Professors Share The "DUMBEST" Student They've Ever Had To Teach In School (r/AskReddit)

professors of reddit who was the dumbest student you ever had and what was so done about them a student in my economics class started his final essay with this we are all familiar with the country Africa yet at the same time we know little about them all we know is that it is hot there african-americans live there and they are really poor this begs the question why is Africa that poor it was just so jam-packed with stupid I had to stop grading for 24 hours edit for the record this was indeed a college student the one who would regularly hand in essays which were obviously copy pasted they didn't bother to change the font or color of paragraphs that were lifted from other websites they never argued or shared their opinion but would ask vague questions such as but what is the United States at the end of the lecture or tutorial that was about a legal decision this happened in high school senior year our teacher was talking about the phases of the Moon and this girl raised her hand and asked if other countries have moons too she thought the moon was only for the US as a GA teaching freshman English I had a couple instances of cheating that left me speechless first my university uses an online plagiarism checker and the students know this with one student over half of his essay was copied from a website he looked genuinely shocked when I called him out on it and then told me that his mother wrote the paper for him I explained that his mother writing his paper was also cheating then he asked if he could get credit for the half that wasn't from a website another time the students had to analyze a movie showing how it used the hero's journey as plot structure this was an easy assignment seeing as how nearly every modern movie uses this structure the student copied the Wikipedia summary of Aladdin word-for-word and he denied doing it he argued it was a coincidence that his entire essay was the exact same as we keep ideas not a professor but back when I was in high school I was a library aide and I was walking into classrooms distributing some books and I walked into a class with the professor in the middle of an angry lecture on plagiarism because one of the students turned in an essay that started with in my 25 plus years of experience in this field happened in the first week of a college anthropology course professor let's list a few basic differences between modern humans and animals student we have a heartbeat in high school British literature class we had to do a paper on a British author one of my classmates wanted to do a paper on an african-american British author and frustratedly explained to the entire library that she couldn't find any I'm not sure she ever figured it out bonus this was a senior Honors English class a student once threatened to sue me over the definition of the terms necessary and sufficient that he had mixed up in an exam no biggy to mix them up actually for a math major it might be but loudly threatening to sue me over an age olds textbook definition in an exam review session was kind of stupid it did entertain all other students who were present another student once requested letters of recommendation for five of the top ten masters programs in Europe while being the second worst in his class of several hundred graduates may or may not be dumb but my friend and I went to her uncle's house which had this piece of paper framed and put on the wall it was a zero out of twenty on a true or false quiz her uncle was a professor and was just too impressed by such an achievement that he had to put it in his home less than one in a million chance of doing that with random answers odds are 1 in 1 million and 48,000 576 that's an impressive level of dumb one of my students told me he was going to be 21 when he graduated high school I asked him why he explained that he ages 2 years every year he is 15 turning 16 so that is 2 years he is probably right that he will not graduate high school till age 21 but not for the reason he mentioned law I had a student who wrote an art history paper about Leonard da Vinci didn't even run that sucker through a spellcheck or anything referred to him as that throughout the entire I don't know if this qualifies as dumb or is closer to stupid but I had a student who didn't show up for class regularly and her grade was going to be a see maybe a D depending on her final exam what made her dumb however was how she tried to cheat on the final exam she reached down into her bag and took out her phone put it on the desk type something into it looked at the test looked at her phone looked back at her test rechecked her phone then answered whatever question she was looking up just to make sure I let her do it one more time I was watching her the whole time and she was completely oblivious to it she got an F I didn't have any particularly dumb student also not a professor but a graduate teaching assistant but I did Mark wanna say that began so eloquently with do we born with intelligent edit as an addendum because I still find this story hilarious the second sentence was how our cognitive is developed one of my fellow PhD student marked an essay once which came in at two pages it was a six page limit and half of the essay so one page discussed Mowgli from the Disney animated version of the Jungle Book the topic was developmental psychology one of my husband's colleagues said a kid came up to him after an exam and said I didn't know the answers to the questions you asked on the test so I made up my own questions and answered them the professor said that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard and when I go to lunch I'm going to tell all my friends had lots of students from Saudi Arabia they typically pushed boundaries so I learned quickly to set boundaries and be firm / fair with everyone in the class one guided and see the need to come to class much or do homework and his grades suffered greatly he came in one day and said I want a better grade my family is the ex's I don't remember the name but apparently they were wealthy and well respected I didn't care and I reminded him of his lack of effort he was best and he made some generic threats but nothing specific I could call anyone about I found out from the other Saudi students most of which hated the guy that he said ducky during the last week and went home without taking any finals maybe he was more arrogant but I'd say he was also a dumbass not a professor but in my statistics class a girl asked if changing the minus two plus would change the answer not a negative to a positive like she wasn't questioning how negatives worked she sincerely wanted to know if changing