fast food workers. You have to keep so much in your head at once, I sure as hell couldn't do it! I have a slow brain and a bad memory and my IQ is 125.
#46
During an oral exam (basic engineering electronics) a girl could not answer a single question. So I ask her simpler questions. I bring close the oscilloscope and point at the power switch - it was pretty clear it was a switch as it was written in bold letters ON/OFF - and ask her what was it? Answer - fuse
Allie K. 7 years ago
How the hell did she get in that class?! On-off switch is something even toddlers can recognize!
PeachPossum 7 years ago
She could have had a bout of serious stage fright. Fear of public speaking is at the top of most people's lists. For some, speaking under pressure in front of a crowd is worse than death. If her knowledge is the least bit shaky and she is easily intimidated, she could well have just clammed up. Not many girls take engineering classes, and those that do don't always have favorable reports on how their peers and professors treat them.
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PeachPossum 7 years ago
In Punchline, Tom Hanks flunks out of med school to become a standup comic. The opening scene has him suffering through an oral exam. One question was to name the body parts that digest food. He blunders through but draws a complete blank on the word r****m. After much stuttering, he blurts, "Poop chute."
#47
We were discussing the three most common phases of matter--solids, liquids, and gases. Using water as the example, I asked a student to tell me what we call the solid phase of water. He replied, "Oil!" I was dumbstruck, but mine was only temporary...
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
Maybe that's why he's so slow. That oil probably killed his brain cells.
Load More Replies... Lukyan Terdal 5 years ago
well, if the water were polluted enough, this is KINDA right, but only kinda.
Jaded Queen 7 years ago
Should have struck him hard so he would have to use the 'solid form of water'. U know practical knowledge. Win-win.
Darren Lewis 4 years ago
"I was dumbstruck, but mine was only temporary" I LOVE that line and am going to have to steal it for later!
Steve Baxter 5 years ago
As a plumbing/ gas tutor, I was doing a one to one revision lesson with a student. I explained water expanded 10% in its solid state which is? ‘Ice’ he replied, good. It expands 1600 times in its gaseous state which is? he had a totally blank look on his face, so I asked. ‘ If you fill a kettle with water and boil it, what comes out its spout. ‘Smoke’ he replied.
#48
While I'm not a professor, I did encounter a student in a biology class once that was a gem. She once asked if rocks were living things. Then a few weeks later, discovered that tuna was a fish...and not just a food...
CJ Harrisson 3 years ago
I had a classmate in eighth grade that didn’t know a shark was a fish. The sad part was that he was one of the smartest kids in that class.
Mary McDougall 5 years ago
I met a woman over 30 who didn't think tuna was a fish. It was chicken. Of the sea!
Mark Warren 5 years ago
I thought for many years that tuna were tiny little fish because they came in small flat tins in the supermarket! Imagine my surprise when I found out they are the size of a bloody sofa!
#49
Not a professor, but a student....My first semester of college I took a communications course and on the first day we introduced ourselves and what we potentially wanted to do as a career and how proper communication is important in that field. My classmate shared that he wanted to be like the guys on the show Entourage. Confused and unfamiliar with the show my professor asked him to elaborate. He went onto explain how he and his group of friends essentially wanted to be a paid groupies - partying, traveling and sleeping with woman on someone else’s dime. When asked which one of his friends was going become a famous actor for them to leach off of, he said that they “hadn’t figured that part out yet”. It’s been a decade, I wonder how that career aspiration has turned out for him......
Signe Manat Hansen 4 years ago
There's nothing wrong with flipping burgers
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Mary Gibson 7 years ago
No, he isn't smart enough to flip burgers, he's cleaning the toilets, maybe.
Elvina Barclay 5 years ago
My oldest daughter had a Grade 5 classmate who at their graduation to middle school when asked where he wanted to be in 20 years stated "married to Emma Bunton aka Baby Spice" from the Spice Girls. That was his life's ambition.
#50
I remember going on a bus trip with some student to a lecture and book signing event in Iowa City. As we were driving down the Interstate, surrounded by cornfields, one of the students yelled, "Who in the HELL eats all this CORN!"
Susann Campbell 7 years ago
That's a great shout out. I'm going to have to remember that when I pass by the miles of garlic fields in the valley.
Bradley Roon 7 years ago
Very valid question, since over 70% of US grain crops are fed to livestock and most in CAFOs - confined animal feeding operations - feedlots. With GMO corn (toxic) and so crowded they have to be fed LOTS of antibiotics to stay alive...
Vanessa Court-Payen 7 years ago
Children. The children eat the corn. Beware of the Children of the Corn. *walks away*
#51
Not a professor, but I used to TA for a post-graduate ethics in accounting course. I once received a paper that was literally a cut and paste of a wikipedia article. I figured this out by the fact that they didn't remove the footnote markers so there were a bunch of blue numbers and [citation needed] marks throughout the paper. He protested the zero he received, loudly, in front of the entire class so I pulled up the wikipedia page on the projector and just started reading his paper.
#52
I once had a classmate who thought we didn’t know the world was round until we invented planes.
All With Heart 7 years ago
I mean...when I was younger I probably could have believed this. Like, 7, maybe?
Alvin Romualdo 5 years ago
There are still people who don’t believe the world is round.
Load More Replies... Brent Wambold 5 years ago
spherical ellipsoid, actually or as the general public learns oblate spheroid
Tarmin Slingerfinger 7 years ago
I think you don't realize what a Darwin Award is
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Ionut Tautan 4 years ago
that's ok, people now believe the world is flat. Now where was this theory born? That's right: USA
#53
I'm currently in a certification program for baking and pastry. Last fall I was taking a cake decorating class and one of our assignments was to visit and bakery, try one or more of their baked goods and write your experience about the visit. It was literally you writing your own Yelp review. That's it. No word count or anything. Just a review. One of the guys in my class plagiarized a review he found online.
Smoofy 7 years ago
The homework is to go somewhere, eat some stuff, and write about it. Thats the opposite of hard
Momom0 7 years ago
what's the damn point of the darn homework? Well the student is an idiot, no doubt about that... but the homework gives the scent that the teacher didn't give a damn and gave a homework for the sake of giving a homework, which wouldn't help students in any way... So the student wrote stuff just for the sake of writing stuff, no brain activity was involved... on either side...
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
Why would anyone be lazy about this kind of assignment? I would LOVE it if my classes had been that easy! You're literally getting class credit for eating snacks!
#54
This was just a one time thing, because this kid is a pretty sharp student otherwise. Im a flight instructor and was trying to teach my student how to find your groundspeed while flying. To do this, you take two points (towns usually) that you know the distance between and time how long it takes to fly between them. "Ok, bob, that took 7 minutes to fly between Bobsonville and Bobsville. The distance is 10 nautical miles, what is our groundspeed?" "5" "5 what?" "5 minutes" "No, your speed" "Yeah, 5 minutes" "So, since it took 7 minutes to fly 10 miles then our speed is such that it took 5 minutes?" "Yeah"
Jace 7 years ago
I just realized that i assumed planes had some kind of gadget for giving you your speed. And apparently they do: https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/question597.htm So why is calculating your ground speed important? Not asking for a friend. I am not a pilot and just have no reason to have learned this before.
