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My last five years of college can verify the validity of this chart. Trust me, the stats on this one are legit!
What about your FIRST five years?
This guy is just lucky he only has to write one 25-page paper. My college requires me to write about 30 3-page papers.
and all us professors know it.
“disquised”
Not as disquised as “margin squeezing”.
What about sizing your charts and graphics to squeeze out that second to the last page? *Grins* ah memories. Not fond ones, mind you, just memories…
There’s nothing professors love better than to read a bunch of half-assed papers written by apathetic students who don’t give a shit. Why are you in college again? Oh, right. It’s to get a piece of paper that supposedly means you’re worth hiring. It’s not to actually – *gasp* – learn something.
No kidding. I was under the impression that a paper was a chance to learn about a topic rather than mechanically crafting some BS. Honestly, I think the “actually learning something” method is far easier.
I’m near the end of my undergrad degree and I can honestly say I’ve never learnt anything from writing a paper. Discussions with classmates in class? Sure. Discussions with teachers during coffee-breaks? Sure. While writing papers? Never.
Never leared anything?
You’re doing it wrong.
*learned
Seriously…
Honestly…
Your comment was so damned ironic, I just had to drink a pack of milk and spew it out my nose.
I’m sure she’s leered at somethings.
“say I’ve never learnt anything from writing a paper.”
I can see that. Maybe school isn’t the best place for you.
Apparently you’ve never entertained the thought that, maybe, just maybe, it’s the educational system that’s broken, and not the students? If you want students that ENJOY learning, you need to start that process early. As early as pre-school (every child should be sent to pre-school). But too many teachers nowadays just don’t give a shit and only want their paycheck and eventual tenure. I’m lucky enough to go to a school where most of the teachers care about students’ learning, and it is a big change from high school. I’m one of the lucky few that came through wanting to learn. Even I can see, though, that papers only help when the topic at hand is interesting. Forced research papers on subjects students have no interest in (and teachers have not explained the usefulness of) are not helpful, they will only make the student want to distance themselves from the topic.
My own personal opinion is that college should be nothing but directed research. A giant library with loosely defined majors where students DISCUSS with each other, and with teachers. There are no papers, only presentations to teachers. The Socratic method would used to determine just how well a student knows their topic. If they do not know enough, they go back and research more. When the teacher has finally determined the student knows enough, that is when they can graduate. My school is like this on occasion, but more often than not, teachers are restricted to methods that do not aid themselves or students (and they know this, and say so).
Sorry, at a certain age “The system failed me” doesn’t apply. Personal responsibility needs to come in at some point when it comes to self discipline.
If the system is broken, then it will always apply, in the same way as broken parenting. It is the root of the problem, and as such, the only way to solve it. If the system were working correctly, and a student still did not care about schooling, then personal responsibility would come into play. If a student has never been taught how to learn well, however, or to enjoy it, then there is no point in them furthering their education, because it will be fruitless.
It’s a psychological paradigm that the way one’s personality develops as an adolescent will be, generally, the way it is for the rest of their life; if the seed of learning is not planted by high school, then a student cannot be blamed for not taking an interest in their education, because they will always have negative connotations in regards to it.
This is a fact that even teachers acknowledge. This is why there is now a movement in the United States to create better-qualified and more well-rounded teachers, starting at the base level of pre-K. This is the only effective way to create smarter, and better learning, students.
That seems fairly defeatist. Do you really think things are so set in stone by high school? That people can’t grow, learn, and change beyond what they are as a teenager? I would hate to live in such a world, just as I would hate to be such a person.
Even when one system is broken, people can and do find inspiration in other places. Parents, families, friends, and role models can all help instill a love of learning that goes beyond whatever is taught in school.
I’m not suggesting the system is perfect. I *am* suggesting that in an imperfect world you owe it to yourself to do the best you can with what you’ve got. Personal responsibility doesn’t begin and end with saying someone else dropped the ball.
