University of Chicago Tells Incoming Students: Don't Expect Safe Spaces or

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > University of Chicago Tells Incoming Students: Don't Expect Safe Spaces or

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

this poo poo is so overblown it is unbelievable. I'm a TA at a massive public university helping with the most offensive possible classes, history, and never once have i even heard teh words "safe space" uttered IRL except for by crazy wingnut conservatives in my cohort

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 19:48

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:25

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

moridin is legit one of the best gbs posters

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 19:49

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

down n out posted:

God forbid people have to think about difficult subjects. All the young safe-spacer types think they're so unique, quirky, and literally a genius. Enforce some rules on them and tell them they're not special and they have pretty epic breakdowns lol

these blue haired menaces everyone imagines ruining college aren't real

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 19:53

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

the professor i'm working for this semester had a student write to the admin saying he was a german jew trying to rob her of her faith thouh, which is funny.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 20:00

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

Sp1r0_Agn3W posted:

what about that really fat bitch that got real mad and jiggly at based fag milo

well they're not ruining anything but their own health. there is one at my school, a huge fat retard who stands around with fat acceptance signs from time to time.

this is her

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 20:04

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

what i mean is they're effectively nonexistent insofar as literally nobody listens to anything stupid undergrads have to say

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 20:04

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

scott zoloft posted:

are you guys all in college or something? i can't imagine anyone having an opinion about nu-liberal college culture unless you're currently enrolled or recently graduated.

i'm a grad student so if i play my cards right i will literally never leave college

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 20:17

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

Wowbagger2004 posted:

Two ladies at work were trying to figure out how to separate desks (it's a cubicle farm hellscape) and I wanted to help but chose not to for fear of being accused of mansplaining.

That is my story about the recent gender paradigm.

thats a stupid thing to fear

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 20:20

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

i despise the idea of cultural appropriation but luckily i have never ever heard it mentioned by even the most left wing professors i've had

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 20:52

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

i get a text message every time someone from university gets victimized and every single year during freshman welcome week the robberies spike like crazy

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 21:19

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

lmao at people concocting increasingly specific hypothetical scenarios where trigger warnings go too far

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 21:27

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

though i did have a prof once let people leave if they were too disturbed by Night and Fog, that coddling fucker

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 21:28

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

Decebal posted:

Isn't exposure to a certain stimuli a way to get rid of phobias ?

Maybe they need to be "triggered" until the brain doesn't respond in such a way ? Nothing can have the same impact it had the first couple of times if you do it repeatedly.

exposure therapy for rape has proven to be ineffective iirc. people didn't respond well to repeated rapes

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 21:29

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

WW1 and 2 hosed like everybody on earth up for ~25yrs

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 21:40

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

naem posted:

I made this gamble once (the most dangerous game)

how did it go for you? people are telling me to start thinknig about a PHD program and my professors are all confident i could probably find funding but like, the life of an academic these days sucks poo poo so hard

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 22:38

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

the real problem with college students today is that they can neither read nor write. this whole feelings thing is overblown, we should address the overwhelming illiteracy issue first and foremost. make people read books and poo poo

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 22:39

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

mdm posted:

Their economics department triggers me

same, unironically

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 22:39

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

EugeneJ posted:

Didn't US schools stop teaching cursive a few years ago?

Signatures are a thing of the past

cursive doesn't matter, its being able to process and articulate ideas that matters, fuckin type it up or whatever its 2016

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 22:43

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

the invisible hand groped ym donger

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 22:50

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

Fire Barrel posted:

Depending on the field/program/school, funding can be hit or miss. History, a field really experiencing some woes in this regard, is a good example of this. Early Modern England, for example, is a hard sell and fewer schools are going to seriously fund those types of programs/grad students. Modern US or Modern China? They generally have better funding. Then again, some grad programs also prevent you from working outside jobs, making low stipends even harder, especially for humanities students. If you're really committed to the field you can push through.

Otherwise, you can sometimes find professional degree programs that allow you to use your education thus far while learning technical skills and the like.