Simona Kováčová 7 years ago
Actually, the gadget you mentioned measures only air speed, which is the speed of the air flowing around the aircraft and isn't necessarily equal to your ground speed. Hope this helps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_speed
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Richard Johnstien 5 years ago
I'm a bio major with a minor in mathematics. I don't know how to do this if I was never given the formula.
#55
Not a professor, but I tutored athletes for $10/hour at a D1 school. Two stories, same guy: "What does 'colonialism' mean?" I tried to explain a concept spanning thousands of years of human history in a sentence. Double checked with his athletic counselor and yes, English is his first language. "What does 'delinquency' mean?" It's for his class called "Juvenile Delinquency" We're 2/3 of the way through the semester. He's been taking this class for months now. Attendance is mandatory for athletes so I KNOW he's been to this class. The sad part is that he was a product of terrible public schools his whole life and was told since puberty when he shot up to ~7ft that as an athlete, school was optional. And damned if he didn't graduate with the same degree as me. We walked next to each other at graduation.
Stannous Flouride 7 years ago
Or at least more effort into growing to 7 feet tall.
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James Methvin 1 year ago
I always listen to NFL players announce what school they graduated from at the start of the game. One was Something Something Elementary. Well paid pro football player who did not graduate middle school.
Suzanne Haigh 4 years ago
Only place in the world where athletes can gain a degree without knowing 1 iota, good old America!.
Stannous Flouride 7 years ago
But the odds are greatly against him ever making it professionally. For every LeBron James and Steph Curry there are tens of thousands who never make it any further than having a worthless certificate to hang on their wall.
Kiki 7 years ago
Which is why I wonder why they give athletes special treatment.
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#56
Not a professor but in my statistics class a girl asked if changing the minus to a plus would change the answer. Not a negative to a positive, like she wasn't questioning how negatives worked. She sincerely wanted to know if changing from subtraction to addition would change the answer. To the professors credit she answered with a kind yes and only a slight pause.
Pinky Ivy 7 years ago
To be fair minus's and plus's are funner to say then negative and positive
eric riggs 1 year ago
except that isn't what she was asking. She wasn't asking "if you use a negative number here, do you get a different answer" (which, still horrifying) She was asking "if you change the minus to a plus in this equation, does the answer change?"
Load More Replies... Jaded Queen 7 years ago
Omg! I would have starred at her and simply would have just walked out of the door and then punched a wall. Like damn! U sure she was not 4 or 5 years old.
#57
Not a professor but a fellow classmates of mine was in my chemistry course. They would go on rants about "Energies" I was very confused as I tried to deduce what energies they meant (Kinetic, Thermal, etc). Turns out they are believe in some magic spirits despite majoring in sciences.
Stannous Flouride 7 years ago
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." ~Arthur C. Clark
Jace 7 years ago
The phrase that bad techno-fantasy writers (and fans) use to excuse why so much techno-fantasy has physics-ignorant concepts all over them. Technology is never going to make magic real. Holography is never going to be like all the s**t on TV. Not ever.
Load More Replies... All With Heart 7 years ago
Wow. I'm...so sorry for this kid. They probably do well in creative writing, though!
Bradley Roon 7 years ago
US Air Force in WWII Italy was getting ready to bomb a town the Germans had retreated to. Morning bombing run on the way at 14,000 feet. Reports from multiple aircraft reported that Padre Pio was seen at 14,000 feet telling the pilots to not bomb the town since the German's had withdrawn and retreated during the night so bombing would just cause death and damage to the innocent. Same Padre Pio who was confined to a specific Catholic church complex, forbidden to write about what he knew, and was seen by Italian troops in North Africa giving Mass to three separate units in two countries - while he was confined in Italy.... In Air Force records - the flight.
Jay Cee 5 days ago
Ah USAAF never known to miss a target . . . well the ground anyway.
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Sharon Vaughn 7 years ago
"Man, you can really feel the energies in here." Zak Bagins, Ghost Adventures
#58
Not a professor, but during orientation someone mentioned the writing assignment that was due for students in a specific first year program. One guy asked, genuinely, "Hey, do we really have to write that paper or can we have someone write that for us?" The leader responded, "No...you have to write the paper." "Ugh, why would I do that? I have the money to just pay some guy. That's what I did in high school, pssh." He was 100% serious.
BusLady 7 years ago
LMAO. In the movie "Back to School" Rodney Dangerfield is rich and keeps hiring people to do his work for him. He has to write a paper on Kurt Vonnegut, so he hires Vonnegut himself to write the paper. But the teacher fails him because "whoever wrote that paper doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut."
Jace 7 years ago
Yes. That's exactly the same kind of person this is about.
Load More Replies... Carol Emory 7 years ago
What's scary about this is that some of these types of people are getting through and graduating. Then they'll be trying to build a bridge to support several tons of weight without knowing how to actually do it because they cheated their whole academic career.
Jace 7 years ago
No, these guys are the managers who try to cut the costs on the bridge project, while the actually knowledgeable people under them are telling them why that is a bad idea.
Load More Replies... #59
I was a TA for an ecology course. I was trying to explain complete metamorphosis by talking about butterflies. The student didn't know caterpillars turned into butterflies. I suppose you could go through life without knowing, but this was an upper division course at a prestigious university...
Fred and George Weasley 5 years ago
@paula marshall it was a joke lol. you know, cocooned? get it? no? k
Load More Replies... Brent Wambold 5 years ago
I respect people who thoroughly understand science - but when I was finishing my degree they found out that my minor, Economics, required a 5 credit ecology course in order for me to be licensed to teach Econ. - I never understood how identifying the phases of sewage disposal or be able to identify trees by their bark alone qualifies me to teach equilibrium, supply and demand, etc.
#60
She did not come to a single class the entire semester. She never once contacted me, never once responded to my emails, never turned in a paper or any assignment. I was having office hours between the final class and when their exams were due, and she comes to me and asks what she needs to do to get at least a B-.
Emma Vink 7 years ago
Our university mandates a minimum of 4 graded assessments for a final grade. An exam may never weigh more than 60% of the final grade. What you are describing is lazy course administration.
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Paula Marshall 7 years ago
"Your extra credit assignment is to build a time machine, go back, and STUDY!"
#61
A girl in my earth science class asked "do the oceans go to the center of the earth?" 17 years old.
BusLady 7 years ago
Where does she think the "center of the Earth" is? On a Flat Earth, it would be the North Pole.....
Hakitosama 1 year ago
Well... To be fair, even without reaching the center, Marianas' trench does go deep....
Ryan-Michele Eagleton 7 years ago
Ah, I already commented this on an earlier one, but it's so relevant here... a student in my college-level into to astronomy class asked how the water on the bottom of the earth doesn't fall off, presumably into space.
Sophia Cai 7 years ago
I think it actually isn't that dumb. She might have meant to ask if the oceans were deep enough to reach the Earth's core.
#62
Not a professor, and it didn't happen in college as well. But in my fourth year of highschool (VWO for all the Dutch people here) a girl asked the teacher what nazi's were. Note that we had already discussed the second World War in second year of highschool and this is the Netherlands where the second World War is often discussed in all kind of schools during our remembrance day.
Sigrid Vinter 7 years ago
I'm a dane learning dutch. It always leads to confusion in class when talking about "nation states" as it in dutch really sounds like nazi states". My teacher has to say it in danish too every time in order to avoid confusion!
