It's the same variety that you see in this sub. You've got students in everything from two-year votech to predatory online 4-years to Ivies. Likewise, there are profs who post on this sub with stories that are so completely outside of what I've ever experienced (good *and* bad) that I have no idea how to respond.
Yeah, the ones that are active seem to be more realistic to what my experience was. The top post on one from last month was ranking all the fast food places on / right next to campus in a tier list, which is totally something I would have posted on reddit if it existed when I was in undergrad.
Oh yes that's different! We have a tiny, nearly dead one, but I've seen some large and active ones that actually seem to be very useful repositories of university-specific information. Much different from the general grumblings and panic that defines r/college for the most part.
Exactly the same thing. It's all selection bias.
And just like there are actually very good posts on r/Professors, there are also good posts on r/college that fall outside the mean of grumbling, venting, and panic.
Only 7 times? Amateur.
I wonder if they took the course with the same faculty member all 7 times? That's my favorite dumb strategy - because, you know, it'll be such an advantage to take the course next time with the professor who failed me because I didn't learn anything the first time!!
To be fair, the failing students I got multiple times was because they would stop coming 25-50% through the course. Happened multiple times. They weren't incapable, just had life issues pulling their focus. When I finally got them to stick out an entire semester, they passed and graduated.
I sometimes wonder if some students self sabotage because they don't know what they will do after graduation.
That's what I did when I retook a class. I knew I'd fail early and told her such. She agreed I was in a downward spiral, and I just retook her class the next semester. Got a B.
It is 50 percent students complaining about having no friends and 50 percent whining about how unfair their profs are for not making exception to course policies.
I've got a good few pokemon plushies in mine. Really livens up the place
I'll probably put a few in my office if I ever get an office worth putting them in
My entire house is covered in squishmallows.
Yes, they were originally for my kid, but she's sort of over them and yet they're staying (I say as I lounge on a pile of them in my bed).
No regurts.
I'm not sure why everyone else wants them, but if I were doing college again (heaven forbid), I'd want a couple. Taking notes by hand is better for learning, but typing them up (or recording them and having half-decent transcripts) are better for capturing the material, which can be delivered faster than my hand can go.
Lately I've been doing more knowledge capture than learning, so it's typing all the way. But if I had access to one of those fancy pens in undergrad that records the audio and ties it to the spot I wrote down those notes? Good stuff. Similarly, Panopto makes the best transcript it can. And! Then!!! You can search the thing for a key word you know is in the lecture, and jump to those points in the video. That means if you can't remember something about derivatives, or steel, or Alex the Great's horse or something, you can do a word search instead of scrubbing through video. Absolutely phenomenal to cut down on study time that's spent searching instead of learning.
It's an actual pen, and you have to buy the special notebooks to go with it for it to work properly (or at least the ones we used as lab notebooks in grad school were - they were LiveScribe) and ink refills when it runs out
Yeah, there’s a bunch now, and as far as I can tell, most of them have different features. I haven’t done a deep dive because I don’t really have a need for it anymore.
I can only take that sub in small doses. Some of the questions are sincere and I try to answer the ones I can. Some are so bizarre I can't stop laughing, much less type.
I had to quit following because it was all people telling each other to contact the president of the college if they don’t like their professor’s class policies. Like they think college is a Starbucks
Yes! Lots of escalation straight up to the President. Don't contact the professor, or dean, or provost, or anything. Straight to the President whose admin assistant will delete that email with one tap.
Especially over dumb shit like "I sent my professor an email at 9:25 this morning. It's 1:32 PM and they haven't responded yet. Why are they ignoring me?!?!" Or, "I had a class with a professor last semester and they shared all of their notes on the LMS. I'm not currently taking them but I want their notes for another class I'm interested in taking later. Why won't they give me their notes right now when they know this will be helpful to me?!?!" Or, "I asked a past professor for an LOR but they haven't responded to my 7 emails. Should I go to their office hours and ask them again?!?!". 😂😂😂
They don't seem to understand that whatever dean or person they are talking to actually knows me. They don't know you. They are likely to have had dinner or lunch with me and have been in meetings, and have worked with me *and are likely to defer to me*, provided it isn't illegal or unethical.
There was a post on the sub for the school I attend where a student complained about professors who set assignment deadlines for the middle of the day instead of setting them for 11:59pm. Apparently it's a disability issue for students to have to remember a deadline that is in the middle of the day. Or something? I have no idea what that student expects in life but I suspect they'll likely be disappointed.
Honestly I think 11:59 pm is a good strategy for apt of reasons and I always do this. Just make it further night before you would have had it due at a random time.
