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Strands of society you have a (possibly irrational) unshakeable hatred of

Started by 23 Daves, December 19, 2005, 05:33:38 PM

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Blue Jam

Quote from: "Suttonpubcrawl"
Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"Then again, you've got students who play up to the student stereotype, and they deserve the contempt they get.

What exactly is the student stereotype, and why do such people deserve contempt?

I knew a few guys like this when I was at uni (2000-2003, straight after my A levels in case you were wondering); one seemed to think that being a student was all about nicking traffic cones, dancing to crap, cheesy music every night, never doing any work, staying in bed until the bar opened, never having a hangover because he never stopped drinking, etc. Most people knew him as "Freddie The Twat."

Most of us worked fucking hard, the few who were like this just made me angry; I was working nights, over 35 hours a week at one point, so practically full-time. Most people I knew had jobs come to think of it. I've certainly been less stressed *since* I finished uni- the idea that uni is a convenient stop between living with your family and "the real world" really pissed me off; for most people uni isn't some magical land where food and rent are free and all the bills are paid for you.

Edited to add that there was very little political activity and protesting going on while I was at uni, and I was about the only one of my friends who'd seen Withnail and I


23 Daves

It's hard to generalise about students, because they all have completely different work rates and motivations - art students generally can get away with a little bit more thinking and idling time than, for example, engineering students manage.  And Medical students have an intense workrate which seems to manifest itself in all sorts of odd, stressed out behaviour.  There are exceptions even to these rules, though.

One thing I will say, however, is that shortly after graduating from university I moved in with a bunch of locals, some of whom were a bit younger than me.  What was noticeable then was the fact that despite their age and their relative lack of qualifications, they did seem a lot more switched-on and mature than many students, as did their friends.  It could have been a fluke, but when it came to handling money, outsourcing work, dealing with relationships, etc, they were a lot more switched on than your average second year degree student.  

The problem with university is you can easily exist in a coccoon there if you choose to, and with some people this seems to involve an artificial extension of their adolesence.  I'm friendly with some very recent graduates now, and what's noticeable about a lot of them is that they're utterly socially cumbersome (responding monosyllabically to friendly strangers they've been introduced to and causing slight offence), have two week relationships that are blown up into epic lovelorn events, and complain about the fact that they have to work in offices doing the stuff most people have to do - as if having a degree means you're instantly promoted to the ranks of management.  Other than that, they're intelligent, interesting company, and reasonably motivated, but there's a definite experience and maturity gap between them and people of an equivalent age I work in my office with.   Who, in turn, aren't necessarily as intellectually switched on (in some cases)... nobody's perfect, after all.

There are exceptions to the above rule, of course, but I'm just repeating what I've witnessed in my experience.  And I've been equally guilty of similar naive behaviour myself in the past.

gazzyk1ns

I think the word "student" is the biggest problem with all these generalisations, it's a pretty useless word now. Surely calling yourself "a student" is the same thing as saying "I have a job" these days? "Students" are people who have just started 6th form, "students" are people doing an HNC in media studies in Ipswich, "students" are people doing a degree at Sheffield Hallam, "students" are people doing a Ph.D. at Oxford. The word has virtually no meaning any more. Going back to what I said at the start, you'd not attempt to generalise about "people with jobs", would you...

23 Daves

Quote from: "gazzyk1ns"I think the word "student" is the biggest problem with all these generalisations, it's a pretty useless word now. Surely calling yourself "a student" is the same thing as saying "I have a job" these days? "Students" are people who have just started 6th form, "students" are people doing an HNC in media studies in Ipswich, "students" are people doing a degree at Sheffield Hallam, "students" are people doing a Ph.D. at Oxford. The word has virtually no meaning any more. Going back to what I said at the start, you'd not attempt to generalise about "people with jobs", would you...

Of course you would!  They're all meaningless drones who watch quiz shows on ITV in the evenings, aren't they?  And they wear suits, the Nazis.

I generally take the word "student" to mean someone at full-time university - we didn't really refer to ourselves as 'students' at sixth form college.  And university is a very contained, self-sufficient environment.  Some university campuses are so well developed that the students don't even need to leave them to go into town very often, and I think, like it or not, that might have an effect on the behaviour of a lot of people - your life can become your degree, the people (usually of your own age) you associate with, and your own belief in your greatness (which hasn't actually been tested in the outside world yet).

