Physics book keeps knocking 'em outta the park with relevant life examples.
my History of Psychology professor
Umm….I think there's something wrong with your font...
I (Kelsie) recently had the privilege of working with probably the dumbest honours student I've ever met. I hate group projects.
The paper was due online, Sunday, at 11:59 pm. We were assigned this three weeks in advance. SInce there were 5 people in the group and the paper had to be 7 pages, we wrote an intro and a conclusion and assigned everybody to write approximately 1 page on the topic. I, the group leader, requested that everyone have their 1 page up on Google Docs by the Friday two days before the due date so that I would have time to edit it and make it cohesive. Everyone complied except one person.
First she told me she didn't have the Google so she couldn't find the document (after I had emailed the link directly to her email). Then she told me she made a new Gmail account in order to find the Google Doc but she couldn't find it. After I told her she could email or Facebook message me her page, she told me she was at work and didn't have time but would do it later.
Her part of the essay (which, I might add, was only three paragraphs long) finally showed up online at 2 am on Sunday morning. I was already asleep by this point, but she was also kind enough to message, "Sorry it took me so long. I'm a senior, working on senior paper, and I work part time, so classes like this aren't really my priority." I wanted to respond "Oh, that's okay. I'm a junior getting my degree in three years, an assistant youth pastor, and I'm launching a business venture tomorrow, but I'm good at time management because I'M AN HONOURS STUDENT." I did not respond this.
I checked it on Sunday morning when I woke up and sent her a message asking her to fix her citations—she had two in-text citations and three works cited, none of which matched each other. Then I went to church. She replied, insisting that they definitely matched each other.
After church, I copy pasted her citations into Facebook message so that she could see they did not match. Not to humiliate her, just trying to get her to say "oh, that one goes with that one" and I could fix the citations. I mean, they weren't proper citations in any formatting style—they were parentheses with random words that didn't correspond to words in any of the works cited. She replied "I'm not on campus because we're celebrating Easter. I'll message you when I get back on campus." (Oh, I'm sorry, am I bothering you on Easter? Wish you'd have gotten it in on Friday, huh?)
Hours later, I finally messaged her again, "When do you think you'll be on campus?" Oh, she's been on campus for hours and she "fixed" it hours ago. Silly me. I assumed she would message. I check again. Well, now the two in-text citations have random words that at least correlate with two of the works cited, but there's no mention of the third. I ask her about it.
"I didn't quote anything from that article, I just used it as a reference point so I didn't cite it in text." OK, that's called plagiarism. "Fine then, I'll put it in the text somewhere." She slaps a second in-text citation on one of her only two already-cited sentences. I give up and submit it to our professor that way because I'm tired of dealing with it, but send her a message to let her know that she may want to review citation styles in the future.
She got annoyed and told me that it didn't matter because our professors wouldn't count off for using the wrong citations. I gave up. If she's going to accidentally plagiarise something, she can go ahead and plagiarise something…as long as it's not my paper being graded.
always a great way to start your guest lecture
Kelsie's chemistry professor
Weird Professor (the one who taught me biology, and now teaches me "Global Sustainability") does not know how to email.
For two years now I have had the pleasure of receiving his weird emails. They are always some article or information that he found interesting and therefore decided to forward to his entire class/classes. They are sometimes relevant ("I am forwarding everyone the exam dates!") and sometimes not ("My wife sent me this article on jellyfish and it's super cool!")
But the pièce de résistance was a recent email about an extra credit opportunity.
Sure, that sounds innocent enough: he forwarded us all an email about a lecture by a prominent environmentalist on a Tuesday evening, and since my class meets on Wednesdays and Fridays, it would be extra credit if we attended. There was about one sentence addressed to us—something like "If you go to this on Tuesday, +2 extra credit. -J" However, there was no information about when and where it was meeting, because that information was in an attachment.
Well, on a Mac, any attached files show up at the very bottom of the email. So I began to scroll. And that's when I realised what he had forwarded us.
The conversation started with a personal email to the speaker, about two weeks previous. My professor expressed excitement to see him again; the speaker responded in kind. Then my professor reminded the speaker of his home address, his cell phone number, and his wife's cell phone number. Then my professor and the speaker got into a multiple-emails-long discussion about their like of Downton Abbey. The professor asked the speaker about any food allergies and informed him of what his wife would be making when the speaker came to stay with them. The speaker responded, asking about accommodations, and was invited to sleep in the professor's guest bedroom. The professor and the speaker discussed another faculty member in the biology department whom the speaker had met the last time that he was in town. On and on.
And since it all culminated in "See you tomorrow!", and happened to have a flyer attached ("for your approval!"), this was what my professor decided would be appropriate to forward to me, all 30 of my classmates, and all the faculty of the biology department.
I now know his personal address, his cell number, his wife's cell number, what the speaker likes to eat for dinner, and also what both of them think of Downton Abbey.
Someone please teach that man how to email.
~Kelsie
guest professor introducing himself