January 29, 2009

Tales from Conversations with Undergrads, Part 2

Ah, a new quarter, a new class populated (in part) by really dumb undergrads. A sampling:

1) Yesterday, I'm having office hours, explaining some stuff on the whiteboard in my office. A lost-looking girl wanders by we have the following conversation:

Her: "Do you know Chris?"
Me: "Like do I know anybody in the world named Chris?"
Her: "Yes."
Me: "Is this a joke?"
Her: "I think my TA's office is next door and his name is Chris but he's not there."

Each office has a list of TAs that inhabit that office on the front door. The office next to me lists no such Chris.

2) The class I'm TAing had the students fill out anonymous surveys on their height, weight, and sex to use for data analysis later in the class. The instructions clearly say:

CIRCLE ONE: MALE FEMALE

One student put a circle in the middle.

3) The instructions also ask for your height in inches, like this: HEIGHT: _______ inches

Many students put something like 5'10". Fine. Maybe they didn't see that they were supposed to put it in inches. But one student wrote this: " 5'1" (I don't know what that is in inches)." This is a STATISTICS class. Yet this idiot either i) doesn't know how many inches are in a foot, or ii) can't do 12*5 + 1.

Amazing.

4) This one comes from my friend Justin:

A (quite attractive) female student approaches him during an exam:

Her: I'm a little confused on this question, can you tell me if I'm on the right track?
Justin (vacantly): OK.... (looks down to see it is a multiple choice question, with "C", the dead wrong answer, circled and no other work) There is no right track, just one right answer.
Her (flirtingly): Yeah, but if there were a right track, would I be on it?
J: (smiles and walks away before giving anything away)


-BRUECHIPS

4 comments:

James P McAteer said...

Ah Students... please post more student anecdotes whenever possible. confirms my suspicions that we are basically doomed as a species.

Memphis MOJO said...

Too funny.

Anonymous said...

More stories about attractive flirty female undergrads please and more stories on the dumb girls too. Thank you.

jmrao said...

in any other circumstance, that girl was on the right track