Comment by nzzn
20 days ago
People are lazy.
American students are mostly rich by any global standard and very, very lazy. Doesn’t matter a huge amount as they don’t matter — they will amount to nothing anyway. The States imports enough talent to make up for the lacuna. In the meantime, their parents pump cash into what will become their Alma Maters.
When I went to an Ivy League US university as a grad student I was astonished at the remedial nature of undergraduate courses. Content that students in my country mastered at 13 needed to be spoon-fed to US students that were 5-6 years older.
Even back then almost nobody failed a course in the US. It was a major deal to fail someone. I came from a culture where the standard was absolute. No curve. Get below z% and you spent the Summer getting ready for a retake. Fail that, and you were out.
Education was paid by the State so it wasn’t a business. Profs could fail 20 - 40% of a class and often did.
It is astonishing that a Philosophy prof is seeing this. Who the fuck does philosophy at Uni and can’t be arsed to read the recommended texts?
He/she is a full Prof. Almost impossible to fire. So fail the lot of those entitled, lazy, bums I say. Enjoy that tenure!
I graduated from top university. I wasn't a particularly bright student, so I had to study very hard in order to pass classes. Just like you say, professor could fail a third of the class and that was normal. Having a weekend off meant that I was forgetting about something.
After graduation, I stopped learning. The older I get, the less point I see in endless grinding. Sometimes I watch some pop-sci shows on YouTube, but pretty much without any actual knowledge retention. At my work I do the bare minimum not to get fired.
I wonder what does this all mean. On one hand I think that if I worked hard again I could achieve great things. But on the other... god damn, I was constantly depressed as a student. Now that I spend my time just dicking around, at least I don't want to kill myself.