And, speaking personally, I drank a lot more as a student than I have at any point in my life since, largely because it was cheap to do so and the social opportunities were far more varied and frequent.  I wasn't trying to be a "pissed up student", and I certainly didn't steal road cones, but the environment itself was very conducive to that kind of behaviour.  These days if I want to score drugs or get drunk, I have to worry about the fact that I might have work the next day, or the fact that a lot of my friends might be tired or busy.  Those kinds of problems don't really present themselves so much at university (except when essays are close to their deadlines) so there's bound to be a bit more hedonism, which leads on to those cliches.  You do have lectures and seminars to attend, but on some courses you are quite free to be your own boss, which isn't a bonus that's presented itself much in my life since.  

I also think that there's a lot of ageism at university as well, because the students just don't have to integrate with older people as often.  And that in turn leads to the extension of a lot of silly adolescent behaviour which might otherwise be stemmed by outside world responsibilities.  Or national service.  One or the other.  Ahem.

Things may have changed a lot though.  I got a grant in my day which stretched surprisingly far (though at the time we obviously complained that it didn't go far enough) especially if I budgeted sensibly.  I'd be amazed if a lot of students these days were as casual about their degrees as many of my friends were.  They've just got so much more to lose.


Almost Yearly

I just sat having a coffee next to four students. There was the one with the bleached spiky hair and the little beard who was quite funny, his mate who liked him a lot and thought he was really funny, an american asian one who liked himself a lot, and a girl one who only liked spiky. They were having a chirpy enough self-absorbed conversation about what they studied, how they studied it, under whom they studied it and how useless that person was, and what they were going to do when the studying stopped. I wouldn't take any of that away from them, they were positive and sober, but honestly it was a very very boring thing to listen to. More boring than fishermen talking about fishing, mothers talking about their kids, old people talking about the world being in ruins, etc, etc. There was this unmistakeable air of none of them having actually dealt with anything real yet, which might well not be true, but the air was there and it made a few eyes roll at adjacent tables.


23 Daves

I used to actually work at a university - this year, in fact, it was the job I was made redundant from - and you'd hear conversations like that all the time.  I think the most common catchphrase was "I'm just so stressed about this essay".  Now, fair enough, coursework can actually be quite stressful, but it's never as important as it seems at the time.  If you're a bright student, you can even get away with flunking the odd essay or two, provided you make up for it with some particularly good ones earlier or later.  The outside world affords very few second or third chances.  If you fuck up once, people get very cagey around you.  Fuck up twice, and it takes years for people to forget, if they ever do.

I do find myself having to hold my tongue a lot around some people.  There was a point this year where I'd just been made redundant and was living in a shithole, and a recent graduate "knew where I was coming from" because she owed her parents "money for the mortgage" on a flat they'd got her as an investment in East London.  I mean, it's just not quite the same thing - in no way is the stress particularly comparable.  She was also complaining about having to do a part-time job and write at the same time... I've held down a full time job and written for the last eight years or so.  Most irritating.  I'm envious, obviously, but I quite like it when people I'm envious of don't whine about their enviable lot.

wasp_f15ting

Its a class thing maybe.. even though I came from a middle class family I need to put in 48hrs a week to get a fucking pay cheque.. the government is not geared to handle people who want to work and study.

I do not get any support or help in any form. I am disallowed a full SLC loan because my dads pension is too high. So I have a none income based allowance for my books etc.  My parents left me here (and fucked off to India) in 2002 and they still assess his fucking pension before giving me a chance..

There is no support either if you want to get a professional qualification like the law practitioners course or bar vocational course (to become a barrister) which cost £8500+ to do, so you can save the money yourself by working your balls off, or get another fucking loan.

There are two choices, work or study. I think they want it that way to keep the peons at the level where they can spit at them. I am not even sure how I am classified; when I go to a bank they never calculate my income for some reason. Even though, I am a full time worker with a permanent contract.

We need more bloody flexibility these days; there are enough options out there for people to work and study. The only way I am getting around it is by doing my uni work at work (since I work nights and it gets quiet after 2, so I have 4hrs to study) and I am at uni for 12hrs in two days. So I take my 21 days holiday a year every other Monday of each month so I can get sleep.... I will be so glad when all this ends :( just to take the piss though I really like how my measly £100 interest had £3 taken out of it. I love you taxman :-D

Mister Cairo

I think the character of the university (how political it is, how well-run it is, is it campus or city) can have an effect.

I would disagree about ageism though, I've noticed quite a lot of mature students on my course, and most of the lecturers and library staff are above 30

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Who here actually has an unshakable hatred of students? I was looking through the thread and can't find it.

