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On November 18 2010 11:20 Irrelevant wrote:
You don't go to a uni to write stupid essays or learn anything, you go there for the name value and the value a degree from there holds in the job market.
I have the highest mark in the majority of my classes (which historically is the case), yet those marks are consistently graded on a curve to make the 'academic under performer' look like he's performing better than he actually is. That post-secondary institutions are more concerned with funding, graduation rate and getting students through the system as fast as possible is becoming the main reasons I'm sick of the system. That I have to do 'worse' to make some idiot look 'smarter' absolutely disgusts me.
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On November 18 2010 08:38 TheDrill wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 06:22 Insanious wrote:
Universities are glorified High Schools... if you can memorize things you can get an A+ if you know why something works but cannot memorize the correct terms, say hello to a B.
Sad but true... every test I have written for my university so far has me getting 100% on short and long answer questions (the "explain theory" questions) but when it is "which one of these is not one of the marketing forces?" multiple choice shit... I do a lot worse... 60-70% correct.
But in the real world will I ever need to know how to calculate the Confidence interval of a statistic by hand, know how to find the NPV of some investment by hand? Hell no, I will use a computer program to do that... but knowing what a CI or NPV means will be important. Too bad we aren't tested on knowing what something means and are tested on how to find something useless. Anyone who has taken both, hard science classes such as calculus and calculus based physics and soft science classes such as statistics and psychology can tell you that there is a pretty fucking huge distinction in the workload required and amount of effort expected. Yea I could write my 5 page English 2 paper the night before and expect a solid B+, but if I tried to cram for even a lowly Phys 1 exam, the only thing I could ever hope for is a gigantic curve giving me a D- instead of an F. Then again, I go to a fairly strong engineering school. Why do you think the writer refuses to do any math?
This is very true. I actually took the higher level English courses in college because they were easier to do. On the other hand my calc 1 teacher never took back homework he gave because as he said, "if you didn't do it you would fail the tests".
I don't agree with these services because it is cheating, but really using them for courses outside your major isn't going to hurt you later in life if you are not caught. I have forgot nearly everything from those classes as soon as the final was done anyway.
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I have never heard of, let alone met, anyone who has used these kinds of services. Maybe it's because my course in college had a pretty high GPA requirement: people who enrolled expected to be working hard just to get by. My 1st semester exam in Pol.Sci. is a 10-page assignment to be done in 24 hours. Won't be getting much sleep that night.
I have cheated once, in primary school. I got caught, my teacher had a serious talk with me, and I've never even considered doing it since. As long as you keep up with your reading writing a paper is no biggie - of course I'm still only on my first semester, things could change.
Also, an interesting comment on the article's website:
'The author admits to an aversion to math, and I am not surprised. He claims to have written more than 5000 pages in the last year. At roughly 250 working days per year, that's 20 pages a day, every single working day. In an eight-hour working day, that's close to 1000 words every hour, with no time allowed for client contact, follow-up, research or anything else. This seems unlikely in the extreme. Even with more hours put in each day, that is an improbably high speed of writing, considering that it has to be kept up every hour of every working day to make the total claimed in this article.
On the other side of the coin, he claims that will be paid about $66,000 for his 5000 pages. That is the princely sum of $13.20 per page, or slightly more than 2¢ per word (at 550 words per page). Not only is he lying and making a dishonest living (presuming the story told here is truthful), he is getting paid pathetically.'
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Russian Federation145 Posts
On November 19 2010 00:50 Hans-Titan wrote:
'The author admits to an aversion to math, and I am not surprised. He claims to have written more than 5000 pages in the last year. At roughly 250 working days per year, that's 20 pages a day, every single working day. In an eight-hour working day, that's close to 1000 words every hour, with no time allowed for client contact, follow-up, research or anything else. This seems unlikely in the extreme. Even with more hours put in each day, that is an improbably high speed of writing, considering that it has to be kept up every hour of every working day to make the total claimed in this article.
On the other side of the coin, he claims that will be paid about $66,000 for his 5000 pages. That is the princely sum of $13.20 per page, or slightly more than 2¢ per word (at 550 words per page). Not only is he lying and making a dishonest living (presuming the story told here is truthful), he is getting paid pathetically.'
Maybe it's double spaced. 
