It's a textbook case

[e of pi]

Got any amusing errors from class materials? Odd sentences? Whatever? Putt 'em here.

I found this sentence in the history reading for tonight and thought it was pretty funny. Enjoy.

“A belief in a rational, steadily improving universe sustained Wedgewood through the childhood deaths of two of his eight offspring, the amputation (without anesthetic) of a diseased leg and his agonizing death at age 64 from a diseased jaw.”

Yep, rigor mortis sure helps to keep a stiff upper lip.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

I have reams of amusing/weird/slightly dirty things my professors have said in class. I published them in the campus paper for lack of better ideas for columns.

Personal favourites:
"It's hard to get a feel for cleavage" - in reference to cleavage planes in crystals, with accompanying hand gestures.

"You can also get cleavage with alcohol" - regarding ability of alcohols to cleave carbon-carbon bonds. The prof saw me snickering from across the room.

[KillerGodMan]

Nothing too bad, but here's one I did on purpose (note: my math teacher loves J. Judy)

Angle C = fish Because Judge Judy said so!

Needless to say, I got that question wrong

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Well, Anglesey is an island, and you can go fishing from islands, so you answer isn't at complete right angles to being right.

(It's highly likely that I'm pronouncing Anglesey wrong in my head, but if necessary we'll pretend it's correct for the sake of a pun.)

[e of pi]

Back in the fifth grade, if I hadn't done the reading for lit and it said something like "name the three major plot points in last night's text...", I'd just write:

Bob, Joe, Ed.

[Vedra]

I remember I got tired of in-class essays once in English class and I wrote an essay about why essays were stupid. He actually graded it. I didn't do too badly either.

[MmeBlueberry]

I have a list of things students have said. Here's one of my favorites, from a 7th grader:

Me: Now, as I read this article aloud, I want you to jot down your thoughts on it, and then we'll discuss it.
C: Mrs. Dean, what's a thought?

[e of pi]

Heh. I've known some kids in my highschool classes like that.

[MaverickZer0]

Heh. I've known some kids in my highschool classes like that.

My entire class is like that.

"Okay class, what's the world's largest WAN?" (A concept gone over two minutes earlier.)

Class: Uh...
Me: Ooh, pick me!
5 Minutes later, after the answer's been given: Oh, the Internet!
Me: *banging my head against the keyboard*

[KillerGodMan]

KillerGM's English Teacher: It's like calling sombody a Nazi because they MIGHT have been in Germany in the Nazi empire!
Student (not KillerGM, who is a history major): Mr. Ryan, what's a Nazi?

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Sa'ar's Organic Chem Prof: Is anyone except Sheila actually paying attention here?
Sa'ar: Sorry, what?

[Chancellor Valium]

Well, Anglesey is an island, and you can go fishing from islands, so you answer isn't at complete right angles to being right.

(It's highly likely that I'm pronouncing Anglesey wrong in my head, but if necessary we'll pretend it's correct for the sake of a pun.)
Ynys Môn!

How can you defile it with that...sais name... :evil:

:P

[e of pi]

Wow, less than one page and the original point is long gone.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

How can you defile it with that...sais name...

I'm Gaelic, not Cymric. Any language that uses a w as a vowel and requires half a pint of phlegm to pronounce the placenames (thank you, Blackadder) isn't worth the trouble of learning how to spell correctly.

Gaelic's almost as bad - whoever transliterated it into the Latin alphabet must have had a few slugs of the Water Of life in him (musta been a Sassenach).

[Xeroc]

... Any language that uses a w as a vowel and requires half a pint of phlegm to pronounce the placenames (thank you, Blackadder) isn't worth the trouble of learning how to spell correctly.
Heh. :D

Wow, less than one page and the original point is long gone.
Wait... there was a point? ;) :P :D

[e of pi]

*shrug* At least a reasonable imitation of one.