from subtraction to addition would change the answer to the professor's credit she answered with a kind yes and only a slight pause actually one of the smarter kids in my class ethics awareness of social norms not so much he sent me an email after the semester ended asking if I'd mind telling my next semester class that his digital textbook was available for sale oh and that it's a PDF so if multiple people want it he can sell them all copies I responded that I admire his entrepreneurial spirit but it probably wasn't a good idea to solicit his professor's help in starting a piracy based book selling business we were discussing the three most common phases of matter solids liquids and gases using water as the example I asked a student to tell me what we call the solid phase of water he replied oil I was dumbstruck but mine was only temporary I saw some amazingly bad attempts at plagiarism in my day these included one plagiarizing from an article in a journal the professor edited this was a grad student too plagiarizing from the same source as another student in the same class first hit on Google is not your friend three turning in a sophomore lit survey paper referring to poets use of hand eka syllabics I have a doctoral degree and I had to look that one up googled author's name plus Endeca syllabics and there was the paper only thing the student contributed was her name for when caught red-handed insisting tearfully that she didn't plagiarize her roommate wrote the paper for her her roommate was the dirty plagiarist I was literally speechless for a moment while I grappled with this line of reasoning bonus points this was mrs. Henniker syllabics I'm not the professor but I did talk to her about this student at the time I was taking an online class each week we had to answer in a discussion board in our own words about whatever the topic was the answers were all public to inspire discussion I researched took my time writing out the answers even though our names showed up I still signed my name at the end of it usually around two after I post my stuff a classmate would post hers too without fail she would copy and paste what I wrote and claimed it as her answer to it was clear she never bothered to read it either because she kept my name at the end of it after seeing this happen over two weeks I emailed our professor and voiced my complaint she emailed me back and said it's already been noticed by her the following week that classmate was no longer on the class roster I was always curious who would pay that kind of money just to steal answers and not bother to learn she wasn't young either we had profile pages she was older than me by at least 20 years was just bizarre and dumb I was a student in this class but after an entire chapter of going over the civil war in a history class our teacher a sad joke said so who won the Civil War a girl raised her hand and said the south and he laughed until he realized she was serious and she tried to defend it saying what we still have slaves right all she had to do to graduate was to show up to a seminar I pointed out the importance of this as it was the last time this mandatory thing was being run and the last chance for her having missed earlier opportunities and I wouldn't run the class next year got an email saying she had a dentist appointment and missed it she failed couldn't get her degree and had to come back 18 months later for it I wouldn't say dumb but definitely baffling and annoying she had somehow all the way to college still believing that weirdly and creepily exaggerated core little girl flirting would get her what she wanted including with female faculty it was cringy to see in action literally tilting her head to the side playing with her hair pivoting her leg back and forth mannerisms combined with semi childish speech patterns while glancing up through her eyelashes definitely I'm only talking to this one in front of witnesses territory she told me that she was reading and studying every night and still not making progress on tests and needed help I explained how to make written study materials to help her absorb information better she said she'd done that and reviewed the materials regularly but still wasn't seeing results genuinely concerned and puzzled I asked her to bring me her materials next class period and we'd go over them to make sure they were accurate and useful she agreed next class period rolls around she announces with even more exaggerated mannerisms that wouldn't you know it she was so frustrated with her score on her last test returned before our earlier conversation that she'd thrown her study materials into the trash in a fit of anger and they were all gone almost as if they had never existed I looked her in the eye and said I think you should consider then that self discipline may be playing a role in your grades in my class she huffed and pouted in outrage and I never saw her again what makes me sad is that clearly someone almost certainly her family had taught her that these behaviors worked no one sticks still behavior that strongly unless she has had success with it history professor is talking about some expedition or something and mentions Antarctica is standing in front of a world map girl raises her hand asks excuse me but where is Antarctica professor stands there unable to answer for a few seconds then raises his arm to the map and goes right here while running his hand under Antarctica and making exaggerated Vanna White motions girl goes oh okay I was a little scared more for the professor he had that I am severely underpaid expression I teach a class on the history of psychology when covering the chapter on behaviorism and discussing the ideas of its founder John Watson who was a determinist did not believe in free will a student asked me in the middle of class that if he was a determinist why did he have vacate free will in the Sherlock Holmes book I was really taken aback by that one I had a student plagiarize on the final exam it was a take-home essay slash short answer exam they knew to cite any sources and to put it in their own words the kicker this particularly bright bold plagiarized me the professor she tried to pass off my words as her own boy my sister is a French teacher not a professor so I'm not sure if this counts but here goes everyone in the class had a fairly lengthy piece of French homework and one student put the entire thing in Google Translate but translated it to Spanish

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Keywords: r/ask reddit, r/ askreddit, best posts and comments, askreddit top posts, reddit top posts, askreddit school, askreddit highschool

Id: HHCDQmLKmxc

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 20 2019