20 pages a day probably isn't that bad for people who enjoy the challenge writing. Did you get his Dickens reference? It definitely takes talent and a lot of effort to do something like this and you have to have some respect for the ghost writer, even if he is being dishonest.
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But writing essays is easy...
You just regurgitate ideas and the same argument structures over and over again.
So this guy is just taking advantage of absurd laziness on the part of students. Good for him tbh, not like not writing your own essays actually proves anything about how much you know at university 
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On November 19 2010 01:24 Piy wrote:But writing essays is easy... You just regurgitate ideas and the same argument structures over and over again. So this guy is just taking advantage of absurd laziness on the part of students. Good for him tbh, not like not writing your own essays actually proves anything about how much you know at university
You must have written some very boring essays, if that's the procedure you followed 
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This is a problem because people get shit education from their High School where how to write is supposed to be taught. So then people get to University and suck ass at writing and go do stuff like this.
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On November 19 2010 00:32 Gnosis wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 11:20 Irrelevant wrote:
You don't go to a uni to write stupid essays or learn anything, you go there for the name value and the value a degree from there holds in the job market. I have the highest mark in the majority of my classes (which historically is the case), yet those marks are consistently graded on a curve to make the 'academic under performer' look like he's performing better than he actually is. That post-secondary institutions are more concerned with funding, graduation rate and getting students through the system as fast as possible is becoming the main reasons I'm sick of the system. That I have to do 'worse' to make some idiot look 'smarter' absolutely disgusts me.
I stopped bothering to do any work in law school because the curve plops me on the winning side of classes full of retards regardless of if I try or not.
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On November 18 2010 04:28 emythrel wrote:Show nested quote +[B]On November 18 2010 04:23 shindigs wrote: The interesting part to me is that this extends even to the levels of PhD thesises (thesi?) I believe the plural is the same as the singular, i can't remember off the top of my head. This stuff has been happening for years and years, friends doing homework for each other, scholars being paid to "correct" papers (they usually just re-write it for you) and directly stealing old papers. Unfortunately, most adjudicators (the people who mark papers) don't have an opportunity to read other materials from the student and thus have no way to check whether the paper was written by the student or ghost written. It is the responsibility of the teacher to read over the papers and check they were written by the student, and when you have 50 students papers to read... thats hard to do.
I thought it was theses? (pronounced thee-sees)
Edit: What I seem to be coming across in a lot of the responses to OP's post, is that a lot of the people are skeptical of his ability to write a technical document. What I derived from the article was that: people give him their ideas for those technical courses and he writes a paper around it. He doesn't actually go and write or derive mathematical proofs for something similar.
A simple example of how he works would be me giving him the lorentz transformation telling him all of the variables and what it means and I need a paper on it that ties it into E=mc^2. All of which can be further researched (via the power of the internet) along with the information I previously provided.
It's really not hard to write a technical document at all. Hell, I'm sitting in my technical writing course as I write this post and I've had no issue bullshitting (with decent grades) on topics I only had a limited knowledge of (i.e., I don't really know everything there is to know about frame dragging and its implication in time travel but the b on my paper says otherwise).
I've also helped several psych/business majors write their own theses (and in one case from my own idea). This isn't that hard, there's a market for it, and knowing the general trend of education and medicine, there's only going to be an increase in demand in future years.
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On November 18 2010 11:20 Irrelevant wrote:
You don't go to a uni to write stupid essays or learn anything, you go there for the name value and the value a degree from there holds in the job market.
not really. most of the time it's how you use that degree. once you get out into world you'll see how many people have degrees that are not directly related to their employment. but w/e, it's what you get out of it. spend 40-80k(probably of your parents money) and you make the choice. I know I've learned a huge amount in only a few months. Some people learn and grow, others are cynical and stultified.
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To be honest, I personally believe this is guy is full of shit...
However, I know for a fact shit like this does happen, I don't believe this guy is part of a company. He stated he's on course to make 66 grand this year and plans to retire? I hope he meant from that particular business lawl. He also stated that he makes half the money from each paper, and he charged a paper 2 thousand (hopefully it was the 75 page paper, but I don't believe he said it was that one, but for the sake of argument, well assume it was that paper) and he's only making 60 grand (took him 2 days to write that paper).. That doesn't add up.