[Lostoyannaya]

Myself and a friend had a theory that our English Literature teacher didn't actually read our work, as he had a knack of neglecting mistakes. For a joke, my friend handed in an essay that started like this:

"King Lear was a play what was wrote by Shakespeare. he was a really kool playwrite who write lots of plays in the middle ages."

...

And he got a B.

~~Lostoyannaya

[e of pi]

I once handed in this essay for an assignment to write about our impact on the enviroment: Rob Davidoff
Mr. Gillum
Period 7 Biology
10 November 2005

The Relationship between Man and Nature in the United States

It f*cking sucks. It always has. We were given a big huge continent and we blew it. We cut down all the forests and killed all the animals we could. The Native Americans had it right, but they stood in our way so we beat them down too. Nowadays, we can blow up cities in a second and are doing our best to break down the fragile relationships between animals and replace it with suburbs and SUVs. We’re doing our best to destroy all that we have and not doing anything effective about fixing it. We cut through the ozone layer and….

Yeah, I’m kidding. Turn the page for the real thing.


Then I had my real essay.

[Lostoyannaya]

I thought it was a wonderful essay! You should email it to the Whitehouse. Through some kind of secure server from an anti-Apache hellicopter bunker :wink:

~~Lostoyannaya

[e of pi]

I'm not that stupid. They'd send me hunting with Cheney.

[Lostoyannaya]

Laugh Out Loud and a Half! What a comeback. What a tragedy. What a vice-president. :roll:

~~Lostoyannaya

[e of pi]

Hey, at least you don't have to live with his riegn of terror. No, wait, we did that already. Hmmmm....name sugestions?

[whoiam]

It doesn't need to be named. We all know what you mean anyway.

[e of pi]

But the history students of the future won't. How about "Administration of horror"?

[Lostoyannaya]

As a student of history, I say it is totally irrelevant about names. That being said, I am merely bitter about being made to memorize various Italian names, such as...Partito Nazionale Fascista.

What about "Pointless Throning of Administrative Errors"?

~~Lostoyannaya

[Chancellor Valium]

How can you defile it with that...sais name...

I'm Gaelic, not Cymric. Any language that uses a w as a vowel and requires half a pint of phlegm to pronounce the placenames (thank you, Blackadder) isn't worth the trouble of learning how to spell correctly.



Nonsense. For that you are to be chucked to the Swydd'far of Llainfairpwthgwyngeth :twisted:

[MmeBlueberry]

I once handed in this essay for an assignment to write about our impact on the enviroment: Rob Davidoff
Mr. Gillum
Period 7 Biology
10 November 2005

The Relationship between Man and Nature in the United States

The first thing I noticed was that you actually seem to know how to head your paper in proper MLA format. I am such a teacher. :p

Okay, something else to add to the thread...um...another conversation with a student (same initial, but a different kid). (Sorry, most of my stuff is verbal communication rather than written.)

Students were working on skits. C came up to me and said, "Okay, this is going to be a weird question, but which way is west in this room?"

Me: (not wanting to take the time to figure out when the sun is where) "I have no idea, sorry."

C: "Oh, that's okay. Wait - do you know which way is north?"

[Chancellor Valium]

As a student of history, I say it is totally irrelevant about names.

McClick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fivefold_Titulary) ;)

[e of pi]

Yes, at my school we were tought MLA and standard essay format back in fourth grade. I've been doing it since, off and on.

[KillerGodMan]

My system is similar

I'm in the Canadian Catholic School system (that does NOT mean I'm Catholic!), and it's different in some instances, but it's pretty much the same as every other North American system

example:


Drama Assignment #3

Actor's Biography

Kyle Beckett
Mr. M Harman
ADA 3O
October ??, 2005

I could explain it better if you want, but that's the basic idea.

[Chancellor Valium]

What is MLA? I've never heard of it.

[Lostoyannaya]

As a student of history, I say it is totally irrelevant about names.

McClick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fivefold_Titulary) ;)

Well, that shut me up.

