My first week at university involved listening to a lot of staff talking about how great an achievement getting into “one of the best universities in the country” was and how we were all CEOs, innovators and success clichés of tomorrow. Personally I found the pointless congratulations and praise rather dull, though it seems that some take it on board in the form of an ego inflation of epic proportions.
However, when it comes to lectures, you’d be right to expect constant “you’re so great” speeches to be off the menu. What you might not expect, though, is each lecture starting by telling you that you don’t know about something.
Personally I don’t like it when I walk into a room to be told by a (rather pompous) lecturer that: “You don’t know how to do this, but it’s okay because I’m going to tell you how to, you precious little snowflake-failure.” Especially when ‘this’ refers to something I’ve done many times before or have been employed to do in the past. To add insult to injury, the information which follows is frequently purely someone’s opinion, or actually incorrect.
Whilst I don’t particularly care for repetitive motivational speeches about how great getting to university is, I think there’s something wrong when the most memorable (and extended) part of a lecture is the part where I’m given a list of things which I apparently don’t know.