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[lostreality]

I don't have any amazing stories...but there is this one arrogant guy in my program.  A year or two ago, me and him were chosen as "advanced grad students" to talk to incoming first-years at their department orientation.  I spent the time trying to reassure students, told them that it's normal to feel overwhelmed their first semester, about resources that can help them (advanced grad students, student psych services, the grad administrator, etc), and how many people feel unprepared and that they were let into grad school by mistake, but that this is perfectly normal, and that they were all admitted to the program cause we thought they would do well here, and everyone wants them to do well, etc.

The whole time I was talking this dude kept undercutting me with comments about how he NEVER ONCE IN ALL OF GRADUATE SCHOOL felt insecure or unprepared or overwhelmed about ANYTHING. And how he would NEVER go to the psych office, because he just doesn't have problems like that.  And how HE never thought he was admitted by mistake, and he ALWAYS felt like he belonged in the program

Yeah good for you dude, how is that helpful to anyone else exactly? I was later told by those first years that every one of them thought he was an arrogant d*****bag.

[higherhurdles]

I have a classmate who won a competitive research fellowship from the university that was paid in lump sum. The classmate squandered the money on all sorts of unnecessary luxuries, like a $2,000 sofa and even bragged about it to peers. Hu ended up needing to take an outside job to pay for living expenses, thus defeating the point of the fellowship. Other classmates now refer to this person as "Moneybags" behind hu's back.

In the end though, I don't let people like this bother me. My colleague wasted a golden opportunity to make major progress on their dissertation, and will have to live with the consequences of that. Slow and steady wins the race, not showy and extravagant. Call me superstitious, but I really do believe that people who behave maliciously or selfishly will eventually get a taste of their own medicine.

I don't see how buying a $2000 sofa is any different from bragging about your father who is a tenure track professor at Top 10 school, your big NSF fellowship, your acceptances at 10 other grad schools, the special personal call from Prof. BMOC asking you to please attend this school, your perfect GRE/MCAT/SAT scores, your 4.0 average.

White guys could brag they have alot of cultural advantages getting jobs.

[higherhurdles]

One of my old professors wasn't egotistical as much as extra slovenly. 

Actually, I'd argue that this is egotism raised to a high art: "I can act as I please, with no regard for the sensibilities of others or the manners of polite society, because I am who/what I am."

It's the same thing with tenured professors who teach poorly because they can get away with it; are unprepared to lecture; recycle the same material for every class; brag about not being up-to-date on newer publications/theories; brag about not knowing math/language/Latin when teaching the material necessitates this knowledge; talk only to the one "brilliant" student; talk only the one "whipping post" student; don't know any students' names by the end of the semester; addressing student's by another student's name.

[lostreality]

One of my old professors wasn't egotistical as much as extra slovenly. 

Actually, I'd argue that this is egotism raised to a high art: "I can act as I please, with no regard for the sensibilities of others or the manners of polite society, because I am who/what I am."

It's the same thing with tenured professors who teach poorly because they can get away with it; are unprepared to lecture; recycle the same material for every class; brag about not being up-to-date on newer publications/theories; brag about not knowing math/language/Latin when teaching the material necessitates this knowledge; talk only to the one "brilliant" student; talk only the one "whipping post" student; don't know any students' names by the end of the semester; addressing student's by another student's name.

I'm guilty of not knowing at least half of my student's names by the end of the semester, but in my (ivy) school, most of the undergrads kind of look the same to me- they all have similar hairstyles, are borderline anorexic (at least by the looks of them, I don't have information on their actual eating disorders), and all wear the same overly expensive latest-fad clothes.  For some reason I usually end up having a class that is 90% white women (probably due to the topic and the overall composition of the university).  Plus they're all hiding behind a sea of laptops. Plus I'm generally terrible at remembering people's names.

[conjugate]

One of my old professors wasn't egotistical as much as extra slovenly. 

Actually, I'd argue that this is egotism raised to a high art: "I can act as I please, with no regard for the sensibilities of others or the manners of polite society, because I am who/what I am."

It's the same thing with tenured professors who teach poorly because they can get away with it; are unprepared to lecture; recycle the same material for every class; brag about not being up-to-date on newer publications/theories; brag about not knowing math/language/Latin when teaching the material necessitates this knowledge; talk only to the one "brilliant" student; talk only the one "whipping post" student; don't know any students' names by the end of the semester; addressing student's by another student's name.

Well, with regard to slovenliness, there is a certain amount of bragging in a kind of unkemptness.  Einstein didn't wear socks, so occasionally people who wanted to be thought of as "too brilliant to spend time on worldly trivia" affected the same kind of no socks, wild hair look.  Indeed, the use of the term "longhair music" goes back to the days when classical musicians were thought to be so dedicated to their Art as to have no time for such mundane considerations as haircuts.  I find it ironic that "long-haired hippy freaks" scorned "longhair music."

As far as remembering students' names, I find it difficult too.  It's helped when I made a point of taking attendance every day (which was required when I first came here; now it's still required on paper, but nobody does it, except for me) and handing back tests and homework papers (which, according to our FERPA police, can't be done by handing a stack to a student and saying "find yours and pass the rest on").  Another old trick is to make sure you address them by name once or twice, but that doesn't help me much.

[mountainguy]

The email is over-the-top, no doubt about it. But I'd be pissed too if I worked a regular job and then had the department chair come and try to put the squeeze on me to switch to another section.

I wouldn't send a scolding email and then cc and blind cc a bunch of others, mind you, but I'd be annoyed just the same.

I agree. The student clearly chose to handle the situation in a way that added fuel to the fire, but I can sympathize with the underlying point. If the e-mail had simply been about what an inconvenience this was because of outside commitments without hurling any personal insults, I would find it completely understandable.