People can grow, learn, and change, but unless something drastic happens to them, they will stay relatively recognizable and keep most of the same personality traits they had as a teenager.
It is not the job of those people to instill a love of learning, nor are they usually qualified. As well, not everyone has access to those resources. The saying “those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach” is part of the reason that the American educational system is so far behind the rest of the world. Anyone thinks they are qualified to teach, and because of that, they are teaching incorrectly. Just as it is a parents’ job to raise a child and provide shelter, it is a teacher’s job to teach. Occasionally individuals will be able to cross those lines, but to expect every child to be able to be reached in such a manner is unfortunately not a possibility.
The things you talk about, owing it to yourself to do your best with what you’ve got, were taught to you at some point, by someone. My point is that not everybody is lucky enough to have that, and if they never learn it, they cannot be expected to do well. That’s why reform is needed: so that EVERY child gets what they need. At that point, if a kid grows to an adult and in college suddenly decides to take stupid shortcuts, then they can be blamed, because they really did have every opportunity and the failure was squarely on their shoulders, and theirs alone.
“It is not the job of those people to instill a love of learning, nor are they usually qualified.”
I strongly disagree, especially where parents are concerned. There’s a difference between instilling a love of learning and teaching facts. Motivation doesn’t come just from being given a bunch of information. And a parent’s role goes far beyond simply providing shelter and food.
It’s a parent’s responsibility to be involved in their children’s education, whether it comes out of a school or not. I think you do parents a disservice by discounting their role. If parents aren’t involved, it can run counter to any good work that may be happening in the school. That may be part of your point, but schools don’t work in isolation. They’re part of a broader context of community and family. Trying to ensure schools are as effective as possible is important, but if the rest of the system is broken that will only get you so far. If you really want to make sure that every child gets what they need, you’ll need to make sure that families and communities have the support and resources they need, too.
I still don’t think it’s too much to ask college students to take responsibility for their own education. And if they’re taking stupid shortcuts, I don’t think it’s out of line to ask them why they’re there and suggest it’s time to take some responsibility, regardless of their background. Maybe it’ll make them think about it. Maybe it won’t. But if they don’t want to be there, there are other people who wouldn’t mind having their seat.
*Plays the smallest violin in the world*
I think you’re out of tune.
When I was a kid I tried to pull that crap on my parents. “Yea, they reason I can’t do that is because XY and Z was unfair, the system is broken.” My parents just said, “too bad, do it anyways. A future employer isn’t going to care that you can’t write a report because the education system failed.” I think kids need to stop being told they are so special and tell them they need to work. The number one problem I see with undergrads is that they all think they deserve an A for sub-standard work. Quite frankly a large portion should have never been accepted in the first place. Maybe that would have been the wake-up call that they needed.
Does the education system need to be reformed? Yes. Do I accept that as an excuse for mediocrity… NO!
All that shows is that you were making excuses and that they obviously weren’t legitimate, not that others’ reasons for failure aren’t. You were lucky enough to have parents to push you to do your work. Many aren’t.
Does the education system need to be reformed? Yes. Should you accept that as the primary reason for people not giving a shit about schoolwork? Obviously. Should you then use that knowledge to try to help students and make them care about what they do? Yes, because that’s what a good teacher does… assuming you’re a teacher. If you’re not, it just makes you one of those from my example above: “If you can, do, if you can’t, teach”. Honestly, though, with an attitude like that, I really hope you aren’t.
Is your degree in something other than humanities? If that is the case, I can see how writing papers is less effective in learning your relevant subject matter.
Writing, while arduous for some, is something everyone should do. Granted there are studies that say that people learn differently – spatial, audio/visual, kinesthetic, etc. – being able to do research and yield coherent, organised, intellectual material is an important life skill. Personally, I think it is absolutely necessary to engage in meaningful discourse with others in the learning process but it is only one component to learning and it does not negate the importance of being able to express one’s thoughts in writing.
