Students.  We’ve all been one at one time or another.  Today I’m writing the first installment of what I hope will be an ongoing series, students are dumb.  I suppose this post could be generalized to “people who don’t read are dumb”, but as any TA or professor knows, this problem can be particularly bad for students.  Usually the information you need has been clearly posted for you.  Students who do not take time to read this information are dumb.

I’m not sure if it is something specific about online discussion boards that breed this particular problem, but it seems to run rampant there.  And it’s not just the frequent starting of threads that have already been started (though this is a problem too).  I’m talking about asking a question that has clearly been answered within a thread to which the entire thread is about.

The other day I clearly posted a clarification about having a lecture during the week of Thanksgiving.  The confusion was that in the class I teach the tutorials for the week were cancelled, but the lecture was still on.  As a reminder to students I posted the following note:

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to remind you that there will be a lecture on Tuesday [specific date].  Only the tutorials on Wednesday are cancelled.

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend!

Seems pretty clear, right?  Wrong.  Two dumb responses followed.  The first was a clarification of whether all Wednesday tutorials had been cancelled.  Umm… yes.  The course TA clarified that yes, all tutorials were indeed cancelled.  The next response was even more baffling.  It asked, since the Wednesday tutorials are cancelled, was the lecture on Tuesday cancelled as well.

Oh my lord.  I don’t have the patience for this.  Luckily the TA was quick to reply because I’m not sure I could have pulled in the sarcasm, or let’s face it, blatant nastiness, and that would have been unprofessional.

A public service announcement benefitting all teachers, TAs, instructors, professors, etc…:

Students, read the information available to you before you ask questions, particularly if that posting will be public and permanent.  Otherwise, you are dumb.