So that equates to roughly 500 dollars for 37.5 pages.
Which is 13.3333 dollars per page. Damn near reasonable price i'd say especially since most undergrad college papers are under 5-10 pages.
He said he can pop out 4 to 5 pages an hour on a good day, so again, for the sake of argument lets assume he can do 3.
So that's damn near $40 an hour. (13.3 x 3)
Assume he works a 8-5. Normal 8 hour day, even though I'm pretty he said (at least made it seem like he worked long 12 hour workdays, but again, sake of argument) that wasn't the case.
Summer, for the average people, is damn near 112 days or so (May 7 - August 21st is what I used, although it changes obviously). But obviously, people take summer school, and he stated that he always has business and it was booming. Christmas's break, or the semester gap, i think is roughly 4 weeks or so (I remember in high school having projects nearly every summer and Christmas break in at least 1 class, usually for English, but whatever)
He stands to make, according to my math, around $71,000. The math seems close, but I still just don't buy it. With interns, price variation, High School, College, amount of effort, etc.. I just have a hard time believing this. There's just too many variables, and to be completely honest, compare him to Obama for great example, while they may be good writers, most liars are. He even stated that he was the best bullshitter, so believe what you want.
Honestly, to me, I love writing and bullshitting, but he just sounds like a bitter english major who's shitty work went unnoticed and now his feelings are hurt because no one patted him on the back when he was younger and his mom and dad didn't support his god awful decision because he's mediocre at best and now he has to be an elementary school teacher because he can't surmount to the great writer that is Dickens.
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On November 18 2010 04:39 JinNJuice wrote:
Honestly I'm not surprised in the slightest. Looking at the students even in my school who are supposed to be top engineering students, I'm amazed at how poor their writing skills are. I don't even want to imagine the graduating high school seniors. The use of texting since they were in 6th grade does not help them improve any technical or creating writing skills at all. It's only going to get worse.
That surprises you? Do you know what engineers focus on? They focus on physics, mathematics, and other technical subjects (fluids, mechanics, etc). If they write, it's most likely an equation. Engineers are not writers, however this is not to say that they should be able to write (for documentation, etc).
Engineers don't care about whether their grammar is crisp or not, or whether they misspelled thermodynamics or any junk like that, they're worried about much more important things. If you can convey your thoughts and ideas in a clear and concise way then what does it matter if a technically minded person cannot write like an author?
There are often people who bridge between the technically minded people and the customer anyways.
edit: Proof is also in the article...this well versed man who writes whatever you want him to write avoids mathematics. Engineers are simply the opposite. Give us the math and screw the writing.
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This was a very interesting read, especially as a law student. I don't really want to believe that anything this flagrant goes on in law school. Still, I assume that it does to some degree. It's a small consolation that anyone who cheats this way through law school will almost certainly fail miserably at actually being a lawyer. Lawyers need to know how to write and use words properly.
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Chronic copying and cheating is the problem here at MSU in engineering from MY EXPERIENCE (keywords).
Solution manuals being out and professors assigning too much homework which is graded is the cause for all of it.
Dont assign mandatory homework and it wont happen, period. Do like in class quizes or projects or something.
As far as essays go im not really sure how to combat it. Its just so lame how stuff like this happens. Theres far too much work assigned.
Senior in Mechanical Engineering here.
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On November 19 2010 02:28 Rickilicious wrote:Bunch of stuff and calculations + Show Spoiler +To be honest, I personally believe this is guy is full of shit...
However, I know for a fact shit like this does happen, I don't believe this guy is part of a company. He stated he's on course to make 66 grand this year and plans to retire? I hope he meant from that particular business lawl. He also stated that he makes half the money from each paper, and he charged a paper 2 thousand (hopefully it was the 75 page paper, but I don't believe he said it was that one, but for the sake of argument, well assume it was that paper) and he's only making 60 grand (took him 2 days to write that paper).. That doesn't add up.
So that equates to roughly 500 dollars for 37.5 pages.
Which is 13.3333 dollars per page. Damn near reasonable price i'd say especially since most undergrad college papers are under 5-10 pages.
He said he can pop out 4 to 5 pages an hour on a good day, so again, for the sake of argument lets assume he can do 3.
