so...pissed...off...right...now
Aug. 15th, 2003 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gmonkey42 It all started out innocently enough: Sam the teacher mentioned to me, because he knows I'm a geneticist, that some microbe had just been discovered that can survive in 250 degrees Fahrenheit or something. Which was cool. Then some - there isn’t really a word to express it properly, so I’ll just say shit-head – pipes up: “So do you believe in evolution?” Sam said “Yes.” I laughed derisively and said that’s like asking someone if they believe in gravity. Because it is. Then Mr. Shit Head starts going on with one of the dumber creationist arguments I’ve heard: “If we evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?” Unfortunately, I wasted a few precious seconds I could’ve spent pounding his head into the desk just gaping at him, because I couldn’t believe anyone actually took that argument seriously. After ascertaining that yes, he was serious and no, he’d never taken a biology class, I started to explain to him how the whole population of monkeys didn’t evolve into us, just a few, or even one, individual monkey, and how this is possible because random mutation is happening all the time. Then the teacher, in his misguided attempt to help, brought up Hiroshima, and how survivors of the bombing had detectable mutations. Idiot Boy said “yeah, but that’s different; that’s man-made mutation” (only he would probably have said it without the semi-colon). Turns out the boy doesn’t believe in mutation. So I tried to undertake the daunting task of explaining how DNA works to someone with the brains of an eggplant but at that point it was time for class to start. Then, during the break, Idiot Boy brings it up again, so I have another go at explaining how mutation is a natural process that’s going on all the time and then the little fucker got all upset and said “I wasn’t talking to you – I was talking to Sam.” Then, to try to hide the fact that he couldn’t beat the average sea urchin at a game of wits, he starts trying to make fun of me to the class, pointing out how I’m jumping in, trying to start an argument or something. Then it was time to take our midterm. So I took it and now I’m done and out in the computer center, venting. Ahh, that’s better. I just hope this guy drops the class soon. I know he will eventually. He can’t write any of his programs himself. And I’m NOT fucking helping him any more. The little shit. Aw, who am I kidding, I’ll probably wind up answering his questions, just as I do with everyone else. You know what really cheeses me off, though? How he’ll acknowledge that I am, without hyperbole, a MILLION times smarter than he is when he needs my help, but when I’m talking about evolution, I can’t possibly have any more insight than he.
Lest you think I was provoking him, I didn’t call him Idiot Boy to his face, or anything.
I was already getting sick of him. He has the worst attitude towards this class. He’s one of those people who divides everyone into “book smart” and “street smart” and believes himself to be in the latter category. I’ve been thinking about this, because I’ve been accused by a number of the self-proclaimed “street smart” of being “book smart,” as if being book smart isn’t vastly superior, and I think I’ve figured it out: book smarts means real intelligence – logical, problem-solving, analytical ability, which may or may not be (but more often is) coupled with knowledge. Street smarts, by contrast, don’t actually have anything to do with intelligence; rather they involve a willingness to behave immorally. For example: in our class, there was one assignment where we had the option of writing one of two programs and if we wrote both, we’d get extra credit. Each program had about three parts. So I wrote both, naturally. I was talking to Dickhead a few days ago before class (it wasn’t my idea. I was just minding my own business, reading my textbook, when he struck up a conversation) and he boasted about how he was only going to write the first part of each program, which would be easier than writing one whole program, and with partial credit on both, still get a decent grade. He didn’t say it but I’m sure he thought I was wasting my time completing an assignment when I didn’t have to. The points he’s missing are: 1. it’s not as if I didn’t have the option of doing what he did; he acts like he was smart enough to do it and I wasn’t but the fact is that he was lazy and dishonest enough to do it and I wasn’t; and 2. we’re taking this class voluntarily. What we actually learn matters a lot more than our grades. Cutting corners on assignments doesn’t do him any good in the long-term, or even in the short-term, really, since the teacher makes it absurdly easy to get high grades anyway. The teacher must have known people might do that with the extra credit and he must not have cared whether they did, or else he wouldn’t have made it possible.
Why, oh why am I surrounded by the anti-intellectual? I seriously need to get the hell out of here. I can only console myself with the fact that the stupid people are bound to drop the class sooner or later, because in previous classes they always have.
Lest you think I was provoking him, I didn’t call him Idiot Boy to his face, or anything.
I was already getting sick of him. He has the worst attitude towards this class. He’s one of those people who divides everyone into “book smart” and “street smart” and believes himself to be in the latter category. I’ve been thinking about this, because I’ve been accused by a number of the self-proclaimed “street smart” of being “book smart,” as if being book smart isn’t vastly superior, and I think I’ve figured it out: book smarts means real intelligence – logical, problem-solving, analytical ability, which may or may not be (but more often is) coupled with knowledge. Street smarts, by contrast, don’t actually have anything to do with intelligence; rather they involve a willingness to behave immorally. For example: in our class, there was one assignment where we had the option of writing one of two programs and if we wrote both, we’d get extra credit. Each program had about three parts. So I wrote both, naturally. I was talking to Dickhead a few days ago before class (it wasn’t my idea. I was just minding my own business, reading my textbook, when he struck up a conversation) and he boasted about how he was only going to write the first part of each program, which would be easier than writing one whole program, and with partial credit on both, still get a decent grade. He didn’t say it but I’m sure he thought I was wasting my time completing an assignment when I didn’t have to. The points he’s missing are: 1. it’s not as if I didn’t have the option of doing what he did; he acts like he was smart enough to do it and I wasn’t but the fact is that he was lazy and dishonest enough to do it and I wasn’t; and 2. we’re taking this class voluntarily. What we actually learn matters a lot more than our grades. Cutting corners on assignments doesn’t do him any good in the long-term, or even in the short-term, really, since the teacher makes it absurdly easy to get high grades anyway. The teacher must have known people might do that with the extra credit and he must not have cared whether they did, or else he wouldn’t have made it possible.
Why, oh why am I surrounded by the anti-intellectual? I seriously need to get the hell out of here. I can only console myself with the fact that the stupid people are bound to drop the class sooner or later, because in previous classes they always have.
