I would be so very happy to hear that you rudely pointed out to that student that he deserves an F.
Never in my life have I heard anything as pretentious as that. I feel like I missed out on the so-called "college experience".
I should mention that he had previously mentioned to his interlocutor that he had appealed to his professor or TA (don't know which) to ask if he could bring in Freud; that wasn't part of the assignment.
Did he mention that if you put your paper in a nice binder you usually get a better grade? Did he say anything about citing one of his teacher's publications in the paper for brown-nosing purposes?
Just to start a disciplinary war, I'll confess that the most pretentious thing *I* ever heard a student say was "I'm only taking this class because it's required. Who cares about stories that uneducated people made up about characters that never existed? I'm majoring in philosophy because it's about Truth."
Why do students think that "my reading is self-evident" is the sign of good work?
That sounds like a fair assessment of introductory literature courses.
(Gauntlet? Thrown.)
It was a second year period course, actually.
my officemates turned my desk over and hid my books and papers today
In order to do the nasty?
I'm not sure that a disciplinary war is best started on the basis of which discipline has toolier/more pretentious students (especially because it'll go badly for the lit. departments if that's the criterion).
Man, it's a good thing I didn't TA more intro literary courses. I would've failed everyone.
Au contraire, Ben. Lit is the refuge of students who like to read stories and girls who want to be high school teachers, not pretentious tools who wear smoking jackets and pontificate in coffee shops.
Okay, actually, we do have some of those. But they're mostly theoryheads who have philosophy envy, so you have to take partial credit.
I kinda undermined my claim with that "au contraire" bit there at the beginning, didn't I?
I kinda undermined my claim with that "au contraire" bit there at the beginning, didn't I?
Sicherlich.
99: Students is not exclusive of the category girls, but "girls who want to be high school teachers" is a category unto itself.
99% of literature majors can't write.
99% of people can't write.
Only 80 comments 'til we see what B is responding to in 17!
Therefore, 99% of people are literature majors.
Some physics types are known to smugly declare that every other science is merely applied physics. It gets really annoying, quick.
99% of literature majors are people.
Why the hell did I tell people it was cheaper to fly into an airport an hour away? It would be so much easier to pick them up if they were all flying into Teoville.
24: Throw 'em all* in the back of the pick-up. It'd be like a conference-attendee hootenanny. There could be hay bales.
*presumes simultaneous arrival or something approximating it; probably not applicable.
There could be hay bales.
This has the makings of a memorable conference.
I want/deserve a smoking jacket.
No more than two at a time, actually; I can fit 'em in the cab, but it'll be a tight squeeze. The bigger issue is that the cheaper airport an hour away is, like, an hour away, which makes scheduling tricky. Luckily not that many people are actually flying in there.
re: 22
I've taught philosophy of science to physics students. They generally really are super bright but they do, as you say, tend to assume the primacy of physics over all science.
I did a joint major in English and Philosophy as an undergrad, so I must have been all the pretentious. Tbh, with the exception of a few theory-heads I didn't find either set of students particular prone to pretentiousness.
18: Nonsense.
I say this as someone who edits other people's writing for a living. See also: craigslist, myspace, livejournal, and blogs. And those are the people who still *try* to write.
I inherited my grandfather's smoking jacket. It was strange that he had one, since smoking jackets are not and have never been de rigeur in Detroit, but I think my grandmother was a big David Niven/Leslie Howard fan, and she got it for him. She tried to persuade him to grow one of those skinny moustaches, but did not succeed.
The moths got the jacket.
You can find some pretty impressive pretension within the undergrad PoliSci ranks, but it's of a different breed than philosophy and literature.
I was a physics major for three years, then literature. There were comical pretenders and attitudes in both, in physics there were two guys who wore "hard-hats" all the time, in class even, as a political statement—see Rick Perlstein's wonderful piece about Peter Boyle in the current In These Times.
