Ugh. I had a chinese lady for TA who could not speak a lick of english. She wrote everything on the board. EVERYTHING. You would ask a question, she'd write the answer on the board. No help at all. I went to considerable lengths to pull off an A-
In college I took an Am. History class and we were assigned 2 1page book reports. Both had to be on biographies within certain time frames. I completely forgot about the assignment until the day before it was due. I went to the library, checked out a 600 page book and a 20 page kids book. I read the kids book wrote the paper and used the 600 page book as the title. Got an A. What made it better was that a friend of mine sat right behind me and actually read a 400 page book for her report; she got a B. She was not real happy, when I told her what I had done. She got wise though and did the same thing on the 2nd report, in fact she even used my books. We both got A's on the 2nd assignment.
OMG non-english speaking TA's are the worst. I had a Korean one and Turkish one -needless to say I never bothered showing up for thier office hours.
The instructor was Vietnamese-Quebecois, fresh from the University of Montreal. She was hired because her husband was a hotshot researcher. Her English was atrocious. That's why I taught.
See, I am surprised by that history theses are usually some of the longest silliness around. You are lucky, I spoose. I have known some who wrote a history thesis longer than some dissertations. Google didn't exist when I wrote mine (but I did write it on a real computer, old man). I just used books, journals, and dissertations...and I annoyed the nearby Kinkos (which is odd because it was only a thesis - surely they have had to print multiple copies of longer dissertations). But, yeah, I ended up adding and changing my thesis after it was bound and everything so now I have two versions - the "official", lesser version and the "real" version.
I wasn't in college but in the 7th grade when I pulled something similar to this. I was taking English and one six weeks, we had to do a book report on an autobiography. I exceeded my reach considerably by deciding to do it on Hank Aaron. This book had like 400 pages (which was a lot to a 7th grade kid who didn't really like to read) and I had only read like 20 pages. This wasn't that bad except it was due like in 2 days. So, I remembered a book report that I did on Aaron 2 years earlier (that book was a lot more kid friendly) and just did my book report off of that book but I passed it off that I had done it on the 400 page book. I got an A - made the mistake of telling my parents what I had done and they weren't too happy with me. But I was notorious for not wanting to read things. In 10th grade, I refused to read both The Hobbit and Silas Marner and I still got a B+ in that grading period. As for writing papers...I'm glad that I am finished with school (both undergrad and grad). I remember the final class that I had to take to get my MBA was Business Policy. I had to write a 15 page paper, double spaced, on Wendy's and its position in the restaurant industry. Fortunately, I got to write it with 2 other people as a "group paper". I think we got a B+ on it (our professor was a tough grader), but I got an A- out of the class. 4 pages and single spaced is just a blip on the radar screen compared to what faces you down the road, francisfan.
wow, long o-chem writeups? ours was usually around 6 pages - 1 page intro, prelab questions, another 1-2 for the procedure and MSDS, another 1-2 for results, and then 1-2 for conclusions and postlab questions. we looked back on those longingly when we were doing pchem, inorganic, and funlab. now o-chem the class was hard (75 was an A and the 2nd semester there were 3 A's out of 22, including me with a 75.6 after bombing the final with a 58.5, and my friend with a 74.2 which i guess he was nice and rounded up to 75) and i hated the actual lab (hated all labs dealing heavily with chemicals actually), but luckily the writeups were short.
I have 33 hours left in my ChE degree, but I still have to take Funlab, senior Lab, and Achem/Inorganic lab. Looks like I have to graduate in Fall 08 as there is no way in hell I can pull this off in two semesters. btw, when did you graduate from UT?
My advisor loved research, but was also big on brevity and was a really good editor. He would read something I wrote and then pick a sentence or a reference and say, "Follow that thread... I think there's some good papers at William and Mary" (or any number of other places). I'd troop off and go look through docs and write a chapter. He'd read it and "suggest" I tighten it up... sometime to just a few paragraphs. Of course, this process would also generate other threads he'd want me to take a look at. When I got tired of this routine and finally said, "Look, this is what I think is important and this is what I'm going to focus on," he got a big grin and said "Go write it up!" I did and I was done.
Spring 2004 undergrad, Summer 2006 PE grad. Fundamentals of Laboratory Technique, iirc. definitely nothing fun about it.
Man, don't stick that 5 1/4" on the CPU. We had an IBM Pc Jr, and Pops was interrogating my brothers and I (11, 7 and 5 yrs old) about who put the disk for his typing program on the computer; like we could even remember what the heck we had for lunch that afternoon. I think he realized he was drilling a dry well, cuz that's the one time I don't remember anyone getting punished. Beep, bleeps, KB Tests, dir /w/p, Carmen Sandiego, Karateka, King's Quest I and II, Below the Root and dot matrix printers (and Monster Math and Trivia 101, the two greatest educational games ever written). Didn't see a mouse until 1992, then it was all about Sim City and Civilization, both versions 1.0. Sometimes low expectations are a good thing.
I remember my senior year in high school we were made to write 10 page final papers for honors English. Anyways, I wrote a paper on Allen Ginsberg and I got a B+. For some reason no one got their papers back, but just a grade on a piece of paper. So some kids started thinking the teacher never really read the papers but just gave out cursory grades depending on what your average in the class was. Fast forward a year later, when I am in college, and my good buddy who is a year below is still a senior in high school and in the same class with the same teacher. The teacher assigns the same final paper. I tell my procrastinating buddy to just submit my old paper and see what happens. End result: He gets an A- on the same paper I got a B+ on. The next year, my buddy passed it on to another kid, but this kid got scared and submitted his original work. The year after that, another kid used the same paper and got a B+ as well. About 2 years later, someone told me that my paper was still being used. But I think the ruse ended since a few years after that professors started running papers through electronic verification purposes. Good times.
Not really. I rarely pull all nighters to write papers. I either finish them early or due them the day they're due. I had a 2:30 English Comp class so I'd wake up at 10 and eat, start writing around 11 or 12 be done before 1:30 and get an A. Although I did have one semester where I sorta cheated my way through it. I had Algebra and a Math major roommate who hated to write papers so I wrote all her papers for Poli Sci and she did all my Algebra homework. It work out rather well even though we both got C's because we were on our own for tests.