Carol Williams 7 years ago
I had to explain to my 55 year old boss what Blitzkrieg meant...then what WWII was....so hard not to walk out into traffic some days....
#63
I am a non-traditional (read: really a lot older than my cohort) student and the bulk of my classes are online. Nearly every one has discussion board posts or peer review assignments that count towards a hefty percentage of grades. I am appalled at the writing skills of some of these people who are taking upper division classes. Not just typos and misspells...things like, "I ringed the doorbell." Repeatedly. From native English speakers.
Signe Manat Hansen 4 years ago
"I should have took the train" no honey, you should have "taken" the train
Jeff White 5 years ago
Most people would have said "I rung the doorbell". And they would all be wrong.
Fjord 7 years ago
English is simple. I am bilingual and English grammar is just common sense to me. But German grammar is hell.
Ruth Beaty 7 years ago
I really don't think they teach grammar and sentence construction in school anymore. I can still diagram a basic sentence and haven't been in school for over 50 years.
Adrian Hare 3 years ago
Absolutely, that's the result of having teachers who say that it doesn't matter about spelling, grammar as long as "we known what you mean"..
Carol Close Taylor 1 year ago
Don't watch Judge Judy! Or, should I say something like, "Ah doesn't sees Jurdge Judi".
#64
I'm not a professor, but the "dumbest"/weirdest thing I ever witnessed in college was a student who had to do a presentation on "Objectivity in Science Reporting", a project she had voluntarily chosen, might I add. She had been provided with reading material by the professor a few weeks in advance. On the day of the presentation, she walked in front of the class, unpacked her things, seemed to be preparing, then sat down in front of us and proceeded to do absolutely nothing. After a few moments of silence, the professor asked what the problem was, and she said, "The texts were in English. I only speak German.", followed by her continuing to just sit there and do nothing. I'm not sure why she bothered to position herself in front of us, knowing that she didn't have anything to present anyway, nor do I know why she didn't inform the professor of the language barrier, let alone why she had signed up for a course that worked exclusively with English material in the first place. I do know, however, that it took a few more minutes of her just sitting there quietly before the professor told her to go back to her seat.
Stannous Flouride 7 years ago
Most Germans speak English better than most Americans (admittedly not saying a whole hell of a lot). But it sounds like she decided to play the "I'm a poor foreigner. Pity me." card.
Jaded Queen 7 years ago
She is dumb. End of story. She could have informed of her problem or left. But she didn't do either
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Christina Sersif 7 years ago
It's amazing she understands instructions in English though. Magic, huh? Only speaks English when it benefits her.
Bradley Roon 7 years ago
Hoping she was at least cute or interesting to observe - i mean the actions alone are intriguing, but it really needs more than that...
Lyn Ashurst 5 years ago
I think she played the whole thing. She could have informed her professor of the language barrier or she could have translated the information into German. Whole thing sounds like a cop out.
Grumble O'Pug 7 years ago
I guess she wanted to share her stubborn stupidity with the class. Gall.
#65
I'm not a professor, but my roommate freshman year of college was pretty dumb. We were at a private liberal arts university, and part of our frosh seminar class was attending one of the "deans' lectures" and writing a paper about it. It was a gimme A. She decided not to attend any of the deans' lectures. They posted the videos of the lectures online, and people who didn't physically attend could watch one and write the paper for 90% credit or so. She elected not to watch anything, just pick a title of one and write about it. The title of the lecture she picked was "The Value of a Liberal Arts Education." She wrote about the value of a liberal education, as in liberal vs conservative and was so pissed when she got an F on the paper and completely couldn't understand why. I don't think she ever did.
Hugo Raible 7 years ago
Slowly I understand the state of US American colleges and universities...
Paula Marshall 7 years ago
*facepalm* She probably didn't bother to study because she thought 'liberal' is a dirty word.
Naomi Armitage 7 years ago
I need to go back and figure out just how many of these stories under the headline "Professors share..." start with "Not a professor..." I'm guessing a good 1/3 of them, maybe more?
Emma Vink 7 years ago
Because a professor is a title that only someone with a doctorate can attain. The bulk of lecturers at a university are Doctors (PhD) or graduate TAs in the process of getting their doctorates.
Load More Replies... Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
Because watching a video and writing a short paper on what the video was about is really that difficult...Christ on a bike...
Knitting Panda 1 year ago
And this is one of the reasons that funding for my former university was gutted by the Republican Wisconsin legislature. It is a liberal arts college. This, to them meant bleeding hearts, socialist, communist liberals. Stripped the heart out of one of the best Natural Resources schools in the country.
Tommy DePaul 1 year ago
At Stanford a lot of my fellow poli sci majors thought "liberal democracy" referred to voting for Democrats.!
#66
A few semesters ago, I had two students in a statistics course not know how to do division using a calculator -- they didn't know what order to press the buttons in.
Lillie Miller 5 years ago
No, people - brains= zombies, then zombies - bloodthirstiness = them
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Guido Essers 7 years ago
Reverse Polish notation - Wikipedia (Hewlett Packard vs Texas Instruments Calculators)
Geoff Kempster 5 years ago
Perhaps it was a reverse polish notation calculator!! That always fools them.
Sophia Cai 7 years ago
To be fair: in China we read fractions the other way. I never read them right.
Jean Gibbens 5 years ago
I taught introductory physics many years ago when calculators were just entering the market for use by students. During a particularly mathematical section, a sophomore student repeatedly got wrong answers. The math itself wasn't difficult so I watched as he used his calculator to determine the answer . . . he would enter the various numbers associated with the problem - including the question number or page number where applicable - periodically hitting a function key, and then at some point, "voila" the (wrong) answer would appear, like magic. I hoped he was the only one, but it seems that the technique persists.
Andrés Cárdenas Flórez 5 years ago
i had a statistics TEACHER that used the calculator to multiply one times zero.
#67
Talking about Somali Pirates. Student couldn't believe they wielded ak47s and used pontoon boats, thought they were the flagship-and-cannonball types straight from Pirates of the Caribbean
Lenka Smetanová 7 years ago
because when they dont looks like a real pirates, they cant be pirates :D :D :D
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#68
Not a professor. But back when i took drivers ed, the teacher asked if anyone knew what the raised bumps between lanes were in the roads. A guy raised his hand, was called on, and said in all seriousness, “for blind people so they stay in their lane.” Everyone turned and stared at him in silence. The teacher had this look on his face like, dafuck? Then everyone started laughing and his buddy next to him whacked him in the arm like, you’re joking...but he just turned to his friend with his hands like 🤷🏻♀️ so the teacher set him straight. He never raised his hand in class again.
Barbara Baxendale 7 years ago
So you're telling me you can't drive if you're blind even with a dog in the passenger seat ??
BusLady 7 years ago
No, that's wrong, the dog needs to be in the driver's seat.
Load More Replies... Marilyn Ransberry 4 years ago
We don’t have those raised bumps here- so THAT’S why blind people can’t drive in Canada!!
Kay McLeish 5 years ago
Well, according to the comedian David Sedaris ( who happens to live ten miles away from me in Sussex ) blind people in America are legally entitled to go shooting.
