dogsnhorses wrote:
Brian Rad wrote:
In a humanities class , underline the teachers pet words ( "impacted" "euro-centric") in your notes . If they use the word very frequently , underline it more than once . At the end of the semester when you review your notes , make a list of the most frequently used words and if you have an essay test use those words . Don't worry to much about the substance or the veracity of what you are saying ;( think of an Obama speech) whats important is the teacher sees his favorite words .

Tell them what they told you. They are not there to educate you. They are there to indoctrinate you.
Very true. I know of several professors that graded essay tests by looking for key words. If you had already proven you had a good grasp of the subject and participated in class, all you had to do was throw those words somewhere in the blue book to get an A. The more the merrier. If your ability/knowledge was in question, then they'd actually read the essays.

Especially at big schools, this is important. If Profs have 500 essay tests to grade, do you honestly think they read all of them?? No.

True and not true. As a TA, nothing pisses me off more than having a student parrot my own words back to me. Well, maybe getting an answer completely wrong pisses me off more, but I hate it when I can't tell if they learned something or not. And we can tell if you worked with your friends or not. Don't think we don't notice when 4 people have pretty much the exact same answer.

In a big class, especially with an older prof, the parroting method works. They're usually burned out on teaching by that point and have important research going on, so they don't really care about the class. It's a sad fact that most profs don't really want to teach, they just have to as part of their contract.

If you have a smaller class, a TA for a teacher, or a full time lecturer (i.e. doesn't do research) then don't do that. They'll notice and it won't win you brownie points.


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