So that's damn near $40 an hour. (13.3 x 3)
Assume he works a 8-5. Normal 8 hour day, even though I'm pretty he said (at least made it seem like he worked long 12 hour workdays, but again, sake of argument) that wasn't the case.
Summer, for the average people, is damn near 112 days or so (May 7 - August 21st is what I used, although it changes obviously). But obviously, people take summer school, and he stated that he always has business and it was booming. Christmas's break, or the semester gap, i think is roughly 4 weeks or so (I remember in high school having projects nearly every summer and Christmas break in at least 1 class, usually for English, but whatever)
He stands to make, according to my math, around $71,000. The math seems close, but I still just don't buy it. With interns, price variation, High School, College, amount of effort, etc.. I just have a hard time believing this. There's just too many variables, and to be completely honest, compare him to Obama for great example, while they may be good writers, most liars are. He even stated that he was the best bullshitter, so believe what you want.
Honestly, to me, I love writing and bullshitting, but he just sounds like a bitter english major who's shitty work went unnoticed and now his feelings are hurt because no one patted him on the back when he was younger and his mom and dad didn't support his god awful decision because he's mediocre at best and now he has to be an elementary school teacher because he can't surmount to the great writer that is Dickens .
I don't think you can account for the varying costs of deadlines. He did mention that there are different rates for different workloads and the time that the work must be done. I'd imagine a 100 page paper that must be done in 2 days would cost quite a bit more than a 150 page paper done over the course of two weeks. Seeing as we don't know the relationship between the two it's not really safe to say. You are right in saying there are a lot of variables.
I wonder if they did have interns that did this: Would the intern get expelled from his/her university under academic integrity clauses if the university ever found out? This is considering the intern's university is different than the customer's.
On November 19 2010 02:36 dronebabo wrote:
lol dunno why u r so defensive there he never said engineers had to have author level writin skills he just said he was amazed at how poor their writing skills are -> it could mean they have writing skills so bad that they are worse than basic which is obviously needed for even career paths focusin on math like engineering
It's not being defensive, more that there is absolutely nothing surprising about that, which I followed up with causality. I re-read it and it seems the tone is misplaced but please understand that it's not meant to be malicious.
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On November 19 2010 02:43 Sadist wrote:
Chronic copying and cheating is the problem here at MSU in engineering from MY EXPERIENCE (keywords).
Solution manuals being out and professors assigning too much homework which is graded is the cause for all of it.
Dont assign mandatory homework and it wont happen, period. Do like in class quizes or projects or something.
As far as essays go im not really sure how to combat it. Its just so lame how stuff like this happens. Theres far too much work assigned.
Senior in Mechanical Engineering here.
I don't think not having homework would solve anything. The only thing that would solve cheating, or lower the percentage of cheaters in college would be revamping the education system. Making a student memorize 8 chapters or Organic Chemistry for a semester is not teaching the student anything. All it is teaching the student to do is memorize key points in the lecture and certain types of reactions so he or she could get by with a grade. If the student wants to properly learn all 8 chapters, then he'll have to either study a shit load, which would be impossible with the work load of all your other classes, or start studying before he or she even takes the classes. The only way to fix this would be to make college education longer (1-1.5 years longer, maybe?), but it'll actually be worth it since you would come out knowing more.
The education system right now is bullshit. Every professor just throws a bunch of reading at you and expects you to memorize it and fully understand it all within a week. It is getting quite ridiculous in my Organic Chemistry class right now. My professor is expecting us to memorize a chapter a week. I could probably do it if I had no job, no social life, no fun and no work from other classes, but when you're taking the normal amount of credits each semester (4 classes here) then you just won't be able to do everything a professor expects you to do in the allotted time.
For example; I have to read and study Chapter 8 & 9 for my next Organic Chemistry lecture since we'll be having a quiz on it. That in itself is about 5-10 hours of just reading and rereading the text book to just understand what is going on. After that, I might have another 5-10 hours or more of doing example problems to make sure I full understand the material. On top of all that, I have Calculus III homework, which I don't find difficult, but it's time consuming since my professor assigns every example problem in the text. That's another 5-10 hours. After that comes my 10 page essay that I have to write analyzing a book about slavery. It's due in about a week and was assigned a week ago. Reading a 500 page book and writing a 10 page essay in 2 weeks is wonderful. Then comes my Physics w/ Calculus class. That's even more work to do.