Writing a university-level paper synthesizes the practise of reading, researching, and honing one’s ability to put together an argument in text; it is not simply stream-of-consciousness prose. While the benefits of practising such skills is not as concrete as say, basic arithmetic, as a writing tutor to university students, both native and non-native users of English, I can attest that these benefits greatly enrich the lives of those who actively pursue them.
Sometimes professors just want you to write 25 pages on topics that you could easily cover in 5.
Yes, because, again, they LOVE to spend their time reading, reviewing, and grading lots of half-assed papers full of crap. I’m sure it has nothing at all to do with the possibility that the topic could actually be researched a little more deeply and the students’ thoughts could be stated a little more thoughtfully than a 5-page paper would allow.
A lot of them do, actually. I’ve had professors assign us additional papers because they said they wanted to do extra grading. And they weren’t being sarcastic.
Also, many of them assign papers just to get their students writing about something, anything. I’ve had plenty of practice writing and I always get A’s on my papers, so it just ends up feeling like needless busywork.
This is an indication that you go to a lousy college.
Of course, deep down inside, you probably already know that.
And here’s where that personal responsibility could kick in and make things more interesting. If it seems like just busywork, do what you can to make it something other than busywork. Pick a more challenging topic when you have the chance. Dig deeper into the research. Try voicing a point of view different from your own, if the paper warrants it. You’re there to learn something. If you’re not being challenged by others, challenge yourself.
Maybe your grades all sucked and they wanted to give you a chance to pass?
Meh. School isn’t for learning things. It’s for getting certificates if you need them. Learning should be done elsewhere, because honestly college is a horrible learning environment. It’s better than primary school, but it still sucks.
It’s true, sadly. I once joked to my friend “I’m too busy with school to learn anything.”
Yeah…Most of my classmates get offended when a professor tells us some interesting random fact (related to the topic) that we don’t need to know. I’ve heard them say that if we’re not going to be tested on it, we shouldn’t bother learning about it.
Pretty disillusioned with college as a whole.
Once again, you know you went to a horrible college when you actually feel this way about college.
It’s the people, mostly…It’s a notorious party school, which attracts the wrong kind of students, which pisses the professors off, which makes it a sucky experience for everybody.
You get what you want out of university. I feel bad for the students who don’t want to learn anything extra and just want the grade. I find them to be very boring.
It’s not that I went to a horrible college, just that I find the classroom environment terrible for learning anything. Give me a book and something to apply it on at my leisure, and I’ll learn 1000 times as fast.
Good for you. But not everyone’s learning style works best that way. I’m more of an auditory learner, so I learn 1000 times faster in a lecture than from a book. I agree that college is a poor learning environment, but that’s because of all the shit-head students who make it that way.
Wait, so you learn something from a lecture? I didn’t think anybody did and thought that this was merely a dance that we all went through to justify tuition fees and pay cheques. I’m happy to know that one of my students might actually be getting something out of everything I’ve said.
Why not just write the paper, then edit Wikipedia to match what you wrote? It’s called the Dick Cheney method.
…………………..
thank you. i just laughed so hard, i shall literally be stitching my rear on for the next several hours.
I think this is about right. Especially the disguised wikipedia-facts. I just handed in an entire paper consisting of nothing but that and a few abstract, pseudo-reflective, open questions.
Why is everyone here so proud of turning in crap?
Your professor’s not stupid. They know it’s crap. If you’re getting okay grades, it’s because either a) your professor has dealt with so many little ignorant shits like you that s/he has given up on life, or b) your professor legitimately thinks you’re retarded, and just wants to encourage effort on your part.
Simple, a professor that demands quality gets quality. Those papers you’re proud of, worked on and so forth. The problem is of all the professors in all my classes that requested long papers, I can count on one finger the number who actually READ them, commented, and made it worth it to write another good one.
Want me to get excited about putting in work to not get it read? Hell, I have to work a year to save up for every semester I go to. I think I would have paid for the right to have my work read now and then.
