to the students who feel it is necesary to have a full-blown conversation at a ridiculously loud volume in the hallways of smu…shut the hell up. as a professor who is trying to get some work done so they can (hopefully) present their classes with some interesting subject material, your conversations right outside my office piss me off to no end and really illustrate how self-absorbed and inconsiderate you are. i’ve already told about a hundred of you to shut up or leave the department…don’t make me say it again.
—pissed off prof.
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2010.
Hire a TA to stand in front of your office and shoo them away. TA’s will work for next to nothing.
This is nothing a few short blasts of an airhorn wouldn’t cure.
yeah, or maybe the muzac strategy will be enough to move those filthy loiterers.
Yanni is enough to have anyone with the ability to hear running for the hills.
I think someone’s a cranky old man….
or woman…they can be professors too ya know 🙂
Interesting, OP’s clearly not an English Prof – or our education system has completely and utterly failed to teach punctuation to someone who’s teaching our youth…
Jesus Christ. What’s crawled up your ass?
I bet the previous OP’s proctologist could answer that question… 🙂
The angry profs need to get together with the angry postal workers, kill us all, and take over the world. “don’t make me say it again.”
As for the OP’s poorish grammar and lack of a Shift key, remember that they are teaching at “Robie Street High School,” after all. On the other hand, maybe it’s a joke by a Dal prof trying to make SMU profs look bad.
I work there too, and deal with the same thing all the time. But it’s not always the students….
Profs, staff, students alike all seem to stand right outside my office and talk. Loudly. About really personal issues that I wouldn’t even be talking about in my own home.
it’s this atupid new trend to drop capitals for internet communication. i expect, given that the rest of the paragraph is easily understood and succinct, that this st. mary’s professor does teach some wacky new age course like ‘modern internet commuication’, or some such nonsense, and actually enjoys having students point out the errors so that she can tell them how 1990s they are…
..and yes, its likely a she…females have adapted to this silly writing style much more than males
…followed by some vulgar diatribe about how “i” was never meant to be capitalized until chaucer did it…or some other cbc-based theory…
i must admit, it helps for typing one-handed
I have no sympathy for the OP…..These kids pay for your salary. If they are disrupting a class in progress that is an issue.
If they are hanging out in the hall between classes and socializing….Well nothing wrong with that. Remember they pay your salary, so don’t take away from there University experience by being a crabby shit.
It’s just as bad when you’re in loyola in an actual class — burke’s even WORSE. Ugh. You just want to yell out the door “STFU, ASSHOLES”…but you can’t 🙁
ah, for the old days of monastic life in universities.
“females have adapted to this silly writing style much more than males”
I’m not contesting it since I think it’s probably accurate, though do you have any proof?
If I remember and use this, I’d like to be able to back it up so as not to look sexist and douchey.
This is a rant! Why do people feel that they should spend so much time commenting on the lack of proper punctuation rather than commenting on the actual subject? And SMU might be known as Robie High but some departments are actually quite well-respected internationally!
” Why do people feel that they should spend so much time commenting on the lack of proper punctuation rather than commenting on the actual subject? “
Bcuz we R sik of Id10ts hoo fuKng speL lIk shat.
lern 2 typ elagantly or B ridicUld unmercifully.
all your base are belong to us
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/base
ytzpilot: No, they don’t pay for his/her salary. Not even remotely close to it actually. The government pays for his/her salary. Essentially, all the students pay for is a small portion of the actual cost of education, the rest is subsidized by the government.
zZz: Thanks for the guffaw. I just read your post, and it reminded me of a dear friend I haven’t heard from in a long time, so I “all your base are belong to us”‘d him. Thanks!
And Indy, the grammar thing is because someone who claims to be a University Professor should have a better grasp of how to construct a sentence. It leads me to believe this is not a Prof, and therefore I’m less likely to commiserate with someone who’s started out by lying. (But that’s just me).
Typography Factoid of the Day:
One of the reasons that word “I” is normally capitalized in English is due to the problems of setting millions of tiny pieces of metal type by hand in the early days of printing.
It was also one of those conventions that helped make reading long pieces of text easier. The lower case “i” is so tiny compared to the other letters, and almost microscopic at text sizes like 9 or 10 point.
The “no capitalization/no punctuation” thing is also a pompous fad that sometimes circulates in academic writing. You may remember the “shocking” (!) snub of the convention when you first read “e e cummings” in Grade 7 English.
Today the “big shocking fad” in academic writing is in not using apostrophes. As in “I dont know why but it cant be stopped.” (Oooh!) Yeah, I definitely do agree that those people should get out more!
In today’s online writing world, it IS considered extremely pretentious to pretend to “diminish” oneself by using “i” instead of “I”. It’s the equivalent of those girls who think it is cute to always speak in the “baby voice.” Unless it’s just a typo, it can be seen by other readers as an extremely obnoxious “princess-y” affectation.
So, I agree that people should be careful about how they write/type/spell when they post. Reading people’s comments is no fun if people can’t understand what someone is really trying to say.
And zZz, I LOVED your most EXCELLENT example of “stoopid” text. I can actually HEAR the person speaking like this!
when I got my keybo last year, I tried typing out like that to see if it was
1. quicker and
2. actually readable.
needless to say it didn’t go over well and I found it actually took more time because I had to stop and think of a shorter way to type it out rather than spell as I normally would.
my thumbs may get a workout but I do type out as I would on any other device…
PROPERLY and including punctuation.
Thanks Never Wrong. The idea that a student is paying the profs salary is so frustrating and indicative of that entitlement attitude we keep hearing about. As a student, you pay for the opportunity to learn, not sit around the hallways causing a ruckus. The prof isn’t your mechanic, or maid or nanny. They don’t OWE you anything except to show up prepared for lecture three days a week. Your satisfaction is NOT guaranteed. You don’t get your money back if you aren’t happy with your C.