Not only do I have work to do for those classes, I also have Labs that I have to take for Physics and Organic Chem. The labs are ~2 hours each and fairly easy, but writing the reports for them is just ridiculous. I spend about 5 hours writing my Organic Lab reports, but even that isn't enough to get me an A by the professor I have this semester (should've taken an easier Professor -_-) and also spend 2 hours writing my physics reports. This is all weekly by the way.
That right there is an average work load for a Chemistry major at my college and I'm not in some prestigious school. I just don't get how Professors expect you to get all that work done, while having a job and some sort of social life. I rarely play video games anymore because I'm always so damn busy, so that's definitely not why I can't finish all my work. The system just needs to be fixed to the point where all Professors actually take into account your other classes and the possibility that you might you know, have to work for a living. I've only ever had one professor that actually took into account the fact that students might have to work and have other classes to do homework for and her class was one of my favorite classes. She assigned a fair amount of work, graded our assignments a bit more harshly to make up for not assigning a ton of work.Even though she was a more difficult grader compared to most professors, it still didn't take a time machine to get an A in her class. In my opinion, that's the best way to learn. We came out of her class fully understanding the material instead of just understanding bits and pieces of it.
Now that I'm done with my semi-rant, I'll go read my 28 page article written by a former slave in 1863 that I have to fully understand by 3:45. Fun times. This shit's really helping my Chemistry degree.
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On November 19 2010 03:15 Joementum wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2010 02:43 Sadist wrote:
Chronic copying and cheating is the problem here at MSU in engineering from MY EXPERIENCE (keywords).
Solution manuals being out and professors assigning too much homework which is graded is the cause for all of it.
Dont assign mandatory homework and it wont happen, period. Do like in class quizes or projects or something.
As far as essays go im not really sure how to combat it. Its just so lame how stuff like this happens. Theres far too much work assigned.
Senior in Mechanical Engineering here. I don't think not having homework would solve anything. The only thing that would solve cheating, or lower the percentage of cheaters in college would be revamping the education system. Making a student memorize 8 chapters or Organic Chemistry for a semester is not teaching the student anything. All it is teaching the student to do is memorize key points in the lecture and certain types of reactions so he or she could get by with a grade. If the student wants to properly learn all 8 chapters, then he'll have to either study a shit load, which would be impossible with the work load of all your other classes, or start studying before he or she even takes the classes. The only way to fix this would be to make college education longer (1-1.5 years longer, maybe?), but it'll actually be worth it since you would come out knowing more. The education system right now is bullshit. Every professor just throws a bunch of reading at you and expects you to memorize it and fully understand it all within a week. It is getting quite ridiculous in my Organic Chemistry class right now. My professor is expecting us to memorize a chapter a week. I could probably do it if I had no job, no social life, no fun and no work from other classes, but when you're taking the normal amount of credits each semester (4 classes here) then you just won't be able to do everything a professor expects you to do in the allotted time. For example; I have to read and study Chapter 8 & 9 for my next Organic Chemistry lecture since we'll be having a quiz on it. That in itself is about 5-10 hours of just reading and rereading the text book to just understand what is going on. After that, I might have another 5-10 hours or more of doing example problems to make sure I full understand the material. On top of all that, I have Calculus III homework, which I don't find difficult, but it's time consuming since my professor assigns every example problem in the text. That's another 5-10 hours. After that comes my 10 page essay that I have to write analyzing a book about slavery. It's due in about a week and was assigned a week ago. Reading a 500 page book and writing a 10 page essay in 2 weeks is wonderful. Then comes my Physics w/ Calculus class. That's even more work to do. Not only do I have work to do for those classes, I also have Labs that I have to take for Physics and Organic Chem. The labs are ~2 hours each and fairly easy, but writing the reports for them is just ridiculous. I spend about 5 hours writing my Organic Lab reports, but even that isn't enough to get me an A by the professor I have this semester (should've taken an easier Professor -_-) and also spend 2 hours writing my physics reports. This is all weekly by the way. That right there is an average work load for a Chemistry major at my college and I'm not in some prestigious school. I just don't get how Professors expect you to get all that work done, while having a job and some sort of social life. I rarely play video games anymore because I'm always so damn busy, so that's definitely not why I can't finish all my work. The system just needs to be fixed to the point where all Professors actually take into account your other classes and the possibility that you might you know, have to work for a living. I've only ever had one professor that actually took into account the fact that students might have to work and have other classes to do homework for and her class was one of my favorite classes. She assigned a fair amount of work, graded our assignments a bit more harshly to make up for not assigning a ton of work.Even though she was a more difficult grader compared to most professors, it still didn't take a time machine to get an A in her class. In my opinion, that's the best way to learn. We came out of her class fully understanding the material instead of just understanding bits and pieces of it. Now that I'm done with my semi-rant, I'll go read my 28 page article written by a former slave in 1863 that I have to fully understand by 3:45. Fun times. This shit's really helping my Chemistry degree.
