If you’re a not-so-recent graduate who finds the plethora of articles on how we can’t find jobs a distant comfort, then this list is for you. Sure, a degree is a way for potential employers to know you aren’t just any idiot off the street—but a certified idiot!
Yet it’s not unlikely that months after you bask in the glory of finally being free, you find yourself couch surfing and somewhat (okay, maybe very) bitter. This is for the graduates who are sick of not getting a call-back.
8. Each guest speaker is someone super successful and not a realistic representation of what you would inevitably end up doing three months after you graduate
Doesn’t it annoy you when your professor invites a bunch of guests who are too smart and successful to relate to? The guest always happens to be a top player in his/her respective field and an anomaly of sorts. Their undying optimism makes you want to repeatedly bang your head against the wall, maybe even more than the countless times they used the word ‘passionate.’
Their arrogance almost seems palpable. You sit through an hour of them self promoting their greatness and making you read a bunch of their groundbreaking work. You develop an unnecessary guilt that if you don’t end up like them then you’re a disgrace to your profession. The only thing that could make things worse is if they happen to be a recent graduate—give me a break!
7. Some information is as valuable as the ingredients on your favourite cereal box
Everyone comes across a bunch of pointless, non-life-altering course material that you’re forced to digest. What does it matter that sociologist Anselm Strauss explored ways that new forms of documents allowed new communities to come into existence? Or that in the neoliberalism ideology the market symbolizes rationality?
Who cares about what some dude really meant in his journal article? Are we better off knowing how to identify a dangling modifier (perhaps that’s a trick question considering I’m writing this, but you get the point), or Euclidean geometry? I think not.
6. Most of the time someone else is too busy giving the correct answers
There is always that one student (don’t pretend you don’t know their name) who knows exactly how to get on the professors best side. Okay, we get it Einstein! Why didn’t you co-write the course pack? By the time the professor is done appeasing the classroom eager-beaver, half the lecture is done. Most of the time you are busy listening to their long, discombobulated thoughts on things rather than receiving knowledge from the person with the PhD.
5. It’s not like your professor is going to award you with a higher GPA for pretending to be enlightened, or actually reading the textbook.
I don’t think it matters if you talk to your professor after class, or buy him/her a cup of Starbucks before each lecture. Sure, you might be given leniency during marking, but it can’t increase your overall GPA and grant you the Dean’s key. Despite of how out-of-touch we think most of them are, professors can smell a suck-up.
4. What does it matter if you have no experience?
We’re in an increasingly competitive job market where most graduates can’t find jobs. No potential employer wants to hire someone who only has a good transcript without an iota of practical, workplace experience. While you are busy pulling all-nighters and taking copious lecture notes, you are also missing out on opportunities and job postings that actually pay. I mean literally.
3. Tutorials = pointless hour spent sugar coating a bunch of ambiguous, non-sense material.
Let’s face it. Professors hire a bunch of TAs to lessen their own burdens (and perhaps occasionally stroke their own egos). Those seminars are full of know-it-all students who want to impress the TA because they probably can’t hold a five minute conversation with the actual professor.
2. Who wants to play the name game?
Think about the number of times that you had to regurgitate the same introduction you used in four of your other classes. Yeah, sure, I believe that you can play eight different musical instruments or have helped build wells in Africa but your fingernails tell a different story. Who really cares about what you or anyone else does in their spare time? It’s not like your interests have an effect on grading (if they did that might be creepy). Next, please!
1. Half those “movies” you could have downloaded off of YouTube:
You spend an hour commuting your miserable, sleep-deprived self from one end of the city to the next to watch a movie that you could have downloaded off some bootleg website in the comforts of your home. Everyone knows that the exam will include one question (if you’re lucky) on the movie worth like, what, one mark? The only letter you will be gaining is ‘Zzzzzz.’
