Why do college subjects have to be so pretentious? -

[Foolish Samurai Warrior]

Seriously, I'm finishing my 2nd year of college, and while I'm pretty good at analysis and understanding most material, the course I'm taking is pretty interesting, but completely pretentious. Instead of giving out terms for most people to easily understand, they just throw you into the material full of terms that a dictionary wouldn't help you with. I had to look for internet articles and the like to understand the things.

 

[Daisymae]

Some profs will do that to prepare you for IRL where different people know different things and its up to you to be resourceful. I don't think its a problem when profs do that to be honest. There's a lot they do nowadays that is shit, but teaching behaviors and how to be intuitive is a good thing. If school was all about jamming facts in your head then itd be useless. Learning facts is the least important part of college. Learning how to think and be resourceful is much more important. Sadly, for various reasons, political, social, economic, even technological, profs don't focus on teaching students how to learn, their preparation and development to be leaders in a field or any of that. The focus is moving more towards remembering things.

Somewhat off-topic, but I do think the whole "college is just about left-wing this and socjus that" is an overplayed line for the most part, especially when most people in bachelor's programs are either in business, nursing or teaching, and business and nursing are pretty applied fields of study and business studies anchor more right-wing (other than econ, then its a toss-up), and nursing, from what I've seen from clients, touches on socjus issues a bit, and some courses are built around it, but nursing programs are built around the actual basics of healthcare application.

Long story short, be happy your prof is enforcing you becoming resourceful because you will have bosses and colleagues who will say shit you have no clue what they mean. You will need to decode it on your own somehow. Learning how now is better than later or being like "what's X mean?"

 

[Shugo]

from what I've seen from clients, touches on socjus issues a bit, and some courses are built around it, but nursing programs are built around the actual basics of healthcare application.

Most degrees are legitimate and have real world uses. However to keep the useless professors employed, many Universities now require you take classes to fufill a "diversity" credit score by taking women's studies or African studies, or other such requirements. My University had a credit requirement, to get so many hours for "Living in Our Diverse World." Most of these courses are basically fullblown SJW indoctrination classes. Many other professors, out of fear for losing their own employment, toe the line and give into the demands of the SocJus crowd in their departments, because being a *phobe on a University campus is not only a death wish for your career, but some upset confused fag student might take out his failing grades on you.

Diversity and Inclusion really are cults on University campuses, with racism and sexism being explained in fine detail in English and Literature classes. My friend listened to his (male) feminist professor explain (on multiple occasions during Philosophy class) how Anita Sarkeesian was a victim of sexist harassment for being a female video game critique. Not everyone buys into it, but everyone in charge sure pretends to, to stay employed.

 

[Papa Adolfo's Take'n'Bake]

1.) Expecting you to utilize all resources available to catalog, document and learn is not "pretentious." That's decent college coursework 101. Especially for fundamental shit like jargon and nomenclature.

2.) If you do utilize all resources available (TA'S, office hours, the internet, text books, etc.) and you still don't grasp the material, it's probably time to seriously ask yourself if you are cut out to study your chosen program.

 

[Foolish Samurai Warrior]

1.) Expecting you to utilize all resources available to catalog, document and learn is not "pretentious." That's decent college coursework 101. Especially for fundamental shit like jargon and nomenclature.

2.) If you do utilize all resources available (TA'S, office hours, the internet, text books, etc.) and you still don't grasp the material, it's probably time to seriously ask yourself if you are cut out to study your chosen program.

There's a difference between looking up the terms and looking for similar material and straight up expecting you to understand something with nothing to go upon.

 

[Some JERK]

Higher education should be hard. Don't be lazy.

 

[Papa Adolfo's Take'n'Bake]

There's a difference between looking up the terms and looking for similar material and straight up expecting you to understand something with nothing to go upon.

You are expected to build something to go on. Do it or don't. In STEM disciplines no one holds your hand. Get help and get the work done or maybe you really should reconsider what you're doing at uni.

The rest of the world that's been through these courses had to do so

 

[Zvantastika]

This happens because some professors are retarded and like jerking each other egos. Any monkey with a dictionary can use big words to make even the simplest of things sound hard, but it takes a really smart person to make complex topics easy to understand. Not all teachers are like this, mind you, some are pretty good at what they do and talk normally, stick to those, especially if they are eager to answer your questions instead of getting offended that you don't know everything beforehand.

 

[Boris Blank's glass eye]

IME most unis and colleges have courses specifically designed to separate the wheat from the chaff. This one might be one of those.
There are also courses specifically designed to make students want to kill themselves. This might be one of those.