23 Daves

Quote from: "Mister Cairo"

I would disagree about ageism though, I've noticed quite a lot of mature students on my course, and most of the lecturers and library staff are above 30

Hmmm... The mature students didn't really integrate terribly well with the others at my university, and it wasn't for want of trying as well.  There genuinely was a mentality of "go away, you're old", and I've witnessed this again myself quite recently.  If you're over 28, to a lot of students (and indeed young people) you almost become a non-person.  I've noticed this on some forums online as well, though thankfully not on here.

I can quite honestly say that I was never like this - even at the age of 18 I had mates who were in their late twenties - but for some peculiar reason, a lot of students are.  If you're at a party filled with them and you tell them your age, they visibly balk.  And then if you tell them you're married, Jesus Christ, the conversation completely terminates.  

Mind you, the mature student friends I had at university were actually among the most emotionally damaged, bitter and insecure of the lot, so I'm not too sure what that means.  A lot of them seemed to turn to study when everything else in their lives - relationships, careers, mental health - had failed.  Some of them were even more brattish and demanding than we were.  What point I'm trying to make here I don't know...

Shoulders?-Stomach!

This might be a case of unusual circumstances but for my first year I lived in a big, big house with about 25 other people, half of which were foreign students, some were mature students and some were mature foreign students. It wouldn't be innacurate to say that by the end we all got on fantastically well, and I can't think of a time where I'll ever be in a situation like that again, unfortunately. It was a big melting pot of cultures and ages and we all benefited from it, I think.


sproggy

Quote from: "Janek's Little Black Box"...what I'm saying is that I've spent the great bulk of my life being a student, and being a very good one at that, and pretty much everyone I meet thinks I'm a twat.

If it's any consolation people like Newton and Brunel were twats and went on to achieve greatness. I am, of course, assuming your Doctorate is genuine and will somehow benefit the world around you in some way, in which case you have earned the right to be a twat.


Mr. Analytical

Quote from: "Janek's Little Black Box"Actually whilst I was at Cambridge someone compared me to Newton. They said 'You're very much like him you know, you're from Lincoln, go to Cambridge, are a gifted physicist, and are a wretched and genuinely hateful human being.' Charming.

 At least you're not a weirdo mystic.

sproggy

Quote from: "Janek's Little Black Box"As for my Doctorate, yes that's genuine enough, although it is in a very specific area of Cosmology that I doubt will really benefit anyone except me in the long run.

Edit: ?


Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer

I can't find a proper place to put this, but it sort of links in with this thread. I don't mind people having strong opinions that differ from mine, but I despise people who promote their knee-jerk opinions without any solid basis. Such as this new reason to hate Justin Lee Collins:

QuoteAnd I hate Shakespeare. I think Shakespeare's rubbish.

I don't mind people disliking Shakespeare, even though I think he's one of the greatest writers who's ever lived - but that's my subjective opinion. But for fuck's sake, give a reason why Shakespeare's rubbish. It's like those fuckers at school who whinge 'Shakespeare's boring!' Perhaps we should study Titus Andronicus - that's got cannibalism, rape, torture, mutiliation, human sacrifice and lots of death. That enough for you?

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: "Janek's Little Black Box"As for my Doctorate, yes that's genuine enough, although it is in a very specific area of Cosmology that I doubt will really benefit anyone except me in the long run.
Fascinating.  (And I mean that.)

I guess it was even more fascinating before you and Sproglette edited.  Shame.

Almost Yearly

No it was some rubbish about Dr Who. Cuh, bloody "intelligent" people.

humanleech

Quote from: "lazyhour"Tip for selfish, inconsiderate people who have a problem with taking their shoes off in other people's homes:  Don't go to Japan
Or North America, so I'm told. However, my immediate reaction to British people who ask you to to take your shoes off is that they're prissy, prim and priggish, and are more concerned with order and cleanliness than letting go and enjoying life.
More than that, I don't feel that I can relax in someone's home after being told to take my shoes. I might do something else terrible, like ask for sugar in my tea.

mook

I must be a right contrary cunt then, I can't relax inside a house unless I've kicked my shoes off. It looks daft to me, people sitting around in a house with outside shoes on, it can't be comfortable. Mind, the first thing I do when I get home is go and get changed into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and turn the heating up full whack if it's a bit chilly, I'll be fucked if I'm going wander about in my own house with a load of clobber on.


Please excuse this post, today is my first drink after 5 solid days of the lurgy.

sproggy

Quote from: "humanleech"More than that, I don't feel that I can relax in someone's home after being told to take my shoes.

But you're quite happy and relaxed at the possibility of doing a 'Chegwin' and treading dog shit into your hosts' carpets?

Very odd.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

I know a few people who work in higher education, and they're constantly dismayed by 'today's students' - one change they note is that students now see themselves as consumers, people who have a right to complain if the course isn't going exactly how they want it. Which you might think is understandable if they're paying huge amounts of money in fees, but it causes lecturers to tear their hair out.