In our backward little English school, we do not use any heading. We hand in the piece of work and spend half of the next lesson helping the teacher figure out who's is who's. :D (Mine's always the one with the doodles).

But...yeah...what is MLA heading? *Is curious*

~~Lostoyannaya

[MmeBlueberry]

Modern Language Association (http://www.mla.org/). It's one of two organizations that has established standards (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html) for formatting written work (among other things). The other is APA, American Psychological Association (http://www.apastyle.org/), which I *think* is used mainly for graduate work and beyond - MLA is used, in the US at least, as the standard for everything up to that point. (It's possible that there are certain fields of undergraduate work that require the use of APA rather than MLA, but the division I've experienced is what I've posted. Also, it sometimes depends on one's professors as to which format is expected.)

APA includes "American" in its title, so I'm assuming its use is restricted to the US. And since those of you who aren't from the US are indicating a lack of familiarity with MLA, I'm guessing the same about it.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

In science, we tend to write research papers and not essays, and the standards we follow vary from journal to journal. The American Chemical Society has a template, the Royal Society of Chemistry has a different template, and Elsevier has a third.

[Chancellor Valium]

Modern Language Association (http://www.mla.org/). It's one of two organizations that has established standards (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html) for formatting written work (among other things). The other is APA, American Psychological Association (http://www.apastyle.org/), which I *think* is used mainly for graduate work and beyond - MLA is used, in the US at least, as the standard for everything up to that point. (It's possible that there are certain fields of undergraduate work that require the use of APA rather than MLA, but the division I've experienced is what I've posted. Also, it sometimes depends on one's professors as to which format is expected.)

APA includes "American" in its title, so I'm assuming its use is restricted to the US. And since those of you who aren't from the US are indicating a lack of familiarity with MLA, I'm guessing the same about it.

Interesting :)

[e of pi]

The title specifically involves:

Student Name
Mr./Mrs./Ms Teacher'slastname
Class
Date of writting. (or is it due date? Don't remember.)

[Chancellor Valium]

The title specifically involves:

Student Name
Mr./Mrs./Ms Teacher'slastname
Class
Date of writting. (or is it due date? Don't remember.)

That would've been a bugger for me when I was at school. I almost *never* handed things in on time...

[e of pi]

So? You could lie. I don't, but you could, scum.

[Chancellor Valium]

So? You could lie. I don't, but you could, scum.

What a lovely way of appellating people. I see that Borg diplomacy is up to it's usual standard ;)

I could, but that would have required effort.

[e of pi]

Not really. Just put a different date.

[Chancellor Valium]

Yes, but when doing that you generally need to think back about a week. That takes effort ;)

[e of pi]

Calender.

[Chancellor Valium]

Calender.

Always lost the damned things. Or they fell off the wall. Or behind the desk...

[e of pi]

Ouch....

[Chancellor Valium]

Ouch....

Exactly.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Well, if you were hiding behind the desk in the first place, it serves you right if a calendar fell on your head.

Also, what are you making you calendars out of if they hurt so much? Lead?

[e of pi]

What else do you make them out of so you can use them in radioactive areas, like my room?

[Xeroc]

What else do you make them out of so you can use them in radioactive areas, like my room?
But then you'd have to stand behind them to protect you from the radiation!

[KillerGodMan]

The title specifically involves:

Student Name
Mr./Mrs./Ms Teacher'slastname
Class
Date of writting. (or is it due date? Don't remember.)

Or, in my system:

Student Name
Teacher
Course Code
Date submitted

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Experiment Title and Number
Student Name
Lab Section
TA Name (one or two of my students always insist on putting El Stevo here)
Some Sort of Date

[e of pi]

Hmmm. Apparently the MLA standard isn't as standardized as the name implies. Oh well.

