/lit/ - Literature

>>4182109
babyshit

Five pages of double-spaced, size 12 Times New Roman. Make sure to use plenty of circular logic in filler paragraphs. The professor is only going to skim anyways.

cite a three line quote every paragraph, spend a long sentence summarizing it, then wax eloquent about nothing in particular
A+++++

>>4182115
You're fucking killing me. I just wrote 40 comments on a five page paper. Don't be a moron, OP. Your professor wants to see you not being a moron.

>>4182127
Quit being such an idealistic, tryhard professor or TA. It's all in the game. The students don't want to, and most likely won't, put full effort into their writing. You don't want to read copious amount of drivel, much less grade them thoroughly and ruin your, or your professor's, pass-rate. So it's simple. Pragmatic graders will turn a blind eye, understanding that their students are only working at half-capacity, and critique them accordingly. You need to accept the rules of the game and keep everyone happy.

>>4182133
The game is one in which I can give a shitty grade or you can actually learn something. As a student, you're powerless, except to choose professors who don't expect that you'll learn anything. Why don't I just give everyone an A so jerkoffs like you don't bitch?

it just took me six hours to complete three pages. i've lost the will to work.

>tfw 7 hours and still can't type 800 words
i've lost control of my live

>>4182137
Do you teach in order to feel powerful? Do you tell others that it's actually a selfless act of paid charity? I'm sure you come into class everyday and find a shiny red apple on your desk. The world thanks you for bestowing upon the ignorant masses that special knowledge that only you - and every other working professor in your field - posses.

People don't attend class to love and respect you. Go start a personality cult if that's what you want. People want a degree so they can move on in their lives. They want grades. If you covetously hold onto these grades like some sort of bridge troll, you're doing nothing but slowing down their progress. They rate you poorly on various websites, enroll in another class with a professor who accepts reality, recieve their grade, and go do things that don't involve acting as puppets in a sad person's power fantasy. You read these negative reviews, maybe get reprimanded by your department head, and grow even more resentful of those ignorant children that refuse to accept your 'help'.

Play the game. You aren't going to fix the Western education system from 10:30am English 2302 in Lecture Hall 12.

>>4182155
*life

>>4182167
passing mediocre kids, allowing them to work in something they have no capacity for, is bad as well though. it diminishes the average performance in the field

>>4182167
The idea is that professors do their best to make grades meaningful. If my colleagues and I are not "bridge trolls," then your hoop jump means even less than it does now.

>>4182171
Most people who receive degrees have no business being in higher education in the first place. They certainly won't work in their field of choice, because they are dumb as shit. They aren't in school to learn. They are in school to accept financial aid, buy textbooks and university-branded t-shirts, and attend football games. Most universities would not exist without these people.

Schools aren't okay with idealistic scholars like Prof. Cole Phelps here failing most of their financial aid income because he/she feels the students aren't respecting their 'superior' intellects.

>tfw I have 3 sentences due on friday and I haven't even started yet

>>4182175
Grades aren't meaningful. They are simply hindrances to the continued enrollment - and tuition payments - of most students at any given average university.

>>4182178
I'm in high school, is this really what universities are like, full of these idiots that waste government money and don't learn?

What should I do if I want to learn about philosophy and literature? As an autodidact, can I get a job doing anything related to what I've studied?

To the anon ITT bitching about grades, why do you care? It's entirely possible to just coast by with minimal effort and still get passing grades. Grades only really matter for grad school.

>>4182185
No, don't listen to these bitter submorons.

>Screenwriting class
>need to write 45ish pages by thursday
>have around 15

Gonna be a fun week for my wrists and fingers.

>>4182193
So, I can get a degree in philosophy and write books about the subject and live this way? Or should I get a degree in some flavor of engineering, and just study philosophy while I'm there?

>>4182185
If you are smart enough to get a full scholarship to any university, take it and get your degree. You would be foolish to pass it up.