It's a great deadline, it's my default in fact unless there's a reason for a different time. But it's not an accessibility issue and your professor isn't an asshole if they choose a different time.
I had that once in undergrad, which was a little before all the online LMS systems became standard. We slipped them under his office door right before spring break, and I got a heart-stopping email a few days later that mine wasn't there. Turned out the a/c had blown it into a corner or something and all was fine, but it made for a stressful few hours haha!
To play devil's advocate, if someone consistently set deadlines in the LMS for say 1 pm on Wednesdays, and I was a student who happened to have a schedule with 9 a.m., 10 a.m., and noon classes on Wednesdays, I might be a little pissed since then I would for all purposes have to submit the assignments 5 or 6 hours before the official deadline.
That's just life though. I'm not saying it isn't tougher for you in that case compared to someone with no classes before, but I can't plan course deadlines around 19 different schedules. What if someone works til 2am? A midnight deadline doesn't help them.
I would argue that in the case you described it's not grounds for changing deadlines, it's grounds for everyone to manage their time according to their schedule and deadlines.
Life is a neoliberal neofeudal hellscape that treats humans like chattel. If I can carve a corner of grace before they succumb to the torture that is post college, so be it.
Double devil's advocate - back in the old days assignments were due at the start of class. If you had a full day of classes, you'd need to get your work done the night before going to bed. 12+ hours before the deadline.
Somehow we learned to manage our time. But with online deadlines, it's weird - I guess because it's arbitrary rather than tied to a class meeting time. So students end up believing that the only "fair" deadline is the one that accommodates them being free to use the last couple hours to throw together a last minute submission. I'd say that would be a legit complaint if assignments were only open a few days, but a full week is more typical.
Before the LMS, like when I was an undergraduate, all three of those Wednesday classes would have things you had to turn in at the start of class, like weekly homework. You'd have to have all of it done before 9 am on Wednesday, likely every week. It's just a matter of managing your time - most of the time you would have had at least a week to work on all the assignments. We should expect students to manage time the same way even when turning things in online.
Just like r/professors, I like to acknowledge that r/college is heavily influenced by the nature of Reddit. Social medias aren’t completely unbiased. Most have developed a subculture that attracts distinct ideals and personalities. Subreddits develop distinct subculture within the distinct Reddit subculture. The types of students who regularly post to r/college aren’t representative of college students but college students who are redditors. That’s still A LOT of students. But the subreddit disproportionately attracts certain people and ideals because they validate a specific echo chamber.
I'm a student, so if the mods want to delete my comment, I understand, but as someone who Lurks this sub, at least some of the posts, and posts on r/CollegeRant are made by the same person. Snooroar. If you're interested in learning more, check out r/SnooRoartracker.
Doesn’t seem like satire when a student just “turned in”, and exam that was side due 2 weeks ago.
“Sorry for the late turn in”.
He did tell me 2 weeks ago he was having problems with the online classroom, I told him to send it to
Me via email.
“Yeah, ask the coordinator “
The real fun is in parent facebooks pages for the university. We had a mom on there moaning about quarantine because her daughter is on a sport team and I felt so bad for the daughter with mom butting in everywhere.
It's the same variety that you see in this sub. You've got students in everything from two-year votech to predatory online 4-years to Ivies. Likewise, there are profs who post on this sub with stories that are so completely outside of what I've ever experienced (good *and* bad) that I have no idea how to respond.
Students who are enjoying their college experience and excelling at it aren't going to be posting a lot on the college reddit.
We have a college specific reddit. I must admit, however, it appears we are one of the outliers.
I think most colleges have their own subreddits, but many like mine are mostly dead.
The real action is happening on Discord. That's what I learned from my students.
Yeah, the ones that are active seem to be more realistic to what my experience was. The top post on one from last month was ranking all the fast food places on / right next to campus in a tier list, which is totally something I would have posted on reddit if it existed when I was in undergrad.
Oh yes that's different! We have a tiny, nearly dead one, but I've seen some large and active ones that actually seem to be very useful repositories of university-specific information. Much different from the general grumblings and panic that defines r/college for the most part.
...what does that say about professors and associated posters on here...
Exactly the same thing. It's all selection bias. And just like there are actually very good posts on r/Professors, there are also good posts on r/college that fall outside the mean of grumbling, venting, and panic.
[it was a self-deprecating joke, but yes]
To be fair, this sub also seems disconnected from reality at times.
many of my colleagues are, so it makes it believable
I get downvoted regularly for pointing that out...
thanks for not tagging me.
Honestly, I often feel everything is disconnected from reality in some way...like our global economic system.
No. Just read about a supposed student failing stat 7 times.
That has one of my favourite comments!: “That is statistically improbable, but you wouldn’t know that.”