For one you're not supposed to have a job, higher education is (supposed to be) a full time commitment and if the course you're attending is decent there shouldn't be any time over for a job if you want any kind of social interaction at all imo.
The rest of your rant is the reason why I went to the UK rather than the US to study for undergrad, being forced to do stuff unrelated to what your are actually studying at a university is incomprehensible to me, however it seems to work well for you guys so what do I know *shrug*
As a chemistry student myself I can't see how approaching organic chem via route memorisation can ever be a good idea though. When you're doing asymetric synthesis they will expect you to _know_ basic enolate chemistry (for example) and if you don't that will hurt so much :/
Much better to think of it as a logic game with really complex rules imo.
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On November 19 2010 03:55 KlaCkoN wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2010 03:15 Joementum wrote:On November 19 2010 02:43 Sadist wrote:
Chronic copying and cheating is the problem here at MSU in engineering from MY EXPERIENCE (keywords).
Solution manuals being out and professors assigning too much homework which is graded is the cause for all of it.
Dont assign mandatory homework and it wont happen, period. Do like in class quizes or projects or something.
As far as essays go im not really sure how to combat it. Its just so lame how stuff like this happens. Theres far too much work assigned.
Senior in Mechanical Engineering here. I don't think not having homework would solve anything. The only thing that would solve cheating, or lower the percentage of cheaters in college would be revamping the education system. Making a student memorize 8 chapters or Organic Chemistry for a semester is not teaching the student anything. All it is teaching the student to do is memorize key points in the lecture and certain types of reactions so he or she could get by with a grade. If the student wants to properly learn all 8 chapters, then he'll have to either study a shit load, which would be impossible with the work load of all your other classes, or start studying before he or she even takes the classes. The only way to fix this would be to make college education longer (1-1.5 years longer, maybe?), but it'll actually be worth it since you would come out knowing more. The education system right now is bullshit. Every professor just throws a bunch of reading at you and expects you to memorize it and fully understand it all within a week. It is getting quite ridiculous in my Organic Chemistry class right now. My professor is expecting us to memorize a chapter a week. I could probably do it if I had no job, no social life, no fun and no work from other classes, but when you're taking the normal amount of credits each semester (4 classes here) then you just won't be able to do everything a professor expects you to do in the allotted time. For example; I have to read and study Chapter 8 & 9 for my next Organic Chemistry lecture since we'll be having a quiz on it. That in itself is about 5-10 hours of just reading and rereading the text book to just understand what is going on. After that, I might have another 5-10 hours or more of doing example problems to make sure I full understand the material. On top of all that, I have Calculus III homework, which I don't find difficult, but it's time consuming since my professor assigns every example problem in the text. That's another 5-10 hours. After that comes my 10 page essay that I have to write analyzing a book about slavery. It's due in about a week and was assigned a week ago. Reading a 500 page book and writing a 10 page essay in 2 weeks is wonderful. Then comes my Physics w/ Calculus class. That's even more work to do. Not only do I have work to do for those classes, I also have Labs that I have to take for Physics and Organic Chem. The labs are ~2 hours each and fairly easy, but writing the reports for them is just ridiculous. I spend about 5 hours writing my Organic Lab reports, but even that isn't enough to get me an A by the professor I have this semester (should've taken an easier Professor -_-) and also spend 2 hours writing my physics reports. This is all weekly by the way. That right there is an average work load for a Chemistry major at my college and I'm not in some prestigious school. I just don't get how Professors expect you to get all that work done, while having a job and some sort of social life. I rarely play video games anymore because I'm always so damn busy, so that's definitely not why I can't finish all my work. The system just needs to be fixed to the point where all Professors actually take into account your other classes and the possibility that you might you know, have to work for a living. I've only ever had one professor that actually took into account the fact that students might have to work and have other classes to do homework for and her class was one of my favorite classes. She assigned a fair amount of work, graded our assignments a bit more harshly to make up for not assigning a ton of work.Even though she was a more difficult grader