Paraphrasing one of my engineering professors "Gentlemen, approx. 90% what you learn here will be useless to you in your life and career. However, since we have no idea which 10% you're going to use, I'd advice you to shut the fuck up and study as hard as you can. Preferably using your brains." He liked teaching students how to study. This is something most universities and professors tend to neglect.

 

[-4ZURE-]

I heard college professors make the courses hard in the beginning to get rid of those looking to just sleep through class. It weeds out the people who don’t care so that the determined likely get more time spent on them. If this is true, then that is likely why they just threw everything at you.

Most degrees are legitimate and have real world uses. However to keep the useless professors employed, many Universities now require you take classes to fufill a "diversity" credit score by taking women's studies or African studies, or other such requirements. My University had a credit requirement, to get so many hours for "Living in Our Diverse World." Most of these courses are basically fullblown SJW indoctrination classes. Many other professors, out of fear for losing their own employment, toe the line and give into the demands of the SocJus crowd in their departments, because being a *phobe on a University campus is not only a death wish for your career, but some upset confused fag student might take out his failing grades on you.

Diversity and Inclusion really are cults on University campuses, with racism and sexism being explained in fine detail in English and Literature classes. My friend listened to his (male) feminist professor explain (during a course on Logic) how Anita Sarkeesian was a victim of sexist harassment for being a female video game critique. Not everyone buys into it, but everyone in charge sure pretends to, to stay employed.

This is kinda accurate. I go to a small college and they had an orientation class everyone had to take called Thrive. It lasted half a semester and was just a slog to get through with multiple papers and such. One of the key things is that it got SJW pretty fast, making us take full blown “Are You A Racist“ tests for homework. Luckily it seems that my fellow Gen z classmates were above it and started talking about how the class is turning them more republican.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Considering the timing (end of year 2 from what you said) this might be one of the first of your major's courses that is supposed to really drive home everything you have to know and push you. It is a make or break course.

In my field of study you had to get a B or you couldn't move on in the program at all in a course at the start of my 3rd year, and this was arguably one of the hardest courses in the entire 4 year program according to most students I asked who graduated. I personally found later courses harder, but knowing you have to get a B, not a B- which did exist in this course, makes it so you have to really try the entire way if you aren't the best at studying and get you to truly push your limits as a student. This is to get rid of the "C's get degrees" mentality that some people have especially in the early stages of college.

I'd suggest trying to find other people in your major and ask them about courses they've taken that you haven't yet and try to figure out which courses are the hardest. This might help you avoid taking on too many hard courses at once or avoid taking them during the summer if you're not good with the limited time you get in a summer class.

 

[Never Scored]

It depends on the subject. Profs in the arts are basically retarded and teach things that have no bearing on the real world, and come up with these pointless, pretentious exercises to foist onto students. You know how you get these adults that think way too much about Thomas the Tank Engine and end up writing book length articles about the wheel alignment of cartoon trains vs their real life counterparts? That's basically what arts professors in college do, except with classic literature and stuff.

I have two degrees, a general arts degree and one in journalism. The one in journalism contained some theory, but most of it was practical and a large component was an internship at a local media outlet. In the arts degree I literally had a professor make us write an essay comparing Victorian era literature to the architecture at the time to look for parallels. Guess which one has the potential to lead to actual employment? I did get out of journalism very quickly because I was making peanuts at a local paper, but the point still stands.

 

[albert chan]

Studying math, physics, or computer science/computer engineering is not pretentious.
Not as the same as say my degree in Communications & Media Production, but even then, that’s not also pretentious because you work behind the scenes and get some form of expert-like training.

Perhaps you can find some solace in that.

 

[-4ZURE-]

It depends on the subject. Profs in the arts are basically retarded and teach things that have no bearing on the real world, and come up with these pointless, pretentious exercises to foist onto students. You know how you get these adults that think way too much about Thomas the Tank Engine and end up writing book length articles about the wheel alignment of cartoon trains vs their real life counterparts? That's basically what arts professors in college do, except with classic literature and stuff.

I’ll have you know, the lecture on the symbolism of a yellow door in chapter whatever of random 1800s literature was very impactful to my life. Really made me change my entire outlook.

 

[Funko Pops NFT collector]

I dont know why people are piling on OP, explaining what a term being used means takes less than a minute and its not like there are 50 unique terms introduced per class,I did'nt come across the problem of terms not being explained but if your job is to teach the only thing you should assume is known by your students are the things being taught in classes that are a prerequisite for the class the professor is teaching.