#69
Not a prof but in my first year in a class with 300+ students we had an assignment called PeerScholar. We had to write about a short maybe 1000 word argument for/against legalizing weed, then you would look at 5 other peoples work and give them feedback, and 5 people would look at your work and give them feedback (you were also graded based on how good your feedback was). One person's argument was hilarious, I have a screenshot somewhere in the depths of my Gyazo account but one paragraph his argument was talking about how the economy would collapse from weed becoming legal cause everyone would be so high all the time they couldn't work. I'm pretty sure he just wrote some last minute shit essay to get some marks since the final draft has the most marks but it was so hilariously bad.
David Herron 7 years ago
I remember that when I was a graduate student, for one course we were divided into small working groups, The professor wanted us to grade each other, which we did. It turns out that we gave each other the same grade, for which the prof docked us a grade because he claimed that we had colluded. (and one member of my group was a nun. So, he essentially accused a nun of cheating)
Kevin Braid 7 years ago
you clearly know nothing on the subject then EM. look at all the place that either went legal or decrim etc, nothing but positives. go educate yourself
Load More Replies... #70
Not a professor but a TA. I don't think I ever had genuinely dumb students, it's just that some people adjust more easily when moving from high school to university than others. In particular, if you were "naturally" smart, you could just coast through high school. Material was presented slowly and frequently enough that missing a class here or there didn't really matter. Not so in university. For a Physics 101 lab course for pre-med students, this one student regularly came 45 minutes late to a 2-hour lab. So he'd miss the discussion at the beginning of the lab session where I'd discuss the task at hand and common pitfalls to avoid. Then he'd wonder why he wasn't able to finish on time and why he struggled figuring out why his lab experiment didn't turn out the way he expected.
Ryan-Michele Eagleton 7 years ago
"In particular, if you were "naturally" smart, you could just coast through high school." Oh man, this. So accurate. I coasted through high school, straight A's without even trying, everyone patting me on the back over how smart I was - and then I went to college. Boy, was that an eye-opener.
Magdalina777 7 years ago
That sounds so crazy to me, with students being 45 minutes-hour late. Here they probably wouldn't even be let into the class at that point...the "acceptable" being late ends 15 mins after class starts(though some special teachers won't let you in even if you're as much as 30 seconds late).
Jace 7 years ago
"Smarts" is not what allows someone to coast through high school. Public school (and much of college) is just binging on data and regurgitating it on tests, then purging it from memory. That's not smarts. It's also something that everyone can easily do. Memorization is not learning.
#71
A few years ago, I had a student turn in a term paper titled "Mental Disroders." They then went on to misspell 'disorder' two different ways in the first sentence.
Laugh Fan 7 years ago
Just a thought but the student might be dyslexic. Not everyone gets diagnosed and the type of dyslexia can vary. Spell check is not always much help if they can't see what is wrong with the word.
Sophia Cai 7 years ago
...on a paper on disorders...ironic... Note: is dyslexia a disorder?
Load More Replies... Stannous Flouride 7 years ago
You have to admit that "Mental Disroders" would make a great name for a punk band.
PeachPossum 7 years ago
Please give the author the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the person is dyslexic.
Tommy DePaul 1 year ago
I wrote a paper on the Yanamamo for an anthropology class at Stanford. This was in the 80s so the paper was typewritten. I caught it after I finished typing the paper. So I added a page entitled "Erata," at the beginning explaining the error. I got an "A".
#72
A student once threatened to sue me over the definition of the terms necessary and sufficient that he had mixed up in an exam. No biggie to mix them up (actually, for a math major it might be), but loudly threatening to sue me over an age old textbook definition in an exam review session was kind of stupid. It did entertain all other students who where present. Another student once requested letters of recommendation for 5 of the top 10 masters programs in Europe while being the second worst in his class of several hundred graduates.
Alia Ris 7 years ago
I sympathized with the second student. I'll probably try the same thing too. Who knows what luck brings?
Karasi Mills 7 years ago
If you really do this, be sure to ask "would you write me a good letter of recommendation?". They may be willing to write an honest letter focused on your weaknesses. Give them a chance to say no, that way your recommendation letters should only be about your strengths.
Load More Replies... #73
I'm not a teacher but my dad is a college professor and he often has pretty funny tales. However this last semester of Psychology in sports students have been a whole new level of dumb. He showed them how to use APA, then he did it for them for the different chapters of the book, all they had to do was literally copy and paste the reference he made for the chapter they used. Dummy proof you would think right? Wrong. One student copied the wrong chapters One student copied all of the references. One student made changes to the references!!! That one I saw big red question marks beside and he noted 'I did it for you? why would you change it to be wrong???'
Adrian Hare 3 years ago
But I've seen teachers 'correct' the student's work so that it's wrong
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
More like not enough, considering he helped them to the point of making it nearly impossible for them to fail, and yet several of them still did.
Load More Replies... #74
As a student in a class, this girl, who somehow managed to be tertiary, would ask an average of 20 questions per 40 minutes session. Since we knew the statistics final would be a project, my friend and I recorded the number of questions she asked compared to the rest of the class. It came out that on average she asked at least 3x as many questions as the class on average. The girl was supremely stupid, and didn’t understand why the probability of rolling a 6 on a die was 1/6.
Nomadus Aureus 7 years ago
Google is a great thing to have: "Tertiary education, also referred to as third stage, third level, and postsecondary education, is the educational level following the completion of a school providing a secondary education."
Load More Replies... Wibbi 7 years ago
When I was a student there was a girl in one of my classes who asked really stupid questions or would try to spread conspiracy theories sometimes. You could really see that she had no background knowledge of the real world at all. It got to the point that the professor would not look in her direction when his talking pauses would allow him to acknowledge her raised hand but just look in another direction until he started to talk again so she wouldn't have a chance to continue to spread her b******t :D
Darylle Estrada 7 years ago
But like, aren't you SUPPOSED to ask questions when you don't understand the lesson tho?
Maria Hammarström 7 years ago
Actually, the odds of rolling a 6 is 50% - you either do, or you don´t. ;)
#75
I didn't have any particularly dumb student (also not a Professor, but a graduate teaching assistant), but I did mark one essay that began so eloquently with "Do we born with intelligent?" edit: As an addendum, because I still find this story hilarious, the second sentence was "How our cognitive is developed?". One of my fellow PhD student marked an essay once which came in at 2 pages (it was a 6 page limit), and half of the essay, so one page, discussed Mowgli from the Disney animated version of the Jungle Book (the topic was Developmental Psychology).
alexa_bessee 7 years ago
Sounds like the people who ask the “pregananant” and “Luigi/oiji/quiche board” questions. Just look up “pregananant” on YouTube if you haven’t seen that video. The channel is ‘J.T. Sexkik’.
Magdalina777 7 years ago
Sounds like someone for whom English isn't their native language. Now how they ended up in an English-speaking college without really knowing English is a different story. Mistakes like these are totally understandable(here people often find passive voice hard as well because our language works in a completely different way and it can be hard to wrap your brain around something so fundamentally different)...but probably not in college. Now if they're a native speaker, well...
#76
I heard this story from my professor dad: once, during the week of a final paper, he found an office voicemail from a student claiming it was midnight and he has to drive two hours to a major city in the because his friend needed emergency appendectomy surgery. The student forgot that, in those days, voice mails spoke the recording time, which was 7:30 AM.