As for this point, low quality writing was sadly common when I was a TA, I saw a lot of this poo poo. Especially when I had a prof that gave more short answer questions. Lot of shallow, choppy writing and a lot of students always wanted to turn test problems into simple yes/no questions. Even happened during discussion sections when they were trying to talk through primary sources. To do anything about that problem, though, you'd have to start with K-12 education imo.

yeah i'm doing my thesis on late-20th century intellectual history and philosophy so i doubt i'll be able to secure funding to write baout that kind of arcane nonsense, which is a shame, because i love history more than anything. just seems like a history PHD right now would be a bad idea. also, yeah, stipends suck, i'm not allowed to work another job and i make ~10k a year as a TA. grad students in other departments make almost twice that, the fuckers

re: writing i'm with you, it needs to start super early, because people are genuinely unable to string together a coherent sentence, much less grapple w/serious complicated ideas. i had a student last semester mix up the Ayatollah, Richard Nixon, and Fidel Castro into one aggregate dictator who somehow ruled from Mexico

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 22:55

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

Blazing Ownager posted:

Honestly I would be OK if the letter said "If you want a safe space, get hosed. If you want trigger warnings, here's your last one: 3.. 2.. 1.. go gently caress yourself. Good luck in the coming school year."

wow....you owned them!!!!!!!!!!!!

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 22:58

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

OMGVBFLOL posted:

research indicates note-taking, both in and out of academic settings, is significantly more effective at committing items to memory if hand-written. handwriting is still a relevant broad-spectrum life skill, sorry bout it

also cursive is much faster, maybe we should be teaching ONLY cursive

sounds stupid i typed notes in undergrad and it worked flawlessly. research dumb

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 23:21

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

ill concede that the best way to take notes on a dense book is to highlight, write in a notebook, and jot stuff in a word document all at once tho

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 23:24

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

im genuinely impressed they were familiar with them tbh

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 23:41

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

Fire Barrel posted:

When it comes to syllabi, particularly for certain classes it really is easy to let students know about potentially difficult material and, for ease of use, many do, in fact, do stuff like this. I've even seen some syllabi, made before the last few years, flag particularly graphic or unsettling course content. However, nothing was ever at risk of being removed for the sake of a person's sensibilities, but only if time was limited. Optimally, I think the classroom as "safe space" would invite the uncomfortable person to explore and discuss a potentially tricky subject in an open environment where everyone has a right to the floor.

Same goes for posters advertising events/speakers. Having a boiler plate warning message for the campus body, just like an advisory warning, could let them know if a particular event/speaker may not be for them. From there, however, it's up to the students if they go or not, and how they handle it if they do. They are adults after all. Banning speakers or cancelling events, though, is not a great idea, just like being to willing to base hires, or firings, on popular opinion.

All that said, I think anti-trigger warning/safe space people can get crazy just as out of hand as the groups they criticize. It's important to stand for academic freedom and freedom of expression for all on campuses, but sometimes people make mountains out of mole hills on all sides of an argument. A simple warning won't erode freedom, just like a shithead speaker won't instantly run to your dorm to antagonize you.

I mainly tend to annotate and use either a word doc or notebook, usually not both. For vital materials, though, I tended to take a lot more notes and actually do a closer reading of the book, rather than a "grad school" reading of it. One reason why I enjoy writing book reviews for history books, though, is they really inform you how to tackle a work of history in a systematic way. And, with generally tight word limits, they can make good teaching tools imo.

for really thorough readings i like the combo because i can write down more extensive stuff on my laptop, like whatever interpretation or relationship or whatever a passage makes me think about, and i can use the notebook for super quick reference to concepts/key ideas for discussions. that's really for excellent indepth stuff, or something i have to write about, or something thesis related, though, i've certainly been guilty of the two-hour 200 page book "grad student" hyperread

book reviews have probably been one of the most useful exercises for me also, since they demand brevity and a full evaluation of the book. i typically do better on 20-40 pg papers because it's easier for me to bloviate a little bit, cramming content into the tight space you're afforded in a review is a real skill-builder. the only B i've gotten in grad school was on a review of a Patton biography because i didn't properly address the mundane biographical elements and just jumped into criticism, which is a pretty big blunder that i won't make again and i'm glad to have learned about practically

i wish there was more money in history

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 01:31

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

i remain a commie

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 02:08

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

sieg heil!!!!!!

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 02:09

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

Horniest Manticore posted:

there is only one true path, my son, and it is the path of stem. come back to the fold

take a look, in a book

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 02:13

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:25

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

School rules in my administration: Be excellent and cool to each other or you are EXPELLED!!!!!!

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 03:09

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > University of Chicago Tells Incoming Students: Don't Expect Safe Spaces or