This technique is more understandable during finals week, that I will grant. But the students in the class I TA seem to think it's TOTALLY AWESOME ALL THE TIME. I anticipate seeing students pretty much non-stop for 7 hours today, because their exam is tomorrow. Again, finals week is okay for that, in my mind.
But I get very annoyed with "my" students. They have a retarded sense of entitlement, like if they don't understand something, that it's not worth doing and someone should just tell them how to do it without producing a single individual thought on the matter. They don't understand that if the only time you put in work is the night before the test, you won't do well.
They don't have any homework (it's a class of 300 people, so homework would be unfeasible), and so they think there's no incentive for actually.... trying to understand the material. I don't get it. I DON'T GET IT. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?Then, when I make them do work during tutoring, they get frustrated with the professor, as if it's somehow his fault they don't understand. Granted, professors should get some blame for students not understanding, but I will side with the professor every time when students (frequently) tell me they don't go to class and don't do the work.
The other thing is that these students have MEMORIES LIKE GOLDFISH. For example, there is a mathematical quantity called expected gain, and these kids have been calculating expected gain since WEEK ONE of this fucking class. I will, without a damn doubt, go to tutoring today and have to re-explain expected gain AGAIN.
Out of all the students I tutor with any frequency (and by "frequency" I mean once a month around exam time), maybe three of them can calculate expected gain without help. Maybe. They have been figuring out this expected gain thing literally all semester long. How is it that you can do something hundreds of times over and not remember how to do it??? The answer: they're not really learning how to do it. It's not a deep concept, by any means, and they can't even be bothered to remember what it is, let alone learning what it is.
Anyway.
I also wanted to talk about football, but I'll be brief. You may remember that I've been making predictions on games the past weeks. Last week I went 13-3. So far this week I am 9-5, YIKES. There are still two games today (Holy cow, Metrodome!), so hopefully I'll hit double digit "wins."
But out of my 5 "losses," two of them are head scratchers in my opinion. (1) What the fuck happened to the Jets? They got humiliated on Monday Night Football, and I really thought they'd come out (at home, mind you!) fired up to bounce back from that. Nope. Instead they played a goddamn miserable game against the Dolphins. (2) Really Seahawks? I know you're not a great team. Hell, you're not really that good of a team. But the 49ers? They have been pretty awful lately, and you guys got trounced! Ugh.