Bradley Roon 7 years ago
True story - two U of Maryland students decided to party at U somewhere in Virginia and tell their professor that they'd missed the exam because in the middle of nowhere, they blew a tire. Couldn't get it fixed in time... Professor said okay - gave them a second exam just for them - put them in 2 separate rooms. First page was one essay question. Second page had one question. "Which tire went flat?"
#77
Not a professor but we once jokingly asked my classmate when the third world war happened, she told us she didn't knew the exact date.
Suzi Gauthier 7 years ago
I had a teacher ask a boy who was distracted how long the 100 years war. I understand he might have thought it was a trick question, but I would have at least tried 100 years.
Kitty Katty 7 years ago
I had a friend who wondered what time of year the Holocaust had been. "Wasn't it around June?"
Sharon Vaughn 7 years ago
When you think about it, the War in the Middle East could be considered WWIII since so many countries are involved fighting terrorism.
#78
Took my Intro English requirement as the online class, part of which included a discussion forum. Each student was required to write a post giving their response/understanding of the topic at hand (eg. the Blind Men and the Elephant) three times over the semester. When you went to the site, the most recent entry was highlighted, so imagine my surprise to see my words highlighted for a post I'd put in weeks before - with someone else's name and an added sentence at the end. I checked into it, and for each assignment she'd gone onto the forum and straight up copied another student's answer, added a sentence somewhere, and submitted it as her own. I reported her to the professor and girl had the nerve to email me (as one of the students she'd plagiarized, she didn't know I'd turned her in) to ask for help defended her because it was *completely* an accident that she'd submitted these answers, she was "just reading other students posts when it happened", and she really needed this credit. Told her if there was such a thing as accidental copy-paste-post, it wouldn't have been edited (3 times), and if it was so accidental that she'd never noticed, then why didn't she ever post her actual assignment answers? Never heard back.
Final score:
19points
#79
I taught calculus in college. There's always several students who are terrible/lazy at the subject, but this term there was one who was really energetic about appearing to put in the effort, in multiple different ways but I'll focus on one. I told the class I'd give them extra credit for doing any of the "advanced" problems at the end of the chapters. This guy turns in elegant, concise, handwritten solutions for all of them. That'd be hard even for me. He even knew how to do epsilon-delta proofs! That's not something I taught. One of the problems involved a variable D and an epsilon-delta argument. His proof contained the phrase "Let ε > D", which is utter nonsense not only in context but in terms of an epsilon-delta proof in general. It's supposed to be "Let ε > 0", without exception. He was copying from an instructor's solution manual without knowing the meaning of the symbols. I suppose this isn't dumb so much as shameless.
Christina Sersif 7 years ago
Well I feel dumb reading this...in my defense I never had to take calculus
Daniela Rodrigues 7 years ago
Types.. . There are lots of them in exercise books... and they cost my nerves
Load More Replies... #80
I'm a film student and we were asked to make up our own ten rules to follow when making a film, much like the Dogma 95 Manifesto, an specifically had us refer to us as a Manifesto. This one student submitted the Communist Manifesto instead. According to my lecturer, that student didn't do very well and is now a forklift operator.
Bradley Roon 7 years ago
The smartest people i've bumped into haven't gone to college/university. Many go to college thinking they get smarter - you don't. You HAVE intelligence and might learn points which help you organize, research, broaden your knowledge for a better understanding/base of something, but some and perhaps many, simply start thinking what their most acceptable "authority figure" teachers and fellow students do - and thus vastly stymie their intellectual capability. In most cases i think an intelligent person can go very far with personal research - obviously excluding many subjects like medicine, physics and places where experimentation with generally unavailable equipment is needed for understanding the subject.
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Kathryn Parris 5 years ago
Actually it's not that easy to be a forklift operator. It's a good job.
#81
... that The Hobbit was plagiarism of The Lord of the Rings...
#82
The student that decided to plagiarize his entire 5 page paper. First, the whole class had been working on this paper for the entire semester (the only paper due), we had library days on how cite things and find the information you needed, and they were going to be turning it in through an online paper checker that would give them feedback on plagiarism. They could revise and resubmit the paper as many times as they wanted and this dipshit turned it in with every single thing but his name highlighted in neon colors. He then had the balls to say he didn't do anything wrong and trashed my desk because he failed.
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
I really have to question how some of these people managed to get into college in the first place...
Jennifer Erdossy 7 years ago
They paid someone to write their application essay.
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Carryn Smith 7 years ago
I had a student plagiarize my Master's thesis. The online plagairism checker didn't pick it up, but I recognised my own work. When she was brought in for her disciplinary session, she got mad and said, "Well, Turnitin didn't catch me, so why am I in trouble?" She wound up having to repeat the course the next year...
#83
Not my story, but in a test where you could bring solved questions with you, a student brought a question identical to the one the test paper has, instead of just copying the answer and getting an A, he glued the solution which he brought with him with a glue stick, all he had to do is not being lazy.
Rebeca Lozada 7 years ago
Well.... I remember when a guy in my class legit sat throughout the whole period staring at the glue and paper in his hand ... 10 minutes before the class ended he said " HOW DO YOU USE THESE .... GLUE STICKS ?" . He didn't take of the cap.... The struggle is real with this one.
Csilla Kaszas 4 years ago
Once a professor showed me that a student handed in in his exam a photocopied page of my hand-written notes as an answer. I took his class 3 years before that. The first half of the page did not relate to the question.
#84
I had a student when I was a TA who took the first quiz in my class, but I realized he wasn’t on my roster. I told him this, but he insisted he was in my section. Soon, he stopped coming to section altogether, but did insist on handing his exams and papers back to me in lecture. I eventually discovered he was supposed to be in my colleague’s class, but never attended that either. After the final exam (which he handed in to me!), he admitted to me that he had just realized he was in the other class, and had been confused because his roommate was in my class, but “I guess it doesn’t really matter since I didn’t really show up anyway!”
Lisa Catacosinos 7 years ago
That seriously sounds like someone's stress nightmare. I mean a real nightmare a person would have while actually sleeping. I would be genuinely frightened around someone like that.
Robert Morson 7 years ago
And genuinely didn't realize why that was a problem.
Load More Replies... #85
This was more of a slip-up than this person actually being dumb, but I was in an Ancient Greece history class and the professor was showing us images of pottery in which most of the humans depicted were black (I assume it had to do with the clay they used or something). My classmate raised his hand and asked, "Are the people on the pottery black because of the clay? Or were all Greeks African-American?"
Jules Marten-Feldmann 7 years ago
Actually it depends on the pottery type. Normally it is the paint, or slip that they use. But I remember also learning that the black characters represented males, as they were expected to be outside and tanned. That is what they taught us in my ancient Greek art class anyway... way back when...
Load More Replies... Darren Lewis 4 years ago
well since we insist on calling everyone who is black an African-American here in the US the student probably didn't have any other reference of what to call them
Momom0 7 years ago
He means to say were all Greeks black, which doesn't sound THAT dumb anymore. However, the American way of life, with millions of eyes and ears directed towards him, waiting to call him a racist, scared him into not using the word "black" to describe human beings... pathetic! And I don't mean the student, he's a victim.
Stannous Flouride 7 years ago
Well, the Ptolemy's of Egypt were Greek and they were "African" too.
Aileen Grist 7 years ago
Or perhaps they were just really dark skinned through living in a hot climate.