But undergrads at the University of Chicago, where I later was a grad student who befriended a lot of them, are in a class by themselves. Now everybody there shows off somewhat—my wife says these here threads capture the quality she associates with "The College" precisely—but there are some really choice examples whose every sentence is more incredible than the last. For a long time I was convinced I was in the presence of an elaborate, very dry and sustained joke. This may have been true of some people at some times.
31: Hear, hear. 3 years of editing medical and other textbooks, many years of editing marketing materials, and all I can conclude is that even a significant percentage of people who are paid to write can't actually do so. (Including me on many days.)
22: All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
But undergrads at the University of Chicago, where I later was a grad student who befriended a lot of them, are in a class by themselves. Now everybody there shows off somewhat--my wife says these here threads capture the quality she associates with "The College" precisely--but there are some really choice examples whose every sentence is more incredible than the last.
Yep. I'm a showoff myself, and I enjoy a certain amount of pretension in other people (after all, someone who's putting on an elaborate act to impress me is, if you look at it one way, showing a respect for my opinion that is absent from someone who's indifferently unpretentious) but I found U of C undergrads really impressively silly back when I was one.
34: "For a long time I was convinced I was in the presence of an elaborate, very dry and sustained joke." That describes my undergraduate years there pretty well. Oh, but it was wonderful.
Though, to this day, I'm annoyed by the class where any negative comments about Freud were dismissed as "showing a lack of perspective."
These days I do physics. Many physicists do think physicists are smarter than everyone else, perpetuating the stereotype. The majority of physicists are, in fact, not particularly smart. One need merely read their papers to see this.
I would estimate that at least a quarter of philosophy majors are Rand-oids, and perhaps more at the freshman level.
L., how many institutions are in your sample?
I thought Rand-oids were found at the highest rates among computer programming students? At least the philosophy majors have to read people who can actually think, and might learn to give up their ill-advised youthful flirtation with Ayn.
Re, physicists, Rutherford was known to have commented that all science is either physics or stamp collecting. He was in a different era, though, and the set of disciplines that he would have counted as "physics" would be a little broader today. Not as broad as you might think, though...
Funny Rutherford story: when working with this other guy named Soddy in the early days of radioactive decay, apparently Soddy suggested that they refer to "transmutation" instead of Rutherford's "transformation." Rutherford quickly replied "For Mike's sake, Soddy, change it back- they'll hang us for alchemists."
(Mike?)
And 38's The majority of physicists are, in fact, not particularly smart. is just weird.
If for "not particularly smart" you substitute in "not superhuman or anything", it works. I'm cleverish, but nothing scary, and I fit right in amongst MIT physics majors -- I dropped out from a combination of lack of interest and lack of work ethic, not lack of capacity. The top couple of people in my classes were, in fact, operating on an entirely different level from anyone I've ever met before or since, but not the bulk of the department.
43: Sorry, my phrasing was odd: the emphasis should be on particularly. I had in mind something more like "relative to people in other intellectual fields." LizardBreath has it right.
Absolutely. They're just people who did physics degrees and I really don't understand how they manage to build themselves up into demigods. The most egregious example of this IMO is Emanuel Derman, who has even Brad DeLong believing that he was "incredibly smart" on the basis of an autobiography that basically says "I was a physics graduate student. I did a bit of research but didn't get tenure, so I went to Bell Labs, where I was regarded as a mediocre player. Then I went to Goldman Sachs, where most of what I did was computer programming on other people's models. I was a co-author of Fischer Black's on a couple of important papers. I thought I'd discovered the key to financial economics with 'implied trees' but it didn't really work out. Then I retired with a stack of cash."
Most 'quants' believe each other to be 'the smartest people in the bank' in the face of the evidence.
Most of the pretension among my fellow Communications Studies majors was found in their opinions of their own skill at basketball.
In my experience, the first year was the most pretentious at U of C undergrad. After that, people either seemed to get more sophisticated opinions or they just stopped expressing them in such a self-congratulatory fashion.
Though now that I think of it, the Foucault-mania started second year, and that was bad too. Maybe it really was four years of pretension. But I should point out that I was in the CS department. (Apropos of 42, I believe the president of the Objectivist Club was a CS major as well.) For much of the latter half of college I was too worried about figuring out my proofs and busy with extracurricular research to run into very much of the infamous pretension.