[Xeroc]

Method Address Protocol
Host
Connection-Type
Encoding
Length

[Derek]

^ Time to Live

Experiment Title and Number
This reminds me of one time in high school chemisty when we were doing a titrations lab. The lab book I was writing in to record my method and observations similarly needed an Experiment Title, but I think the best my teacher had done was "Lab 15: Titrations." Obviously this needed some work, so I wrote in my lab book: "Lab 15: I'm Pickin' Up Good Titrations..."

The teacher was amused, which is one of the better possible reactions I get from teachers when I try to be clever/funny.

[e of pi]

Heh.

[Xeroc]

^ Time to Live
Actually, I was using HTTP, there's not Time to Live on an HTTP header, only on an IP packet's header. ;)

[Derek]

Yeah, but it's too cool a term to avoid mentioning.

[Chancellor Valium]

Since sometime about halfway through secondary school (I'd guess), I've layed out everything comme ca:


(Date of writing) Insert Title Here

Name


Blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah. etc etc ad nauseam

[e of pi]

Hmmmm. Interesting. I usually stop njust before nauseam.

[Chancellor Valium]

Hmmmm. Interesting. I usually stop njust before nauseam.

Bad idea. If you continue past it, the teacher vomits and then no-one knows the mark anyway!

[e of pi]

Hmmmm. But what about page limits? Also, my old history teacher had a saying about essay lengths.

"An essay is like womens clothing. It needs to be long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep things interesting."

[Chancellor Valium]

Hmmmm. But what about page limits? Also, my old history teacher had a saying about essay lengths.

"An essay is like womens clothing. It needs to be long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep things interesting."

My problem was always writing enough....

[Lostoyannaya]

I use padding. Shift + F7 in Microsoft Word brings up the thesaurus. You can find some really long words in there! ^^

~~Lostoyannaya

[Sa'ar Chasm]

I'm discovering the key to padding a thesis is whitespace and figures. I need to do more experiments so that I have more graphs to take up more space.

Unfortunately, thesis-writing has a high energy of activation and a lengthy induction time.

[Lostoyannaya]

Graphs? Thesis? o.o Okay, I was speaking of my English coursework...I hated writing science coursework...my teacher always told me I'd put the equipment and the graphs in the wrong places...^^. Then she left. I wonder if it was me...?

Good luck to all you padders out there.

~~Lostoyannaya :wink:

[e of pi]

I have the oppisite. Problem. Given a topic where I actually, have an opinion, I can't stop writting. I just keep typing, on and on, word after word, paragraph after paragraph, page after page....

[PointyHairedJedi]

That was always my downfall when it came to History examinations - I'd go on and on and on and on, and then the time would be up, and I'd only have gotten through a third of the questions. :oops:

[Derek]

I use padding. Shift + F7 in Microsoft Word brings up the thesaurus. You can find some really long words in there!
Hopefully you use it well. I shudder to think of some of the papers I wrote back in my classes. I would try to use the thesaurus to reword my sentences, and what came out was incomprehensible.

Original sentence: George Washington was one of the great founders of our country.
After Thesuarus: George Washington was certain of the large begetters of our rural.

(And yes, I was tempted to say, "George Washington was certain of the large shapeshifters of our rural.")

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Original sentence: George Washington was one of the great founders of our country.
After Thesuarus: George Washington was certain of the large begetters of our rural.

It reads like you used Google Translator.

[Lostoyannaya]

That was always my downfall when it came to History examinations - I'd go on and on and on and on, and then the time would be up, and I'd only have gotten through a third of the questions. :oops:

I'd love an exam like that! In our Law examination in January, we got two questions, each worth thirty marks, and an hour to answer the questions in. That sixty minutes for sixty marks, a mark a minute. And my damn pen kept breaking!

I'm suing Bic.

~~Lostoyannaya

[e of pi]

Heh.

[Chancellor Valium]

That was always my downfall when it came to History examinations - I'd go on and on and on and on, and then the time would be up, and I'd only have gotten through a third of the questions. :oops:

Heh. I'd always write too little, and get to about 15 minutes before the end, then start writing like fury...