r/TikTokCringe • u/Saint_Gut-Free tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE • 1d ago

Discussion Don't assign the fucking assignment

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435

u/Project_Valkyrie 1d ago

She's got a solid point.

143

u/Travelcat67 1d ago

For real. Just the cost of college alone, deserves the respect of actual grading. I’d be pissed too.

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u/capntail 1d ago

I could always tell when a prof. assigned an essay and they just wanted you to turn something in to check a box - I'm glad some of them didn't ready my ramblings sometimes.

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u/PracticeTheory 19h ago

I wish I'd realized this sooner. I'd agonize over the writing quality for so long and then feel so much disappointment at the untouched paper.

Prof. G I put my heart and soul into that Ulysses S. Grant report...

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u/capntail 16h ago

I was a poli sci major all I did was write for 4 years. I really didn't pick up on the cues until much later. I honestly don't know how I did it especially one a few that I just phoned in.

Also, as a poli sci major, where all I did was write, I took electives that usually didn't have much of a writing component. The start of my junior semester, I signed up for racquet ball, thinking it was a good change of pace and got me active. I should have known when the teacher introduced himself as a Phys Ed major working toward his doctorate and that this wasn't just going to be an easy A. Greattttt, but I pushed through for a couple weeks.

However, then came the day when he was leaving for a week for some conference. He decided that he didn't want us all to have nothing to do, so he wanted us to read an article on performance-enhancing drugs in sports and write a two-page reaction paper on it. That was it for me! I packed up my shit as he was mid-sentence and headed for the door. I got a, “Hey, where are you going?” I politely said, “All I do is write for my major. I'm not writing in racquetball.” I marched right to Student Services and used an upper-level drop to drop that shit class.

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u/capntail 16h ago

Bonus - I replaced it with Native American Anthropology, huge class but the prof was amazing and it was one of my favorite college course ever.

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u/No_Engineer9446 22h ago

To be fair, professors aren't paid nearly enough for the workload expected of them. Most students now use AI, and lecturers know this, but proving misuse is another matter. Universities are reluctant to fight these battles because student satisfaction ratings matter, often more than academic standards.

That said, OP can't prove the professor used AI either, so there's probably little she can do.

As a lecturer, you eventually reach a point of numbness. You can't force students to learn. When most students put in minimal effort, often relying on AI to do their thinking, it's hard to keep going above and beyond for them. Eventually, you start matching their energy.

I'm not saying it's right, but lecturers are human too. It's a vicious cycle, and the quality of education is suffering.

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u/Travelcat67 22h ago

Yeah but tbf OP is clearly a gifted and hard working student. Maybe at least still try to teach and support these kids.

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u/No_Engineer9446 21h ago

And therein lies the problem. Being vocal, confident and seemingly interested doesn't necessarily make someone a good student. In my experience, some of the most vocal students are the ones who overestimate their understanding and struggle the most with constructive feedback.

They convince themselves they know the material, dismiss feedback, and then fail without understanding why. You can explain their mistakes repeatedly, but they're often too busy questioning your competence to recognise the gaps in their own knowledge. You're suddenly defending your ability to teach a subject you've spent years studying to someone who has barely begun learning it.

I'm not saying OP is necessarily one of those students, but calling someone gifted and hardworking based on a video of them complaining about their professor is precisely the kind of assumption I'm talking about. Confidence isn't competence.

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u/Travelcat67 20h ago

I mean she got a 97. She’s not a failing student.

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u/-tekeli-li 22h ago

It's a solid point because it should be bloody obvious. We are all in a widespread societal agreement that "AI is here to stay though", so we are apparently just going to go with it; dismantling our critical thinking because self debasement and self destruction of the human species is a good trade-off for efficiency.

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u/CeruleanEidolon 21h ago

It's THE point. If you're just going for the degree, what's the fucking use of that? Sure, you need that for your career, but you won't be able to do fucking anything if you aren't doing the coursework to actually earn it.

And your prospective employers will clock this immediately when you can't answer basic questions about the field you're in. Why flush your money down the toilet just to get a rubber stamp? Without the skills, that stamp won't even get you in the front door, let alone a seat in the lobby waiting for a callback.

She has good reason to be pissed at this professor. If the professor can't grade all those assignments herself, that's what TAs are for. There should be plenty of grad students and even undergrads willing to put in the time for a stipend or the experience and a line on their resume. If the university is just going to grade shit with AI, that's fucking free. Students can do that at home.

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u/JetmoYo 23h ago

Except for the hillbilly side-eye towards a PHD in the arts. For its academic or historical aspects, it's legit like any other.

Unless she be side-eying her own fields' PHDs. As a universalist anti PHD pixie- gremlin, which I then mad respect

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u/gundarin 8h ago

I thought she was side-eying the idea of someone with an art PhD using AI, the tool that really hurts artists. 

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u/vivaenmiriana 21h ago

I think it was more a statement on "This person has a PHD, they should be smart enough to assign homework with a thought process in mind and should be smart enough to grade what they assign"

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u/DriveByStoning 21h ago

I actually have zero clue what my math professor does. Everything is on Pearson, the lectures are from years ago, and the study material is either in the text on Pearson or links to fucking Khan Academy.

This isn't like a fly by night online college, it's a DII college. What the fuck am I paying for? I'm only getting a degree to move up in my job. This shit is a scam.

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u/jyunga 19h ago

I remember going to uni 25 years who and I had a professor teaching a bunch of classes (he had horrible broken english) with powerpoint slides. He wouldn't let anyone have them to study with so people searched around other school sites. Found the exact same slides word for for on one of the American uni/college sites. Prof just copied out all the words and pasted them into new slides. I felt so ripped off considering his teaching method was just reciting the powerpoints and not actually coming up with any thing during class.

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u/WhyAmINotStudying 15h ago

She's going to make some corporation a lot of money some day.