A piece of advice to all the first year students I have or will have: To hell with your parents' expectations.
Mommy and Daddy have spent the past 18 years of your life hovering over you, awarding you 9th place ribbons. Your parental overcompensation has come in heaps and droves. Consequently I see students who, after getting their first B back on a paper, clutch their chest in agitation; some even break down. One student told me just last week that "I know I seem calm right now, but I'm actually very troubled that I got a B+ on this test." Another one asked, in response to an A on a paper, "What could I have done to have made this a perfect, A+ paper?" I wanted to answer that he could have kissed my ass.They don't give a shit what they've learned - it's all about the letter stamped on the end. I marvel at what kind of rubber-stampers these students had in the past, particularly the first-year student in my composition course who told me, quite seriously, that "our high school teachers used to do all this for us."
High school doesn't live here anymore, Laguna Beachers, and you're all high off your ass if you think any of the following:
- your tuition dollars entitle you to an A in my class
- I work for you
- my research and scholarship is purely confined to the realm of a university and has no use in the "practical" world
- I will acknowledge that your status as "millennial" students in some way legitimates my having to repeat things about my courses that can easily be found my READING the fucking syllabus
I mean, are you even in college to learn? Anything? Do you even know how to think for yourself? I'd much rather have a student who didn't give a shit about a B average, but loved to debate me on topical content of a course, than one who debated me BECAUSE he got a B.
In the real world, no one gives a flying fuck about whether or not your GPA was a 3.8 or a 4.0. This type of shit seriously portends an increase in cardiac arrests for your generation.