If you're lazy, or unfortunate, or dumb, consider another path. Higher-education loans are simply another bubble waiting to burst.

>>4182193
This person has their degree framed on a wall. They need to say things like this in order to validate their loan payments, their early-twenties, or their job in academia.

Did your team win on Saturday?

>>4182185
They are not wasting government money! They are supporting the government and the bankers behind the student loan system by buying in and agreeing to live most of their life in debt to said organizations. It is true that the universities are mostly filled with idiot rich kids whose parent's didn't want to hire a babysitter and that these schools are just the next step of state indoctrination following high school.

Unless you get into a college that will actually teach you something it is better not to go. You want to learn Philosophy and Literature; you'll get bitch slapped repeatedly for the next four years and then find yourself having to go to Grad School, accruing more debt just to hold off your Undergrad loans since your degree is considered useless by employers and academia has turned you into too much of a pussy to join the workforce.

>>4182199
I can easily afford to attend a UC with the money my parents have saved for university.

>>4182200
So then, what should I do? When I graduate from high school, I won't be able to find any worthwhile work, is it a waste of time to get a STEM degree?

5 pages is fuck-all

cmon dude you can do this

>>4182208

B-but, muh sources and muh insightful commentary...

>>4182205
There is no clear answer. Our entire generation is struggling with this reality. Play the game and find your path.

>>4182205
If that's what you want to do then yes. IMHO you're too young to know what you really want. I'd wait a year or two before deciding to go at all. But maybe you don't want to listen to me since I'm working poverty.

Up to you to decide what path you want to take in your life.

>15 to 20 page paper on the Presocratics due October 25
>I haven't even started finding sources yet

>>4182220
you're fucked man.

>>4182220
down adderall in your room for a week

>>4182219
Between graduating and perhaps going to university later, what should I do?
What is there to do?
Keep in mind, I can afford to simply masturbate in my room for the next few years, but certainly that would be a waste.

I always start doing the work 2-3 weeks before the due date. But does anyone else only leave like 3-4 days to write the thing? I usually spend so much time reading sources.

The end result is usually B+ or A-, because I blather and put in pretentious references to Martial and Melville in history essays.

Whatever, can't be helped.

>>4182228
go live somewhere else for a year. go live in iceland. fuck idk

>>4182228
If you have rich parents, read good books and travel like a motherfucker. Don't read like a consumer, and don't travel like a tourist. Use that time to grow. Challenge yourself daily.

I'm 22, and after years wasted in multiple majors culminating in a total mental breakdown, I'm just starting to do these things. Only now am I growing as a person.

>>4182230

I usually do the reading (8+ hours) a three to four days before the due date, and write a day or two before, depending on length.

A is usual end result.

>>4182234
and do what?
sit and masturbate in a bedroom, but in iceland?

>>4182240
hike, work on a farm, etc.

>>4182240
Work at an Icelandic hotdog stand. I heard they have the best in the world.

>>4182133

Enjoy your bachelor's degree, that's all you'll ever have.

>>4182228
I can't give you any answers. It's up to you. I'm a line cook in a kitchen which gives me just enough to live off of. If I were in your shoes I'd take that money and travel on the cheap for as long as I could. After I left college I went migrant farming for a while and became an anarchist. Study culture and society, expand your brain outside the chains of academia. Anywhere you travel you'll be able to interpret the circumstances of that location through the lens of conflict theory. Have fun, do good, be enlightened etc. etc.

Also feel free to disregard everything I say. Answers in life are never handed to you on a silver platter and as they say "hindsight is always 20/20".

>>4182237
I do not have rich enough parents to travel so much, I've considered saving up as much money as possible from some shitty job while I live at home, and then hitchhiking for a while.

Has anyone on /lit/ lived as a hobo? Are there any good (nonfiction) books about living as a hobo?

>>4182250
You're taunting the Amish with your new iPhone.

I don't give a fuck about any degree.