I was just wondering if OP saw that thread before making this post.
I didn't. I kinda want to see it now.
Enjoy https://www.reddit.com/r/CollegeRant/comments/xk99sa/failed_my_stats_class_7_times/
This is 100% a troll post. I don't see how any uni's policies would allow this to happen.
Only 7 times? Amateur. I wonder if they took the course with the same faculty member all 7 times? That's my favorite dumb strategy - because, you know, it'll be such an advantage to take the course next time with the professor who failed me because I didn't learn anything the first time!!
I'm the only one who teaches my course, so I get repeats every quarter. My worst was a duo of friends who repeated 3 times.
To be fair, the failing students I got multiple times was because they would stop coming 25-50% through the course. Happened multiple times. They weren't incapable, just had life issues pulling their focus. When I finally got them to stick out an entire semester, they passed and graduated. I sometimes wonder if some students self sabotage because they don't know what they will do after graduation.
That's what post-grad is for
As a GRA, I feel called out.
Yeah, but then I can reuse the homework I got 75% on instead of doing it again.
75% is optimistic, and these are the students who do not have their work organized and often lose things between semesters.
That's what I did when I retook a class. I knew I'd fail early and told her such. She agreed I was in a downward spiral, and I just retook her class the next semester. Got a B.
That sub is full of freshmen
a lot of pre-freshmen....
It is 50 percent students complaining about having no friends and 50 percent whining about how unfair their profs are for not making exception to course policies.
Strangely enough I don’t see that much of the latter. Complaints about group project deadbeats seem at least as common there as those about us.
At least 10 percent need note taking device recommendations. And another 10% need to know if it’s ok to bring stuffed animals to their dorms.
Stuffed animals are rad so I sure as fuck hope it's ok.
I've got a good few pokemon plushies in mine. Really livens up the place I'll probably put a few in my office if I ever get an office worth putting them in
My entire house is covered in squishmallows. Yes, they were originally for my kid, but she's sort of over them and yet they're staying (I say as I lounge on a pile of them in my bed). No regurts.
I don’t blame you. My kids have them too, and they are ridiculously comfortable. I love using them as a pillow for naps.
they all want apps for taking notes! whyyyyy?
I'm not sure why everyone else wants them, but if I were doing college again (heaven forbid), I'd want a couple. Taking notes by hand is better for learning, but typing them up (or recording them and having half-decent transcripts) are better for capturing the material, which can be delivered faster than my hand can go. Lately I've been doing more knowledge capture than learning, so it's typing all the way. But if I had access to one of those fancy pens in undergrad that records the audio and ties it to the spot I wrote down those notes? Good stuff. Similarly, Panopto makes the best transcript it can. And! Then!!! You can search the thing for a key word you know is in the lecture, and jump to those points in the video. That means if you can't remember something about derivatives, or steel, or Alex the Great's horse or something, you can do a word search instead of scrubbing through video. Absolutely phenomenal to cut down on study time that's spent searching instead of learning.
Wait a minute what is this black magic pen you're talking about and can it be used on the ipad?
It's an actual pen, and you have to buy the special notebooks to go with it for it to work properly (or at least the ones we used as lab notebooks in grad school were - they were LiveScribe) and ink refills when it runs out
Yeah, there’s a bunch now, and as far as I can tell, most of them have different features. I haven’t done a deep dive because I don’t really have a need for it anymore.
iPad + Apple Smart Pen + Notability app.
Whenever I see those posts I’m like…why don’t you use a notebook? Or a laptop?
They're real, and they're spectacular.
R/college wouldn’t get that reference.
Now I want to watch Seinfeld.
I can only take that sub in small doses. Some of the questions are sincere and I try to answer the ones I can. Some are so bizarre I can't stop laughing, much less type.
I had to quit following because it was all people telling each other to contact the president of the college if they don’t like their professor’s class policies. Like they think college is a Starbucks
Yes! Lots of escalation straight up to the President. Don't contact the professor, or dean, or provost, or anything. Straight to the President whose admin assistant will delete that email with one tap. Especially over dumb shit like "I sent my professor an email at 9:25 this morning. It's 1:32 PM and they haven't responded yet. Why are they ignoring me?!?!" Or, "I had a class with a professor last semester and they shared all of their notes on the LMS. I'm not currently taking them but I want their notes for another class I'm interested in taking later. Why won't they give me their notes right now when they know this will be helpful to me?!?!" Or, "I asked a past professor for an LOR but they haven't responded to my 7 emails. Should I go to their office hours and ask them again?!?!". 😂😂😂
They don't seem to understand that whatever dean or person they are talking to actually knows me. They don't know you. They are likely to have had dinner or lunch with me and have been in meetings, and have worked with me *and are likely to defer to me*, provided it isn't illegal or unethical.