Jennifer Erdossy 7 years ago
Yes, some were, but they couldn't be African-American. They could be Black.
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Paulette Kooijman 7 years ago
It has to do with the backing process and the amount of oxygen they let in at some point. The figures were painted in clay slip which doesn't let oxygen through and turned black. The rest of the surface would turn red due to oxidation of the clay. About a 100 yrs later they changed the process and would cover the whole vase in slip but leave the figures unpainted, so they would be a more natural red colour. I majored in greek archeology btw.
Amaranthim Talon 7 years ago
I want two spotlight the glaringly obvious - GREEKS - are NOT - /facepalm...
#86
I had a student who wrote an evaluation of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." All the way through--five pages--she referred to it as "The Unbearable Lighthouse of Being."
Final score:
14points
Stannous Flouride 7 years ago
Good thing she wasn't thinking about the Microsoft search engine.
Sharon Vaughn 7 years ago
When I read Ghost Writer I thought it was great, but was surprised when they made a movie of it with Pierce Brosnan as the lead. I couldn't figure out why they'd have a Brit play the POTUS. It took me a second look to realize the book was about the PM of England. I read it during an election year, so had POTUS on my mind.
#87
In Math class I said there was 36 letters to the alphabet without really thinking. My teacher didn’t seem mad, just disappointed.
PeachPossum 7 years ago
English once had 36 letters but we dropped 10 of them by the end of the 19th century. Interesting video about it at the scholarly kitchen.
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#88
Not a professor but I am in graduate school. We are in a hybrid program which means we do part online and we go to class five Saturdays a semester. One guy came to the first class then never came back until the last class. We were having a final that day, which he didn’t know because our midterm was take home. He slept thru the final. Even snored a few times and almost fell out of his chair. I don’t know why he even stayed.
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
No, but not bothering to show up the few days he needed to actually be in the class and then expecting there to be a point in showing up on the last day is.
Load More Replies... #89
I'm not a professor but I was a TA for a first year Computer Science class. When I was grading some assignments, I saw that the student submitted the file with only the name changed and didn't bother to look over the assignment at all. The assignment was the same as the previous years, but the test variables were changed to different values and this student didn't even bother to do that and just assumed the assignment was the exact same.
Carryn Smith 7 years ago
We had a girl this semester who handed in an assignment she had gotten from a student who did the course last year. All she did was change the name. Problem is, we change the assignment completely each year to avoid this very problem happening. When she was called in for disciplinary she didn't even fight, she just walked in and said, "I know. I f****d up. Where do I sign to admit guilt." The sad part, though, is the girl she copied from also got hit with a disciplinary, and it turned out her roommate had sold her books and assignments without her knowledge
Brent Wambold 5 years ago
I used to change assignments and variable values - then the student body literally got so apathetic, they stopped trying to cheat - they just don't do the work
Mike Goins 5 years ago
I am a retired professor of English and once, during the final for an American Literature class, I had a student sneak her phone onto her desk even though it was strictly prohibited (nothing on the desk but the final). She would punch in numbers and then answer the multiple choice question and did it over and over. even though I walked the room during the exam. It turns out her boyfriend was in an earlier in the day final with me and he was answering with letters the numbers she sent him as he had stolen a copy of the final. She missed every one and got an F for cheating as his final was different from hers, he sent her wrong answers every time, and she was so poorly prepared she didn't know the difference. I also gave him an F and both were suspended.
#90
The one who would regularly hand in essays which were obviously copy pasted. They didn't bother to change the font or colour of paragraphs that were lifted from other websites. They never argued or shared their opinion but would ask vague questions such as, "but what is the United States?" at the end of a lecture or tutorial that was about a legal decision.
Robert Morson 7 years ago
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a federal republic composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions.
#91
Finally a good one to speak to. There was this girl on the basketball team in college...just to set the stage. The assignment was for creative writing 101 basically. Bring in an apple, write about it, place apple on the table with everyone elses apples, swap papers, find the apple that goes with the vivid discription on the paper. Dumb b*tch brought in a pear from the tree near the mailroom. Tried hard to convince me it was a crab apple and that they werent edible. IIRC, she even used pear shaped to discribe it. Her writing level was literally 2nd grade at most. Wasnt even ripe.
blugeagua 7 years ago
Was there really a point to write “dumb B***H”? Why call her the such a misogynistic term as b***h which is just f*****g rude and doesn’t prove that you’re a better person.
Person2638 7 years ago
Yes, I agree. Dumb b*tch is a wrong choice of words. He could have said dumb person or just avoided calling her a mean name.
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JE Cummings 5 years ago
It cracks me up the number of commenters who are more upset about the word "b***h" than the fact that the dumb b***h was massively stupid and entitled.
Paula Marshall 7 years ago
Did you know that putting an asterisk in doesn't change the fact that you are still calling names? Aaand *else's, *weren't, *describe, *wasn't.
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
Did you know that being preachy doesn't make you a better person than the OP?
Load More Replies... CrunChewy McSandybutt 7 years ago
Considering the level of writing skill of this post, I think perhaps this may be a pot/kettle situation.
Lisa Catacosinos 7 years ago
What does it being ripe have to do with ANYTHING? Was it a pre-requisite for the assignment so people could taste them or something? If so, that would be gross. People eating off the same apples. Did they have to bring knives? If you were allergic to apples, did you get marked down for not being fully able to do the assignment? Was the pear an Asian one? You know, they DO look like apples...
Merlyn Emrys 7 years ago
Your writing level isn't exactly such that you can afford to sneer, friend...
#92
Not a professor, but a student. First day of classes for college in my Human Development class. So, as usual, the teacher used the first day to go over the syllabus. He had it projected onto the screen and gave us all a copy of it to follow along (which is more than what professors usually did). Anyways. he was going over it in quite of bit of detail to make sure we all understood what was expected of this class. Every person in that classroom understood what he was saying and how the syllabus worked... except for this one lady. She was middle aged, maybe a little older and, for whatever reason, she had a question about everything about the syllabus, asking a question after every point the teacher made. She would even ask a question after the teacher just went over what she was asking. He would comply to answer her questions, but even he was getting annoyed or would say that if she had a question to ask at the end of class. Everyone in the classroom was so annoyed by her that one of the students spoke up and said that she was wasting everyone else's time in class for asking questions that the professor literally had answered before she asked or its in the syllabus and she needs to read it before asking. The lady looked so surprised and offended and then looked at the teacher, as if expecting him to say something. He just shrugged and said "He's right" and went back to the syllabus. She shut up after that and we never saw her after that first day. Now, I don't like to make assumptions that people are dumb cause they just might be confused about something or have something going on. At the same time though, how stupid can you be to just keep asking questions that are clearly being explained to you, and then get offended when someone calls you out on it?
Nikki D 7 years ago
That's actually really sad. She probably wasn't used to a classroom environment OR being disrespected by her juniors. She was probably acting offended to cover up her humiliation.
BusLady 7 years ago
If I went back to college at my age (60) I would feel very awkward.