>>4182250
Confirmed for faggotry. Too bad your masters couldn't help you argue with >>4182133

>>4182255
You said your parents can pay for a full undergraduate education out of pocket. That's a huge sum of money, if true.

That's nearly an infinite amount of money when it comes to travel. Stay in hostels, book redeye flights, and eat street food. Find temporary work in places where you plan on having an extended stay.

>>4182269
It's not out of pocket, it's a college fund, as well as significant interest free loans for being jewish.

I'm still curious about this hobo bit though

>>4182155
We all know that feel.

>>4182240

Uh... Read.

>>4182271
Interest free loans for being Jewish? I never got those and surnames don't get much more Semitic than mine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bEWbMTwt1U


>>4182200
>>4182219
>>4182252
Going to bed now. GL to you.

>>4182194
You should Plover, or maybe even look into buying a Steno if you have the time.

>>4182194
screenwriters enjoy the leisure of wide margins

>>4182286
The surname is not the point, you usually need to prove you're religious and actually jewish.

I don't know that there are any abandoned homes around here besides in the ghetto, or any where else for that matter

dude I've done 5 pages in 2 hours and still got an A. You have to know your audience and how to set up a winner, after that, it's just plugging in quotes.

>>4182220

What, all the pre-socratics? Sounds like an easy ride.

Oh and if not, just do Heraclitus.

>>4182109
>15 Hours to write a Five-Page Paper
>
>I got this
I remember when I was twenty.

>>4182230
I typically start reading and finding sources like a week before the exam is due and write the night or two nights before depending on the length of the essay. I remember this one essay I wrote in college that had to be twelve pages long and used about 50 pages worth of source material plus multiple additional sources were need as reference. I started reading the morning before, skipped class wrote until about 40 minutes were left, went to the library to print it out and turned it in. Made a 97, the highest grade in the class.

>>4182137
>As a student, you're powerless
>this attitude

without those students paying, you wouldn't have a place to extend your adolescence.

I completely lost track of what everyone's talking about in here, but good luck OP

>>4184334
What the fuck man.

>>4182205
In reality you do what you want to do. Listening to society is the worst choice to make in your life.

>>4182109
I wrote a 5 page linguistics paper the day before it was due while drunk. Just do it.

>>4184366
>education is a business
Oh lolbiterians what will we do with you

Oh ass i just remembered i have a paper due friday thanks op

>>4186347

But education IS a business. I live in australia, land of the glorious HECS loans, and even here the universities accept heaps of students into utterly useless degrees such as sports science, sports psychology, ''urban legends'', womens studies, aboriginal studies, gender power dynamic studies whatever. The difference is, here, it goes on the public purse. So you're not paying for it, but your grandchildren are

>>4186441
it's more than just an urban legend that your a faggot

>>4182109
A well-written 5 page paper with the appropriate amount and type of citations only usually takes me 3 or 4 hours, assuming I'm actually going for an A.

I've written them the day they were due more than a few times.

You can churn out a B+ in only an hour or so if you are a good draft writer.

>>4186450
have you got the knowledge already or do you need to learn what you are writing about

>>4186451

Please, tell me how studying an arts degree majoring in urban legends is going to help you contribute to humanity in anyway at all. Im sure your deep knowledge of red dog, the bunyip, and the boogieman will really advance philosophy, science and the arts. Its completely worth $80,000 of my tax dollars being invested in this idea.

>>4186487
good point lets just throw out the humanities all together

>>4186486
I don't usually choose prompts that I know very little about, and I don't remember ANY prompts that I was assigned that wasn't in some way directly related to the material covered in class.

I wrote a 17 page one in like 7 hours last semester on a prompt that I didn't know a whole lot about, and that included research. I got an A. I've done a couple of 10 pagers overnight as well with very broad prompts that required a lot of research, so I guess if you know you need a lot of research you have to account for that as well.