compared to most professors, it still didn't take a time machine to get an A in her class. In my opinion, that's the best way to learn. We came out of her class fully understanding the material instead of just understanding bits and pieces of it. Now that I'm done with my semi-rant, I'll go read my 28 page article written by a former slave in 1863 that I have to fully understand by 3:45. Fun times. This shit's really helping my Chemistry degree. For one you're not supposed to have a job, higher education is (supposed to be) a full time commitment and if the course you're attending is decent there shouldn't be any time over for a job if you want any kind of social interaction at all imo. The rest of your rant is the reason why I went to the UK rather than the US to study for undergrad, being forced to do stuff unrelated to what your are actually studying at a university is incomprehensible to me, however it seems to work well for you guys so what do I know *shrug* As a chemistry student myself I can't see how approaching organic chem via route memorisation can ever be a good idea though. When you're doing asymetric synthesis they will expect you to _know_ basic enolate chemistry (for example) and if you don't that will hurt so much :/ Much better to think of it as a logic game with really complex rules imo.
Who says I'm not supposed to have a job? Would you like to give me $50 /week for gas? Maybe even more for food every week? It's kind of the standard that you have some sort of job while your in college. At least around here it is. Not everyone has their parents supporting them for everything. I'll admit that my parents pay for my education, but they sure as hell won't pay for anything else. If I want to get to school, I'll have to work for my gas money. If I want to go out with friends. I'll have to work for the money to do so. It just doesn't seem possible for anyone to go through their college years without some sort of job unless that person has someone supporting them financially and paying for every little thing.
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On November 18 2010 11:45 MadVillain wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 11:13 L0CUST. wrote:On November 18 2010 10:57 MadVillain wrote:
I have to consistently disagree with people who say that the current academic system is "deeply flawed." Obviously there could be substantial improvements but I think how it is now is acceptable.
I'm in the sciences so maybe its different, but you can't really get away with bullshitting. If you're a student with a high GPA it means you put in an immense amount of work, either that or you're a genius. Most of the time it's the former. In science at any legit university you need to know you're shit and the only way to get by is to study hard.
The educational system was built to supply factories with competent employees to run them. The concept was, people would go to college to learn and become educated enough to work at factories. In return for going to college they gained "job security" as in they could be fairly certain that they could hold the job for however long they wanted to work there, and not have to worry about being laid off. Well, times have changes. People are no longer granted the same "job security" and the jobs that pay for people to simply go to work and put in time are becoming outsourced or the pay reduced considerably. The jobs that pay well involve different skills now than they did many years ago. The education system hasn't changed at all to accommodate this, which is sad considering how much the world has changed. I don't know what school you went to, but I went to GT for a couple of years (30k a semester for powerpoints got me to leave), and most of my friends and I "bullshitted" our way to 3.0+ GPAs. You don't have to "know" anything, you just need to know where to look for the right information. 1hr per class per week definitely isn't an immense amount of work. I'm currently enrolled in ChemE at the university of minnesota. I can tell you that there is no way putting a mere 1hr per class per week would get you any higher than a 2.0. Its simply impossible, the work load is to high, the concepts and problems too difficult to simply "look for the right information." I can say this is true for almost any engineering, tho chemE is particularly difficult from the general consensus. As far as job security goes, these days graduating with an engineering degree is as secure as you can get really, there is always demand and as long as you make yourself a good candidate you will get a decent job. But I don't see how can pass an extremely difficult exam without actually knowing what you're doing. Speaking of which I need to go study for a couple hours. Ney all night... sigh
shurg its not "impossible". I knew a friend's brother who rarely studied at all for his undergrad degree when he was going for pre-med. He'd be taking "hard" classes like organic chemistry (I've never taken it so but a lot of people bitch about how hard orgo is), never go to class, and just show up for the test and ace everything.
well he's a doctor now making a bajillion a year.
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EPT