The teacher/student relationship isn't what it was - you can't just turn up at a lecture and waffle for 50 minutes, you have to provide bulletpointed handouts and weblinks and perform elaborate Powerpoint shows. A few lecturers say 'fuck off' and do it the old way, but they risk the students complaining about them being unprofessional. Even though they're 19 and know nothing.

Dubzilla

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"I know a few people who work in higher education, and they're constantly dismayed by 'today's students' - one change they note is that students now see themselves as consumers, people who have a right to complain if the course isn't going exactly how they want it. Which you might think is understandable if they're paying huge amounts of money in fees, but it causes lecturers to tear their hair out.

The teacher/student relationship isn't what it was - you can't just turn up at a lecture and waffle for 50 minutes, you have to provide bulletpointed handouts and weblinks and perform elaborate Powerpoint shows. A few lecturers say 'fuck off' and do it the old way, but they risk the students complaining about them being unprofessional. Even though they're 19 and know nothing.

I'm not sure if this is true.  I started University this year as a mature student and I've noticed, if anything, it's the University that's obssessed with seeing students as consumers.  The day barely goes by without a Department or Faculty distibuting feedback sheets or holding discussion groups or meetings to find out what we think about them and in what ways the course could be 'improved'.  For the most part students aren't interested at all, they just want to come along to the lecture, sit down and take notes.   You know the old fashioned way.

That takes me on to the other strand of your comment about lectures.  By far the most popular lecturer on my courses is an ancient old Classics professor who, much to the amusement of the entire hall, apologised to the class recently for forgetting his professors robes.  I'd say the majority of the lectures are of the old fashioned 'waffling' variety and in my experience students far prefer them and learn more from listening to the traditional type of lecture than they do with those delivered via Powerpoint.  To me it is the poorer  lecturers  that use Powerpoint to cover up their weaker  teaching skills rather than beacause of any demand from the student body for 'flashy' lectures..

mayer

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"The teacher/student relationship isn't what it was - you can't just turn up at a lecture and waffle for 50 minutes

Hehehhe. I went to two Universities in the 00s. Bollocks you can't. Most did.


Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"it causes lecturers to tear their hair out.

Lecturers, in my experience, are all writing papers and books, and undergraduates equals about £12k a year which pays their rent and meagre drugs bill, and that's all we were and we knew it. Mercenaries the lot of them. A friend from my year is teaching logic to first years in Manchester now. As he puts it, "it's toss easy and it pays the rent".

I've gone through well over a dozen lecturers and met four that gave a shit about (i) the course, or (ii) der kids. Most lecturers think "teaching" undergraduate courses is beneath them, and most of those are clearly not afraid to make that blatantly obvious



Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"they risk the students complaining about them being unprofessional.

Oh come on. Students today don't turn up to lectures. I certainly didn't. In four years at University I never learned a single thing at a lecture. I wasn't meant to. Lectures are there for PhD students, proffessors and bookwriters to earn a wage whilst they smoke shit grass and insult kids in the pub.

Annie_Hall

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"I know a few people who work in higher education, and they're constantly dismayed by 'today's students' - one change they note is that students now see themselves as consumers, people who have a right to complain if the course isn't going exactly how they want it. Which you might think is understandable if they're paying huge amounts of money in fees, but it causes lecturers to tear their hair out.

The teacher/student relationship isn't what it was - you can't just turn up at a lecture and waffle for 50 minutes, you have to provide bulletpointed handouts and weblinks and perform elaborate Powerpoint shows. A few lecturers say 'fuck off' and do it the old way, but they risk the students complaining about them being unprofessional. Even though they're 19 and know nothing.

hmmmm.  I've been a lecturer in further education (college and University) for the last five years, and all in all I agree with you.  Although it does depends on the class, really, and the calibre of student.   I find that classes that force the students to write, think and actually DO something, are always met with resistance, AND, it's always the lecturer's or the college's fault!

For example, in my practical photography classes or the adobe classes I run, everybody is happy to work through whatever assignment they have.  They take their Camera's (provided by the college) and go do their thing about campus and you don't hear a word of complaint.  I take the same group for a basic skills class (basic maths and English) and the whole thing goes to the wall.  Complaints about the size of assignments, the amount of support within classes, they complain about having to bring their own pens! Apparently pens should be provided, along with the paper pencils, rulers, rubbers, calculators etc.  They complain about the literature they are asked to read in 'Their own time' and don't see why education should bleed into their out of college hours! Mercy!