Comment by viccis
20 days ago
>This professor that authored this post is complaining that students don’t have original thoughts. For undergraduates, classes are primarily about competency. Having an original thought is really hard work. You have to have a breadth of knowledge in a field that can’t be attained in an undergraduate course.
It's honestly insane to imagine not expecting an undergraduate to answer a simple question asking for an original thought about a simple topic. The Notes from the Underground example is doing exactly this. "Original enough to be publishable" is not the same as "original". For the latter, it just means that the student thought about a question and gave their own answer rather than repeating some talking point that an internet search or ChatGPT query produced.
You're correct. But I think that it is still difficult to make an argument that is original enough to make a professor happy.
I think most professors are plenty happy with something that shows a bit of thought and analysis. They're not giving PhD quals, we're talking undergrad coursework here.