[pinkmouse]

The email is over-the-top, no doubt about it. But I'd be pissed too if I worked a regular job and then had the department chair come and try to put the squeeze on me to switch to another section.

I wouldn't send a scolding email and then cc and blind cc a bunch of others, mind you, but I'd be annoyed just the same.

I agree. The student clearly chose to handle the situation in a way that added fuel to the fire, but I can sympathize with the underlying point. If the e-mail had simply been about what an inconvenience this was because of outside commitments without hurling any personal insults, I would find it completely understandable.

Except that by my reading of the story, this student hadn't needed to move sections. His cohort had been asked to, refused due to personal time constraints (it sounded like this guy was not the only one who couldn't make the time change), so another group moved instead. The situation was resolved, and he got to stay in the time-slot he wanted. So why he would send such an angry letter mystifies me.

[marlborough]

I was a "super GTA" in my grad program, teaching a survey class and supervising a GTA of my own to do the grading and assistant stuff.  This GTA was a non-traditional student who thought he knew everything from having watched the History Channel.  He assumed that he would socialize with senior professors because they were of an age, and shunned the Grad student cohort as "kids." 

He was a rotten GTA.  Flat out lied about having copies of a midterm ready, and then tried to blame a female GTA when he still hadn't gotten around to copying and stapling as the test session started.  Blew his chance to be seen and evaluated guest lecturing once by just showing a chunk of a Hollywood movie, because he was too busy to do a real lecture.  Told students that I didn't know stuff because "she was too young to be there to really understand."

Then he published a vanity memoir about his time in the Air Force, and gave me a copy, inscribed "I hope you can learn something from this."  He tried to used said book in lieu of a dissertation and was shocked, shocked that the old boy professors he thought were his buddies wouldn't go for it.

[laurel_knx]

This GTA was a non-traditional student who thought he knew everything from having watched the History Channel. 

Wait... I'm not an expert in psychometrics because I took the SAT? Dangit!!

Seriously, though, what a jerk. I'm glad this story had a happy ending (ego shot down by the good ol' boys). We had a nontraditional student who thought that things her daughter did counted as evidence against the research we read in a Educational Psychology class. I'm not saying anything against older students, but there are those who think too much of the value of experience.

[litcrittr82]

I had someone in my MA cohort whom we all detested.  This person was an older, hippie type who tried to appeal to us whippersnappers by dropping gratuitous drug references.  Any hipness that this person tried to project was always already invalidated by frequent comments about the alleged precociousness of hu's children, named something like River and Pond, or Canal and Reservoir, or maybe it was Bay and Sound.  Hu was, in my view, a total moron, but carried on as though hu was on another (psychedelic?) plane of enlightenment.  It was not uncommon for this person to misuse words in sentences such as these, from my first-year theory seminar:

"There is no equivocation between colonialism and hegemony"
"Nothing was more sanctimonious to the Maasai than music and dance"

and my favorite, a non-sequitor in response to a comment I made once in seminar about punishment and spectacle:

"Foucault wanted to bracket the entire Enlightenment sans-rature [sic]"

I gave a well-received paper in that seminar (orally, mind you), to which hu's only response was 'your punctuation is atrocious.'  I had printed copies for the class so they could follow along, per my professor's recommendation.  Say what you will about my punctuation; but it was later discovered that this person had printed my MS Word paper in some kind of unformatted text version, so question marks appeared for commas and quote marks, and things like that.  Rather than realizing that hu's copy of my text was screwy, hu assumed that I was using question marks, commas, and quote marks interchangeably, and commented on it out loud during the Q&A period.

[kiana]

You know, litcrittr, judging by the description you'd given, maybe the gratuitous drug references weren't only to appeal to you whippersnappers.

[litcrittr82]

You know, litcrittr, judging by the description you'd given, maybe the gratuitous drug references weren't only to appeal to you whippersnappers.

Hehe, very good point. 

[commcycle]

Who else is now using the phrase "stop being such a hu!"

[thebuffster]

Except that by my reading of the story, this student hadn't needed to move sections. His cohort had been asked to, refused due to personal time constraints (it sounded like this guy was not the only one who couldn't make the time change), so another group moved instead. The situation was resolved, and he got to stay in the time-slot he wanted. So why he would send such an angry letter mystifies me.

You're right. People in another cohort could more easily switch, and so they did. Remember, his email came after an email from the chair apologizing for trying to get some people to switch sections.

[comp_queen]

This GTA was a non-traditional student who thought he knew everything from having watched the History Channel. 

Wait... I'm not an expert in psychometrics because I took the SAT? Dangit!!

Seriously, though, what a jerk. I'm glad this story had a happy ending (ego shot down by the good ol' boys). We had a nontraditional student who thought that things her daughter did counted as evidence against the research we read in a Educational Psychology class. I'm not saying anything against older students, but there are those who think too much of the value of experience.

Um . . . I realize we're venting here and trying to get some humorous/stress relief mileage out of annoying-people-in-our-past memories.  However, the bolded text is a great example of why a lot of people dismiss us academic folks out of hand. 

I don't care how many studies somebody publishes stating that XYZ is the case.  If my experience has always shown ZYX to be the case, I will continue to believe ZYX, despite any "evidence" or "research" offered for XYZ.

My favorite example of this is the health article that comes out every now and then claiming that eating greasy foods doesn't cause acne.  Um . . . yes it does.  Next!

Don't you see that you and your fellow students--or perhaps your prof--are being a bit arrogant yourselves by expecting this classmate to believe what's in a book over her own lived experience?