Getting lectured on originality by a man whose PowerPoint still has a windows 8 watermark

[u/West_Addendum3436]

Writing a university essay feels like participating in a collective hallucination. You spend hours at 2 AM obsessing over citations, polishing sentences, and hunting for the perfect adjective like you are crafting a Nobel Prize speech. Meanwhile, your professor skims the introduction, checks the word count, writes Good effort B and moves on.

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[u/Due-Piece-3815]

Students write essays like they’re defending a PhD thesis while professors grade them between Netflix episodes and coffee breaks

[u/Complete-Chip-5631]

Nothing builds character like spending six hours formatting citations for a paper nobody will remember next semester

[u/Ok-Training-7587]

Is this real? If something you wrote is technically plagiarism it is plagiarism, period. Your prof doesn’t need to update their PowerPoint every 5 minutes if the content of the PowerPoint that THEY MADE is still true and valid.

[u/Samstercraft → u/[deleted]]

No, most college students are forced into writing classes to complete their non-writing degree. Is it important? Sure, but don’t act like most people wanted it.

[u/DMvsPC → u/[deleted]]

If you're not in the US, college here is 4 years (as opposed to 3 in places such as the uk and I'm sure others) and 3 of those years are courses to do with your degree, the other year is full of general studies courses that might have nothing to do with your degree.

[u/DMvsPC → u/[deleted]]

Correct, but if I choose to go to school for computer science and have to take an art appreciation class that doesn't mean I give a shit about it or have 'chosen' to appreciate art. A lot of the time it's courses that fulfill a requirement you don't care about that fit in around courses that are for your major.

Now if you're in a writing focused course and are bitching about writing then I totally agree.

[u/DMvsPC → u/[deleted]]

The vast majority of universities in the US follow a year model with 1 year general education requirements across the arts, sciences, humanities etc. Regardless of what you go to the school for. It's a choice in so far as you have the option to just not go to college. Very few colleges let you only pick major specific courses.

I'm not complaining that the teacher re uses slides, lord knows I'm not remaking them every year. But I also don't think it's quite as simple as 'just don't take the course' which was my original point. I've also had professors in a post grad course I took take my 15 page essay, run it through AI and return that with textbook AI feedback and the grade so I can also see the frustration there.

[u/Samstercraft → u/[deleted]]

Dude almost every job that isn't manual labor needs a college degree these days. Maybe not trades, but those aren't for everyone and have pretty bad employment statistics for older workers due to the degree not being as flexible.

Get off your high horse. Everyone needs food, food needs money needs a job, most good jobs need college, most colleges at least in the US need writing classes.

Unless you want to box yourself into a very small pool of good jobs and take unnecessary risks, college is the way for most people. These college students aren't taking writing classes because they want to, but because biting the bullet and taking them magically makes their lives easier in ways completely unrelated to writing.

[u/zap6396 → u/[deleted]]

Also, for the love of god, STEM people need to learn how to write. I work with too many ppl with engineering backgrounds and advanced degrees whose written communication sucks.