>>4186497

People who want to study uneconomical subjects should pay for it themselves. Its no issue at all whether or not humanities should be discarded; they shouldn't be. But, it is wrong for students of these disciplines to get tens of millions of dollars of other peoples tax dollars while our infrastructure crumbles and our hospitals struggle with 8 hour waits in accident and emergency.

>>4186530
Yes, because doctors of medicine are more important than doctors who do research.

Obviously, what is important isn't the good life, but life in general, right?

>>4186552

We shouldn't be pouring funds into the halls of academia, because academia told us to, whilst letting our brothers and sisters move closer to poverty. One must set their house in order before analysing the suffering within itself.

>>4186570
Academia is one of the most amenable environments toward the plight of the poor in a number of ways. We don't "pour funds into the halls of academia, because academia told us to;" we instead realize the vital importance of research and education, even within our hegemonic superstructure, and resources are distributed accordingly.

If you really cared about the poor, you wouldn't be advocating to dump the burden of education on them.

You instead seem to be espousing the view that only the rich should be exposed to culture and anything other than glorified skilled labor education. Or am I wrong?

>>4186570
If you're looking to trim enough fat to deal with poverty academia shouldn't be your first stop.

>>4182195
http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/grad.htm

Based on what this philosopher says, it seems that grad school in the humanities is so saturated with students that getting a good job as a philosopher who does research is nearly impossible these days. So your best route is to study something that you can earn a steady living off of (like engineering) while doing philosophy on the side, or double majoring in it if you want. From what I've read you'll want to avoid grad school in the humanities in general.

>>4186593

>>4186590

These are both valid points, but tertiary education is a huge thorn in the side of australia. It is free, which is good - but it is not actually free. We get our degrees and if we don't work, we never have to pay back our interest free debt. Well, this works well for the current generation, but it is quite bad for our economy in the long term.
You see, we are actually generating this massive massive debt, constantly, that will one day have to be paid off. And thats acceptable, when people study subjects that will generate tax revenue eventually, and pay off those debts.

The problem arises when so many of us study these economically useless subjects on the public purse. Whilst I see things from your view, I also see that if we do not trim the fat, we will suffer a heart attack, and the free tertiary education will be entirely destroyed.

>>4186632

As Nietzsche said: his wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well

>>4186632
The thing about academia is that it also HIRES people in the humanities.

If you are talking about undergrad, no one gives a fuck at all about what kind of degree you graduated with, you are probably going to work in a fucking office anyway.

If you are talking about grad school, paring back the tertiary education, thereby causing less teaching positions to be available, is not the way to attempt to create tax revenue.

If you are having trouble paying for higher education, my advice is to take notes from the scandinavian portion of the world. You might find that there are a lot of ways in which governments run efficiently and still have robust social welfare programs.

>>4186646


I think the ratio of undergrad to postgrad should be changed so there are less undergrad and more postgrad.

Our problem is our government is too weak. We have far more mineral resources than norway, but nobody dares to nationalise it because our media demonises any politician that attempts it. We have so many minerals here we could live in a utopian communist state where all the workers are robots, but alas, our autocrats are fucking idiots.

>>4186637
that chapter was sarcastic idiot

>>4186693

that comment was sarcastic idiot

>>4186654
Or we could teach a limited matriculation for free in 5 person classes; and not require "degrees" for jobs that only require on the job training.

FFS cunts.

>>4186654


the thing is though, having something else do all the work for you usually sucks in the end.


you want an example of a post scarcity society? look at detroit.

>>4182115
>>4182120

i wish.
i just started a law degree this year, had to do a few arts papers along with it. thought i would nail the art history essay with this kind of highschool shit.. nope

wasn't expecting such harsh grading/comprehensive feedback, kek

>>4186646
>You might find that there are a lot of ways in which governments run efficiently and still have robust social welfare programs.

such findings will usually come down to

- maintaining an almost entirely monocultural society
- having access to and the means to extract vast reserves of resources relevant to industry (oil & gas in this case)

and literally nothing else. socialist capitalism doesn't work under all conditions