If everything you’re saying is true, then I’m sorry, but you’re not the type of person that ought to be going for a college education. You’re paying your entire way through– an indication that you can’t get any sort of scholarship or financial aid, which to me indicates that you’re not performing at a very high level. College tuition isn’t that expensive for those of us who– no matter how poor our parents– were able to get the college to pay it.
Moreover, the school that you’re working so hard to pay to attend is clearly a diploma mill. I hate to break it to you, but most people are going to see that degree and know it’s not worth the paper the diploma is written on.
Even the people I know who teach at the crappy unaccredited online schools read everything their students submit.
Back in my day, we didn’t have no dang-blasted Wickurpeedia. We had to walk five miles uphill through the snow to get to a library to plagiarize OUR term papers!
Kids these days.
good…….for u..
That’s how science works!
Outsourcing and adding a minimal quantum of own information and research.
Been a while since I’ve seen a submission here that actually makes me laugh. I can especially relate to the Wikipedia and the margins portions. I thought I was a minority, but I guess my peers’ talk is just hot air.
The bottom 60 percentile is the majority, mind you.
As is the top 60 percentile the majority, and the middle 60, and the upper-middle 60, and the bottom 30 plus the top 30, or any subgroup of the population that has more people in it than it doesn’t.
This chart is FTW. The part about Wiki is especially true.
Oo! Ooo! I just went through this! It really sucked, too. Expecially when I loast all my (required) quote note cards half way through.
You’re a winner.
And you’re a very obvious troll.
You can also make the periods size 13, if you only need to make things a little longer.
Not that I did that this weekend or anything. That would be wrong.
I’d say the orange is a subset of the blue….
That’s what I was going to say. At the college that I teach at we don’t even accept Wikipedia references, no matter how well you think you disguise them.
The key is to use Wikipedia’s sources, especially if they’re internet sources, and use those as your sources to get around it.
Not that I’ve ever done that…
The wikipedia part is true haha
It’s the same at universities all over the world! But in its defense, I use it just to get the gist of something, and then use that information to find relevant stuff. It’s a lot easier than jumping in straight away
or go right to the sources and go from there.
i always resize all punctuations to 14.
you might be able to get away with 2.1/2.2 spacing as well.
You know how you think these things are clever and aren’t noticed?
You’re wrong on both counts.
My favorite part is that “Material From Outdated Books” is *almost*, but not *quite* the same color as “Messing With Margins To Squeeze One Last Page Out Of It”
how to Fail in pie chart form…
Lame. So, so lame. Just drop out so someone who actually cares about an education can take your place.
Well if people kept doing that, there’d be almost no one there!
Finally!! then a degree might mean something again!!
‘twould be delightful, wouldn’t it?
Man, is that an option? If all it took was everyone else dropping out for me to actually ENJOY my education, they’d be dropping out like flies. Whether it be by their volition or my own, well, that remains to be seen.
Seriously, have people absolutely no sense of humor?
I do the same things constantly, because writing a paper is idiocy.
I learn close to nothing from writing papers, yet I get the highest grades in my class (albeit not perfect).
True learning isn’t about telling others what you’ve learned.
That’s dumb.
And the teachers’ job.
As a moderately educated person you should be able to do research on a subject, look at the arguments, think critically about those arguments, and create your own supported argument. You SHOULD be doing that in a paper. If not you don’t belong in college and should look in to some other line of work that does not require an education.
Also, students always think they have learned a concept until they need to explain it. Then it is obvious they have not learned anything.
Well, y’know, reading through the stuff, I just realized that it is pretty stupid.
Not your arguments, the ways of collecting information described on the chart.
But it’s still funny.
Insert happy smiley here.
(Oh, and resizing is not stupid, if you can get a point out in fewer words, do it; I get scolded for writing too much).
don’t be like that,…..think positive…
if you are always like that you will not accomlish anything..
Don’t go to school online. I immediately resize the font and margins of all papers I recieve before grading them. And we have software to catch those uncited materials!
What software do you use?