Load More Replies... Smoofy 7 years ago
Ok I have a small rant i have to do real quick. I have ADD, which means Attention Deficit Disorder. That means I get distracted so often that sometimes I miss what someone is saying and have to ask them to repeat it because my brain automatically goes into daydream mode every thirty seconds. My brain goes a bit slower than everyone elses, so it takes me a minute to process and think about what someone is telling me. And if people go just a tad too fast, there's no way I can catch up. I HATE it when people say others are stupid for asking questions every few minutes, because you have NO IDEA what's going on in their head. It sounds like she was trying to pay attention and was genuinely trying to clarify things she didn't understand. Don't shame people for asking questions, because wouldn't you rather they understand it rather than go around aimlessly confused?
Tommy DePaul 1 year ago
But she didn't even take the redirection to wait and ask questions at the end of the class. Her behavior was negatively impacting the rest of the class. I would be furious!
Load More Replies... Cheryle Fuller 7 years ago
I was a slightly oder college student, and told an much older woman she could carpool with me on certain days. I am a quick learner, and when we were learning the machines for a secretarial class, the teacher showed me how to do it, then ask me if I would teach our group of about 10. So I would show her and walk her through it, then show another student and then back to her. She got at least 20 tries on this machine and was still confused about the basic functions of a calculating adding machine! (pre computer days). I got really annoyed with her, and asked her why it was so important for her to be dumb. I really thought she was using me to play dumb. boy, I got hell from the teacher who overheard this outburst. She really was using her pre conditioning about what women could and could not learn to justify not choosing to learn this very basic machine. (Truly, it was simply a 3 keyboard calculator. Each calculator was for a different function. 1/debits, 1/sales, 1 for totals
PeachPossum 7 years ago
Was she really asking questions or was she asking him to repeat what he'd just said? If the latter, she was more than likely hard of hearing. A darkened room (as for a projection) makes lip reading difficult if not impossible. If she was hard of hearing, then shame on your professor and all of you for showing little to no compassion. Her only mistake would have been not to inform the professor of her disability.
Mandy Delaforce (PC Girl) 7 years ago
The government is full of public servants like that. They've been there for a very long time and everything is handed to them. When it's time to think for themselves, they can't and expect the answers spelled out for them.
Brittany Shaffer 4 years ago
It was only the first day?? Then maybe the teacher could have kindly talked to her at the end of class instead of her getting called out in front of a bunch of people she didn’t know...
Rochelle Flores 5 years ago
As a non-traditional student, she may have never taken a course that presented a syllabus. So she was likely trying to make sure she completely understood what was going on. The guy who called her out and the professor were d***s - plain and simple.
Joanne Hudson 7 years ago
For someone who doesn't like to make assumptions, you sure made a bunch of them. Assuming how the rest of the class felt, assuming her age and that it caused her problems. Obviously you have not yet learned that "when you 'assume', you make an a*s out of you and me". Some people learn in a different way. I can learn almost anything by reading a book, but if you stand in front of me and lecture, it goes right in one ear and out the other. Are you aware there are many successful people who can barely read and write? Well, you got your 15 minutes of righteous indignation, go sit down.
#93
When I was seventeen, we had a whole year of lectures about politics. What's socialism, communism, liberalism, that kind of stuff. In the final lecture before the exam, the teacher asked if we had any more questions and he wished us the best of luck. On that moment, a true gem in my class (and also seventeen...) asked; "Mister, what does democraaaty mean"? (she even pronounced the word badly) I was stunned. All of her family members are doctors. Thank god the girl was pretty at least.
Final score:
10points
PeachPossum 7 years ago
Hm... maybe she's the one the other teacher complained about, the girl that twirls her hair, swings her legs, bats her eyelashes, gets by on her looks alone...
Eduardo Pereira 7 years ago
Bad pronunciation apart, "what does democracy mean?" is indeed a fair question. I bet if you ask it to 100 people you would get a whole lot of different answers. Specially if you don't stick for general deffinitions ot it and go on to try and understand what those really mean and how democracy is supposed to work.
#94
(Not a teacher, but 1 of my friends) On a geography test with one of those blinded maps: Test: 'What is the capitol of Australia?' Him: 'Paris' He got a 0, even though the minimum was a 1.
Sigrid Vinter 7 years ago
I didn't know that there was an australian version of Capitol (hill). And I'm a geographer!
Stannous Flouride 7 years ago
One could also say the A$ is the capital of Australia.
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#95
I was giving a final and I noticed a student hiding paper under his exam. (I could see the corners sticking out from where his exam was folded from the staple). I asked him what it was just to make sure it wasn't a cheat sheet. He said it was scratch paper and I said "ok make sure it gets turned in with your exam". And he looked a little deflated. So when he turned in the exam I noticed his scratch paper had only the problems (including problem numbers and instructions) written down. He was going to transcribe the test, take it to the bathroom for his girl friend to take, and then copy it back to the exam.
#96
*I'm not a professor* During a biology unit, this girl in my science class asked me WHETHER WATER WAS A LIVING THING OR NOT. Her expression was completely genuine, and she really didn't know whether water was alive (we were 12 years old at the time- man, the good old days-, perfectly capable of knowing these things). She had no mental disorders of any kind.
Final score:
8points
Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
If you happen to be playing Slime Rancher and raising Puddle Slimes, then yes. Otherwise, I have to question how she would even begin to wonder about that sort of thing.
Lukyan Terdal 5 years ago
Perhaps she simply watched "Moana" too many times
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Alicia Hawkins 7 years ago
That's not an excuse, tbh. I knew a girl who knew more advanced things than that when she was NINE. Twelve is almost a teenager. That's not naivety. That's ignorance.
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Nardo218 x 7 years ago
why does every single person feel teh needto say they're not a professor. This is saying in your cover letter "I'm not really good at the requirements but ...." Stop being so honest about negative things and just say what you're going to say. No one cares.
Bradley Roon 7 years ago
Masaru Emoto - The Hidden Messages In Water. Water which is frozen makes beautiful crystals if "positive" and loving thoughts are sent to it. If negative thoughts, anger, hate, etc are sent to water - that water will have consistently ugly, cancerous looking crystals. Replicated. Very likely that water is part of the carrier of consciousness...
Chicken Yao (Submission author) 7 years ago
She was asking if water, the pure substance, was a living thing
Neb 7 years ago
Depends on how many bacteria live in that water. If more than 50% of water (not sure if to measure volume or mass), then the water is alive. If less than 50% - then not quite.
Chicken Yao (Submission author) 6 years ago
Well that doesn't make the water itself alive it just means the water contains more living organisms
Load More Replies... #97
When I was a TA for an intro to logic course, one of my students could not grasp simple inferences like modus ponens or modus tollens in propositional logic. Modus Ponens: If it's raining, then the ground is wet. It's raining. Therefore, the ground is wet. Modus Tollens: If it's raining, then the ground is wet. The ground is not wet. Therefore, it is not raining. Simple, basic inferences. Yet, after 3 hours of working on it with them one on one, would still tell me it's valid to conclude that since the ground is wet, it must be raining, or since it's not raining, the ground can't be wet. This was just before the final exam which was over predicate logic which entailed proofs involving relations and identity. To correlate to ordinary math: they were struggling with basic addition and subtraction when the exam was over algebra and trig.
Lisa Catacosinos 7 years ago
No, seriously. That sprinkler reference doesn't make sense. It's either raining or it's not. XD
Load More Replies... Knitting Panda 1 year ago
What do you call the thing that goes: "Communists wear red. Joe wears red. Therefore, Joe is a communist."?