For example if you talking law 1 and your professor uses the term law hierarchy and doesnt take 1 minute to explain what that is and keeps teaching the class like nothing thats just being a shit teacher.

Some professors think that being unclear means they are smart since they need that form of verbal masturbation,by the way university is shit in general and requires you to pass useless classes,instead of learning something useful like python or other language you have to take a class where they test if you know what are the requirements for being elected a state senator or what an habeas corpus is(as if that was something a bussiness student would ever use). People go to university to learn a skill that they will use in their job not to waste time that cloud be used to learn something actually useful. If you force me to waste 40 hours in class plus the time I have to sit down at home studying in order to learn something useless you are wasting my time(and there is definitely some classes like that in university).

 

[Autumnal Equinox]

I’ll have you know, the lecture on the symbolism of a yellow door in chapter whatever of random 1800s literature was very impactful to my life. Really made me change my entire outlook.

*Snorts* you incompetent boob! Don't you know the yellow door is supposed to be a postmodern take on Asian womyn in the Industrial Age? Gawd!

Seriously though, remember Billy Madison's rambling incoherent response to how a kindergartner story related to industry? You could spin that exact kind of bullshit in a college lit class and walk away with an A.

 

[-4ZURE-]

*Snorts* you incompetent boob! Don't you know the yellow door is supposed to be a postmodern take on Asian womyn in the Industrial Age? Gawd!

Seriously though, remember Billy Madison's rambling incoherent response to how a kindergartner story related to industry? You could spin that exact kind of bullshit in a college lit class and walk away with an A.

This isn’t even a college thing. Literature classes in high school are the same thing. I always preferred the writing class for this reason. These classes were nothing but trying to make out deeper meanings in ancient literature that we have no connection to. Why can’t literature classes have good material, maybe update to include more movies and tv instead of just outdated books.

 

[Foolish Samurai Warrior]

You are expected to build something to go on. Do it or don't. In STEM disciplines no one holds your hand. Get help and get the work done or maybe you really should reconsider what you're doing at uni.

The rest of the world that's been through these courses had to do so

I'm not in a STEM course, so that has nothing to do with me. I'm studying society, not the properties of electricity.

Considering the timing (end of year 2 from what you said) this might be one of the first of your major's courses that is supposed to really drive home everything you have to know and push you. It is a make or break course.

Nah, this is just one of the courses available right now. I couldn't underload this trimester.

I dont know why people are piling on OP, explaining what a term being used means takes less than a minute and its not like there are 50 unique terms introduced per class,I did'nt come across the problem of terms not being explained but if your job is to teach the only thing you should assume is known by your students are the things being taught in classes that are a prerequisite for the class the professor is teaching.

For example if you talking law 1 and your professor uses the term law hierarchy and doesnt take 1 minute to explain what that is and keeps teaching the class like nothing thats just being a shit teacher.

Some professors think that being unclear means they are smart since they need that form of verbal masturbation,by the way university is shit in general and requires you to pass useless classes,instead of learning something useful like python or other language you have to take a class where they test if you know what are the requirements for being elected a state senator or what an habeas corpus is(as if that was something a bussiness student would ever use). People go to university to learn a skill that they will use in their job not to waste time that cloud be used to learn something actually useful. If you force me to waste 40 hours in class plus the time I have to sit down at home studying in order to learn something useless you are wasting my time(and there is definitely some classes like that in university).

Oh this is definitely how I feel.

It depends on the subject. Profs in the arts are basically retarded and teach things that have no bearing on the real world, and come up with these pointless, pretentious exercises to foist onto students. You know how you get these adults that think way too much about Thomas the Tank Engine and end up writing book length articles about the wheel alignment of cartoon trains vs their real life counterparts? That's basically what arts professors in college do, except with classic literature and stuff.

I have two degrees, a general arts degree and one in journalism. The one in journalism contained some theory, but most of it was practical and a large component was an internship at a local media outlet. In the arts degree I literally had a professor make us write an essay comparing Victorian era literature to the architecture at the time to look for parallels. Guess which one has the potential to lead to actual employment? I did get out of journalism very quickly because I was making peanuts at a local paper, but the point still stands.

Well you nailed it in the head, it's an art subject.

 

[melty]

If it seems too easy to understand then you might start thinking you can just learn it on your own for free and not pay the college $$$$$$.

 

[lurk_moar]

I did a vocation STEM associates degree, and I have been accepted into a vocational bachelors degree program of the same major. Most of my gen eds were field related like biology, anatomy and phys, speech, computer apps, statistics, and employment skills but no SJW bullshit. No wonder why laboratorians are an insensitive bunch.