Yeah college sucks. Now if you'll excuse me I have to study for my 8 exams.
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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My impending mound of essays fills me with dread
Oh boy, here comes an unpopular opinion.Teaching you to read the fine print is doing you a life favor, imo. Yes we wish everyone to be straightforward in social or business contracts, but too often they aren't, on either side of of people bound. Hopefully this professor will teach you to read between the lines, as well. And we being the fallible beings we are, hard-learned lessons stick longer than easy breezy. I would encourage you to see this professor as a teacher and friend, even if they seem adversarial. That's not the same as abusive. Someone tough and fair will end up being someone you can learn from and depend on for wise council, long after the class. Abusive people can teach you things too, like how to stick up for yourself, but hopefully this professor won't go that route.
What the professor is teaching is that they shouldn't be trusted. This destroys what would otherwise be a useful teacher-student relationship and makes it harder to teach and to learn. If the professor's only goal was to teach people to read the fine print then maybe they'll succeed, but they'll struggle to teach the students literally anything after this nasty trick.
I used to have that attitude. Then a year or decades later came to see what they did was a great favor. Imagine, for example, if someone had taught reactionary voters these things, and instead of being openly resentful, we had tucked it in our back pocket and moved on. My life have been simpler. I'm not saying it should be that way, but PR and marketing people exist, regardless.
Eta diplomats, too.
Yes, it's a useful lesson about society, but it ensures you learn nothing else from that professor and might destroy your ability to learn from any of the other professors. They destroyed a safe learning environment to play a nasty trick and teach you a lesson, and in so doing they destroyed their own ability to be a good professor and damaged the institution of learning. At best all they can ever be is "that asshole that taught me not to trust him or anyone else" - that's a horrible learning environment.
This sounds extremely similar to arguments defending archaic parenting methods like beating/spanking children, having them work extremely young, inundating them with chores, etc. because it "builds character".
Just because it's likely for these students to be deceived by bad actors in life is not an excuse to deceive them intentionally to teach them a lesson. You could explain that to them honestly and highlight its importance instead. Eroding trust and building resentment is not helpful.
I said it's going to be unpopular. I also said easy lessons often don't stick. I further said it's not that it should be this way, but that it is. Finally, I said my life would have been simpler had I appreciated these teachers sooner rather than later. But do you. Make my mistakes with different results. I will applaud you and learn from your techniques, should you report back with how you did it
In the meantime, procurement departments and treaties still exist.
Finally, I said my life would have been simpler had I appreciated these teachers sooner rather than later.
So by your own admission it didn't even work. So the piece of information was important but the method of delivery failed, which is the entire point.
All of this was taught to me in a high-school life class. It doesn't need to be done by professors in academic settings where a trust-based relationship is being fostered when there's a class on this entire thing, as well as taxes, writing checks, etc in high-school.
Do schools not have that? Understandable, which doesn't mean that it should be done by professors.
So, I told my perspective and personal experience in simple, straightforward manner. Rather than considering this s a favor, either, people are upset looking for justification of reactionary feelings, which I also already validated. And people are still mad. This is why people do what this professor did. Good on him. He did what was right for students, rather than what's easiest and wouldn't win him popularity points anyway, which also isn't his job.
Advice given, unasked, is never a "favor". Don't expect anything back from it.
Saying that there is a high-school class dedicated to preparing students for that in a more rigorous, disciplined environment that is better suited for teaching life skills isn't reactionary. Actually, I'd argue that it's "good on the professor" for shoving random "life-lessons" in their module is more reactionary, but that's up to you I suppose.
Neither is his job.
It was asked. Because one had this or the other experience doesn't mean we all did. But we will have similar experiences surviving capitalist employment and other dealings.
a more constructive way to do that would be to hide something like "include the word 'porpoise' and win a piece of candy" in the fine print or something
positive reinforcement is generally better than negative
Im almost 30 and a non traditional student. I know how to read the fine print. Hence me noticing this. But these 18 year olds on their first day are getting a bad grade as their lesson. A hole theyll have to dig themselves out of. I dont think its an appropriate way to go about teaching that lesson.
Edit: Maybe youll disagree but the way i view it the goal should be teach first, then test if you learned and grade. You shouldnt be teaching by giving bad grades to people who come in not already knowing the lesson your trying to teach.
There are state and federal requirements for verifying a student’s attendance, both for the student’s sake and the institution’s sake. The method for doing that is largely up to the institution however and your institution may have left it to the professor’s discretion. Or maybe that’s the policy they settled on.
Not sure how that applies here? This is an online only course, and they track when you login.
It applies to all courses. Logging in doesn’t seem to meet the requirements. Someone somewhere has deemed it not functionally equivalent to showing up to class on the first day. 🤷
So how does this requirement to structure your discussion post in a very specific font, and length verify that you attended more so than any other response to the post? To be specific this is a no set meeting times course. Like you go on canvas, do the work, submit it, and thats it. There are no video lectures, or anything like that.
You’re asking the wrong guy. I’m just giving you a potential reason for that asinine shit. Our institution settled on it needing to be an actual Canvas assignment, not simply signing your name. Ask your dean, they had to approve the syllabus for the class I’m sure.
It's just so ridiculous. I'm just here to get a piece of paper(which costs thousands of dollars btw) that says i can do jobs that pay better because im tired of working manual labor for the past decade and getting paid pennies. And its like everything is structured to be as annoying and punitive as possible for no reason. I didnt even get caught by this, but seeing all these other people(mostly kids) who are basically being tricked into a bad grade annoys me. And im sure the professor wouldnt do it if it's not allowed so running to the deans not gonna do anything. I just wish people were nicer to eachother.
I just wish people were nicer to eachother.
I wish that too. But we're not there yet. It's no reason to quit working on it.