Oishii Gyuunyuu 5 years ago
To be fair, I feel like half the population of earth don't get this logic. So not getting it isn't dumb in that regard, it's just common mistake.
Paula Marshall 7 years ago
I have a cat. Lions are cats. Therefore my cat is a lion! See, it works!
#98
I'm a TA for Intro to Psychology- I teach my own section(s) each semester. The class has 5 mandatory tests and an optional final that can replace the lowest test grade for the semester. However, students only could take the final if they had 2 or less absences throughout the semester. I had a student who forgot to take the last test (they have to take the test at our computer lab outside of class time). Week 15 of the semester, with 4 tests already under her belt. Just forgot. Didn't even try to give me an excuse. She had too many absences to take the final so she just had a big old 0 for one of her tests. Somehow managed to scrape by with a D, though.
PeachPossum 7 years ago
Sigh... I fail to understand why people use the word 'less' where 'fewer' is required. Is it advertising that is messing people up? The signs at the express lines at the grocery stores? The rule is simple. If the thing can be counted as individual units, the word is 'fewer,' but if it cannot, the word is 'less.' For example, one can count bottles of milk, so the phrase is "fewer bottles of milk" but one cannot count milk, no matter how much or little is there, so it is "less milk, please." Do not be tripped up by tricky wording either, as when 'milk' is no longer a noun but an adjective, as in "fewer milk bottles."
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What do you think ?
Agnes Jekyll 7 years ago
A colleague's student told him Shakespeare's Hamlet was written by Penguin Classics.
logical fallacy 7 years ago
Then Penguin Classics must be the greatest literature figure of all time.
Load More Replies... Agnes Jekyll 7 years ago
A student told me he couldn't write the test on the date specific in the academic calendar (too busy) but was perfectly willing to write it on a Sunday. The same student asked me to tell him what questions I would be asking on the final, as he didn't want to waste time studying what wasn't on the test. A student admitted her tutor had written her essay for her (it was far too sophisticated), and was dumbfounded that was cheating, and defended herself by saying she could have asked her mother to write it. She was equally dumbfounded when I told her that was also cheating.
Johanna Kidd 7 years ago
Ah yes, this is the future citizens of the world&no wonder some feel like the world is going to hell in a handbasket!
Load More Replies... Nostalgic Hyena 7 years ago
I can almost see kindergarteners doing these, but when I hear that college students do this it's a little troublesome.
Esca Sav 7 years ago
This wasn't in college, but to get into my High School Engineering Program, we had to be interviewed. It was a group interview and they asked us if we agreed on sending the Hubble Telescope to space. There were four sides: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree. I was one of the few people that didn't know what the Hubble Telescope was at the time, but I wanted to be different and chose "Strongly Disagree," but didn't have a reason to why. In pure panic I responded with "Aliens will use our technology against us."..... I got in the school and the program 😂😂😂😂😂.
Pretty Flower 7 years ago
A girl in my class thought your blood is blue. Quite a few others did too. I maintained it was red, but apparently I'm stupid. Science teacher looked like he wanted to quit his job.
Laugh Fan 7 years ago
Didn't they ever fall over and, I don't know, graze a knee or something? See their blood that way?
Load More Replies...
The Cappy 7 years ago
I was in a graduate genetics class years ago. The entire class, we spent discussing one gene after another, and these are named things like XPC, XPA, LIG3. Near the end of the semester, she raised her hand and asked what those 3-letter names meant. There was a moment of silence, during which the good natured professor was struck mute. This was foundational knowledge. If she hadn't understood that, she couldn't have understood anything up until that moment. And she had just sat there the whole time, understanding nothing. And here it was the last week of classes. It was mind boggling. (The professor did manage a statement about how these were designations for the genes.)
The Cappy 7 years ago
Sorry. Wasn't being clear. "she" was one of the students. I was probably 21. This student was older than me.
Load More Replies... logical fallacy 7 years ago
And my mother, first grade teacher, was dumbfounded the other day because a student didn't know what a bone is. I'm gonna show her this. XD
Catherine Holtham-Oakley 7 years ago
Could someone please remove the superfluous 'the' from the title please?
GiantSpaceTiger 7 years ago
Had to scroll a long way down to find someone else who noticed the irony!
Load More Replies...
Jurgen Shantz 7 years ago
I was working in my shop class when I heard a girl I knew ask someone : "wait, are vultures birds or animals?" I think she might have meant mammals but still jesus
Agnes Jekyll 7 years ago
A colleague's student told him Shakespeare's Hamlet was written by Penguin Classics.
logical fallacy 7 years ago
Then Penguin Classics must be the greatest literature figure of all time.
Load More Replies... Agnes Jekyll 7 years ago
A student told me he couldn't write the test on the date specific in the academic calendar (too busy) but was perfectly willing to write it on a Sunday. The same student asked me to tell him what questions I would be asking on the final, as he didn't want to waste time studying what wasn't on the test. A student admitted her tutor had written her essay for her (it was far too sophisticated), and was dumbfounded that was cheating, and defended herself by saying she could have asked her mother to write it. She was equally dumbfounded when I told her that was also cheating.
Johanna Kidd 7 years ago
Ah yes, this is the future citizens of the world&no wonder some feel like the world is going to hell in a handbasket!
Load More Replies... Nostalgic Hyena 7 years ago
I can almost see kindergarteners doing these, but when I hear that college students do this it's a little troublesome.
Esca Sav 7 years ago
This wasn't in college, but to get into my High School Engineering Program, we had to be interviewed. It was a group interview and they asked us if we agreed on sending the Hubble Telescope to space. There were four sides: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree. I was one of the few people that didn't know what the Hubble Telescope was at the time, but I wanted to be different and chose "Strongly Disagree," but didn't have a reason to why. In pure panic I responded with "Aliens will use our technology against us."..... I got in the school and the program 😂😂😂😂😂.
Pretty Flower 7 years ago
A girl in my class thought your blood is blue. Quite a few others did too. I maintained it was red, but apparently I'm stupid. Science teacher looked like he wanted to quit his job.
Laugh Fan 7 years ago
Didn't they ever fall over and, I don't know, graze a knee or something? See their blood that way?
Load More Replies... The Cappy 7 years ago
I was in a graduate genetics class years ago. The entire class, we spent discussing one gene after another, and these are named things like XPC, XPA, LIG3. Near the end of the semester, she raised her hand and asked what those 3-letter names meant. There was a moment of silence, during which the good natured professor was struck mute. This was foundational knowledge. If she hadn't understood that, she couldn't have understood anything up until that moment. And she had just sat there the whole time, understanding nothing. And here it was the last week of classes. It was mind boggling. (The professor did manage a statement about how these were designations for the genes.)
The Cappy 7 years ago
Sorry. Wasn't being clear. "she" was one of the students. I was probably 21. This student was older than me.
Load More Replies... logical fallacy 7 years ago
And my mother, first grade teacher, was dumbfounded the other day because a student didn't know what a bone is. I'm gonna show her this. XD
Catherine Holtham-Oakley 7 years ago
Could someone please remove the superfluous 'the' from the title please?
GiantSpaceTiger 7 years ago
Had to scroll a long way down to find someone else who noticed the irony!
Load More Replies... Jurgen Shantz 7 years ago
I was working in my shop class when I heard a girl I knew ask someone : "wait, are vultures birds or animals?" I think she might have meant mammals but still jesus
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