I guess the point of this comment is: God it's great to be in California. My classmate (a Stanford undergrad) was flabbergasted last week when I told her that grad school had been much more social than college for me.
31, 35: I'm not saying that most people are currently writing well. Just that most people are capable of writing fairly well if given decent instruction.
I have hope! And faith! Damn you!
God it's great to be in California
You have to give California credit: insufferable it may be, but pretentious it ain't.
49: I could speak mandarin fairly well if given decent instruction. I still, however, can't speak Mandarin.
50: Cracker, please. Napa Valley?
Hm. Napa's really quite lovely, and there's a difference between ostentation (granted) and condescension, which is what I was really trying to get at.
"We're better than you, but it's really no big deal. Have some wine."
54: "it's really no big deal" s/b "your money still spends."
I never thought pretension implied condescension. A lot of time pretentious people are overjoyed to be able to introduce new and ignorant people into the world of pretension.
Cryptic Ned has never met my least favorite sil.
Some people might find this group's disdain for pretension ironic. Now, could somebody please translate that sentence into German and Latin and tell me what Kierkegaard might say on the matter?
I take this thread to be a tacit admission that none of you have read The Brothers Karamazov, right?
Nor in any other language, for that matter.
Anyone here actually change majors because of the high proportion of annoying, pretentious fucks in the department? Just me then?
(Amusingly, King and Queen of the APFs in said department were an ex-child star of minor distinction and his toothy blonde girlfriend.)
I changed majors to find more annoying, pretentious fucks. They can be a side-effect of genuinely interesting stuff, unless you're talking about Anglo-American philosophy departments*.
* NB: Zing!
59.---Doing a Freudian analysis without any further textual evidence would be wrong and silly on any novel, including The Brothers Karamozov, which, yes, I have read.
Maybe he just hadn't read the book. Ben, are you sure he was on the third page of his paper rather than the third page of the novel?
The Brothers Karamozov, which, yes, I have read.
Considering that I've almost never read the books y'all talk about, I'll note that this is one that I have read, and even remember parts of. Being young and pretentious can be pretty great.
58: But we're not actually pretentious.
66: It's a win-win. Y'all get to feel great and we codgers get plenty of amusement.
who can't write. They studied battlements and such.
60 was so perfect, eb. You should have saved 61 for tomorrow.
71: not to mention Major Major Major Major.
I've always found Major Dad's prose to be prolix.
Major Major Major Major is a member of the 99%. Major Dad, however, is not a literary person, but a flesh-and-blood televisionary person.
The corresponding truth, ineluctable, sad, is that Major Dad is not well versed in battlements.
"Got no worry, got no stress. Cause we feel good in a dress! Major Payne's a major diss. He make us squat when we piss. Got no worry, got no care. I'm a bald-headed son of a bitch with out hair! Use to be Samson, now I'm Ann. Got to earn my right to be called a man!"
Looks literary to me.
Damon was abandoned by his mother, and everything else comes from a Freudian analysis of that; you don't really need any more textual evidence.
I'm on my third of three-and-a-half pages regarding a Freudian analysis of the Brothers Wayans.
What of the works of Major Harris? No love at all?
Yeah, yeah, and Sergeant Rock?
No, wait...
Well I suppose it's time you learned, SCMT, that Major Harris was a literary invention.
This talk of battlements reminds me of Uncle Toby.
80: funny.
wrt the original topic: While "you don't need any more textual evidence" is clear asshattery, do people feel that for a first- or second- year lit student, a psychoanalytic reading of a Russian novel is a bad idea?
No, it would probably be a worthwhile exercise. It might be a little bit fish-in-a-barrel-ish to apply Freud to Dostoevsky, but it wouldn't be a waste of time unless you were sloppy and dogmatic about it.
I should have written "Major Lance, author of 'Um Um Um Um Um Um'".
58: Some of us know zero Latin and about enough German to order a cup of coffee. And I can't even spell Kierkegaard.