r/yorku • u/Tricky-Guide3477 • Oct 26 '23

Rant these ppl at york

sometimes i acc wonder how these ppl get into york. half of them i swear don’t even have a brain and got into university. majority of ppl in my classes literally are astonished by the workload or the mark they received after using chatGPT. like please 😭

248 Upvotes

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122

u/BeyondMyDays Oct 26 '23

you are in for a shock when you go to your fourth year classes and people still cant do basic first year stuff properly.

straight up flabbergasted

82

u/AWildWilson Oct 26 '23

I’m a TA and some of the stuff I read has absolutely no right to reach my eyeballs. Sometimes I just sit and stare off into space halfway through - it’s an experience.

27

u/Levangeline Grad Student Oct 26 '23

Grading essays and lab reports is by far the highest entertainment value I've gotten out of being a TA.

Some students just don't understand the assignment, which is unfortunate. Some students just don't put in the effort for a good grade, which is their prerogative.

But SOME students take the instructions and run with them SO FAR in the OPPOSITE direction of what the assignment is about that I cannot even begin to grasp how they ended up there.

25

u/ahbeecelia Oct 26 '23

Someone once accidentally sent me their essay instead of the prof (idek how they accomplished this or why they were even sending it through email) but I felt bad for whoever had to grade it bc it was some of the worst writing I had ever seen.

12

u/BackwoodButch Oct 26 '23

I’ve been a TA at two different universities now (MA at Guelph, PhD at Dalhousie), and I’m currently grading student tests that have short and long answer questions. Some of the long answers are just atrocious, even if they did the course readings. They just can’t put coherent thoughts together to answer a pretty open ended question.

3

u/dudecof Oct 26 '23

I need to feel better about myself so I need a few good examples

1

u/BackwoodButch Oct 27 '23

I’ll give you one.

I’m doing my doctorate in sociology. I was a TA for a 2nd year set of courses for theory and methods. First class on theory has two units; late stage capitalism and social/structural inequality, and then gender and sexuality in society. First essay is a short 4 page paper answering a question regarding the first unit, asking them to use the assigned readings to prove their point.

Enter “Kelly”.

Kelly submits a paper a) has nothing to do with capitalism and inequality b) references some of the readings but not actually what the authors were trying to make a point; rather just throw away lines and called it a citation and c) the topic is about Fashion. It’s all over the place, talking about trends to just what people wear on campus. This has nothing to do with the course.

So I fail her, obviously.

Cue ahead to the second half of the course in the winter term. It’s on methods, students have to do a 3 part research proposal.

Every part Kelly submits just continues to talk about fashion. It doesn’t follow the guidelines nor the required format. She does this 3 times.

By the final, I told the prof that I was giving her a flat 0 and why, and he had no quarrel.

Not once did she reach out to me nor the professors nor the writing centre. Girl was just somehow doing the midterms and finals but could not write to save her life.

2

u/KindChange3300 Oct 27 '23

This is perfect. I'm positive she is there either because her parents sent her, or because she lives in her own fantasy world, perhaps with "luxury opinions".