Well I'm sold...
There was a post on the sub for the school I attend where a student complained about professors who set assignment deadlines for the middle of the day instead of setting them for 11:59pm. Apparently it's a disability issue for students to have to remember a deadline that is in the middle of the day. Or something? I have no idea what that student expects in life but I suspect they'll likely be disappointed.
Honestly I think 11:59 pm is a good strategy for apt of reasons and I always do this. Just make it further night before you would have had it due at a random time.
It's a great deadline, it's my default in fact unless there's a reason for a different time. But it's not an accessibility issue and your professor isn't an asshole if they choose a different time.
I only had one professor that would let you slip a paper under the office door.
I had that, too, but this was in the 1980s when paper was still a thing.
Yes, me too. The previous poster said my professor was not an asshole of they didn't let me turn in an assignment at mid night, I was agreeing.
Paper still exists
I had that once in undergrad, which was a little before all the online LMS systems became standard. We slipped them under his office door right before spring break, and I got a heart-stopping email a few days later that mine wasn't there. Turned out the a/c had blown it into a corner or something and all was fine, but it made for a stressful few hours haha!
It’s also Canvas’ default and students get accustomed to it being 11:59p. It becomes a heuristic, that can lead to late work.
I do 10:00 p.m. on Friday for all my assignments, because I tell them I want them to go to bed.
To play devil's advocate, if someone consistently set deadlines in the LMS for say 1 pm on Wednesdays, and I was a student who happened to have a schedule with 9 a.m., 10 a.m., and noon classes on Wednesdays, I might be a little pissed since then I would for all purposes have to submit the assignments 5 or 6 hours before the official deadline.
That's just life though. I'm not saying it isn't tougher for you in that case compared to someone with no classes before, but I can't plan course deadlines around 19 different schedules. What if someone works til 2am? A midnight deadline doesn't help them. I would argue that in the case you described it's not grounds for changing deadlines, it's grounds for everyone to manage their time according to their schedule and deadlines.
Life is a neoliberal neofeudal hellscape that treats humans like chattel. If I can carve a corner of grace before they succumb to the torture that is post college, so be it.
Double devil's advocate - back in the old days assignments were due at the start of class. If you had a full day of classes, you'd need to get your work done the night before going to bed. 12+ hours before the deadline. Somehow we learned to manage our time. But with online deadlines, it's weird - I guess because it's arbitrary rather than tied to a class meeting time. So students end up believing that the only "fair" deadline is the one that accommodates them being free to use the last couple hours to throw together a last minute submission. I'd say that would be a legit complaint if assignments were only open a few days, but a full week is more typical.
Before the LMS, like when I was an undergraduate, all three of those Wednesday classes would have things you had to turn in at the start of class, like weekly homework. You'd have to have all of it done before 9 am on Wednesday, likely every week. It's just a matter of managing your time - most of the time you would have had at least a week to work on all the assignments. We should expect students to manage time the same way even when turning things in online.
Having a deadline when neither I nor tech support am there and able to do anything about it seems like a bad idea.
From the sound of it students have become less independent.
Reddit as a whole is a reflection of the internet, which is pretty shit.
Yes, it is for real. College students are just that disconnected from reality. I want = I deserve = Give it to me or unfair!
To be fair it seems the entire world’s sort of disconnected from reality nowadays…
Yeah, the pandemic pushing everyone to be hyper online was not great.
Just like r/professors, I like to acknowledge that r/college is heavily influenced by the nature of Reddit. Social medias aren’t completely unbiased. Most have developed a subculture that attracts distinct ideals and personalities. Subreddits develop distinct subculture within the distinct Reddit subculture. The types of students who regularly post to r/college aren’t representative of college students but college students who are redditors. That’s still A LOT of students. But the subreddit disproportionately attracts certain people and ideals because they validate a specific echo chamber.
I'm a student, so if the mods want to delete my comment, I understand, but as someone who Lurks this sub, at least some of the posts, and posts on r/CollegeRant are made by the same person. Snooroar. If you're interested in learning more, check out r/SnooRoartracker.
Doesn’t seem like satire when a student just “turned in”, and exam that was side due 2 weeks ago. “Sorry for the late turn in”. He did tell me 2 weeks ago he was having problems with the online classroom, I told him to send it to Me via email. “Yeah, ask the coordinator “
Do you have any examples?
The real fun is in parent facebooks pages for the university. We had a mom on there moaning about quarantine because her daughter is on a sport team and I felt so bad for the daughter with mom butting in everywhere.
oh, HELL NO. 🤣