Reminds me of my 8th grade History report. The 3 books I had all had the same info on that one subject, only got me through 2 pages and I needed 4. Back then wiki wasn’t that popular (2005) and it was a gold mine.
Wait… Do people really use wikipedia as a source for college level papers? Alright, I get that not everyone loves college (personally, I enjoy it, but then I am in a major I love and get gleeful when I find new ideas to read up on but… Well, I’m a huge geek) but you think that people would at least know better by then.
…
I’m being stupid again, aren’t I?
I applaud students like you! Unfortunately you are a minority.
No, she is white.
Its not that you actually cite wikipedia (although I’ve had to for a couple of the pictures of molecules I used for my masters thesis since I couldn’t find them anywhere else) what you do is you go to your topic(s) on wikipedia and then go straight to the references section at the bottom and go to *those* websites and get your material. For referenced print sources I’ve been able to track a lot down within the library.
Wikipedia does two things A. helps you understand something you didn’t really understand before and B. provides an excellent starting place for basic research on the topic
Bingo. Wikipedia is very useful, IF you know how to use it properly. I’m a straight-A pre-med in the honors program, and I do what you described here on a regular basis. I’ve had TEACHERS tell me to use it in that way, too. Wikipedia isn’t a bad website; idiots who don’t know how to use it properly are bad students.
Couldn’t you have shortened that last phrase to “idiots are bad students”?
showoff
And oh yeah, I also spent pretty this past weekend (as in, practically the entire weekend, with very few breaks) writing a 24-page paper, so while I didn’t use the particular approach this graph suggests, I still find the timing very amusing
Wait… so what you’re saying is that wikipedia… is best used… as some sort of encyclopedia?
Why is this so hard for so many people (both students and older faculty) to understand?
Encyclopedias are terrible sources for anything substantial.
That’s not what they’re for.
They’re designed to be quite good at initial contextualizing and giving generalist background information. They give you a traced outline of a complex concept, and give you some sources and some vocabulary to go forward and read more substantive sources on the topic. Britannica and Wikipedia BOTH do this quite well.
I had to more than ten 50+ page research papers and I can say that I never used any of your tactics except legitimetly reasearching. Hope you get caught for plagarizing your paper.
Don’t blame us for your masochism.
I think everyone should be requried to write one paper the old fashioned way; no computers. You go to the library and do research there, then handwrite out the rough draft, then revise it 800 times then type it on a typewriter. Consider it an exercise in respect ; for old folks (like me) for tradition, for new advanced technologies.
….
That might just be the least effective and obnoxious idea I have ever heard.
You know, aside from Baconlube.
I agree with papajon, maybe the kids would complain less when they see what they might be doing. DAMN KIDS!
Right, since my dad’s an immigrant and live in great poverty, you should all learn how much life can suck.
Because it could suck so much you have to walk 4 miles to save some few cents.
Great logic dude.
Why don’t we all get extreme tans and burn all our belongings so we can start learning how much it sucks to live in Africa south of Sahara!
Honestly, if you were sarcastic, remember, some people are incredibly retarded, and sarcasm doesn’t transfer well over da inturwebs.
Eep, that’s a bit harsh to make EVERYONE do… But I would fully support making this the penalty for plagiarism. You have to do your next paper this way!
LoL, I’m 25 and I still brainstorm with pen and paper. I do all my outlines on paper and substantial parts of my drafts. It’s a pity that good ideas that might not fit where one wants them to is at the mercy of the delete key.
I can assure you that us humanities majors (I got my BA in poli sci), still go to libraries and do research.
I did my first papers as a middle school student on typewriters. I do not miss it at all.
*are at the mercy of the delete key.
The internet brings the death of true research
Or, rather, you think it’s disguised. Really, you’re probably not clever enough to actually disguise anything beyond the recognition of even a marginally qualified instructor. Not as clever as you likely think you are, anyway.
Could you also include the mark you received for your paper and the university which you attend?
Your a doush bag with diabeties.
You, My friend, have positively brilliant grammar and spelling skills.
Pwned