Mature Age

Ai Ya! I’m just about to be a mature age student! I’d better go down an hour early to make sure I can get front row seating. I must think up a question to ask right at the last second of class. I also need to be able to imply that my own life experiences are more valid than the tutor’s. Must also find out location of tutor’s car so can follow them to the carpark afterwards to like chat about stuff.

I’ll be a student in the next building to where Outrage Cohen will be teaching journos at the same time! Oh the humanities.

About AHC McDonald

Comedian, artist, photographer and critic. From 2007 to 2017 ran the culture and satire site The Worst of Perth
This entry was posted in Uncategorisable Worsts and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

106 Responses to Mature Age

  1. monkeypants says:

    yep that about sums up most of my mature age students.
    your lecturers would probably be disappointed if you behaved in any other way TLA. I can see you all hanging out together:

    Like

    • shazza says:

      Yep Mp, I hear you.
      My limited experience teaching students at Curtin was memorable. I had some doozie debates while tutoring smart arse mature agers. Just remembering them now still shits me.

      Like

      • monkeypants says:

        it’s enough to drive a woman to drink shazza! that’s what i tell senor moneypants anyway.
        and thanks for the blondie post the other day, i’ve been forcing the kids to listen to my old cd’s in the car. Blondie rocks.

        Like

    • Pfortner says:

      don’t forget to crap on about the buddhism/quantum physics connection, or perhaps what your children said while potty training or whatever…

      Like

      • Jasmine Glendenning says:

        It has been close to 30years since I thought about Schrodinger’s Cat & I was happy with the quantum leap to Buddhism now 30years on and I when I’m not reminiscing about potty training I wonder If Schrodinger ‘hated’ cats.

        Like

  2. shazza says:

    I expect DFOC will direct his students to this site.
    A dose of ‘up yours future cunts’ interspersed with Wintoning seems a good foundation for aspiring gerbalists.

    Like

  3. skink says:

    jeez, is everyone here a tutor?

    I had brief experience as a tutor and it sent me running screaming to the hills.

    Mature age students were definitely the worst. Either they knew it all and kept interrupting to show that they knew more than you and should really be teaching, or they knew absolutely fuck all and had to have the very basics explained to them.

    either way, they did not seem to have any reluctance in interrupting the session to try to tailor the whole course to their own needs.

    you can’t teach an old cunt new tricks

    Like

    • shazza says:

      Oh, I’m sad to hear that.

      Like

      • skink says:

        actually, it was the kids who were just thick as pigshit that shat me the most

        entry levels were so low that, as Lisa points out, many of them did not have the basic levels of numercy required. Several times I had to ask then why they thought they might be suited to a field where they obviously struggled to grasp the basic tools.

        still, at least they kept quiet about it and did not feel the need to broadcast their ignorance, or suggest that somehow not having a grasp of the entry-level theory was mitigated by the fact they had years of experience in the workplace.

        Like

        • skink says:

          numeracy, numeracy… good job it wasn’t literacy.

          Like

        • shazza says:

          When I explained to a 3rd year student her writing skills were below uni level standard, she remarked I was the first teacher to mention it. I was gobsmacked and outraged.
          Curtin has a free support service for students who are below par and no one, prior to myself, had even considered referring her. Fucking Amazing.

          You taking note of all this DFOC?

          Like

        • Pfortner says:

          what I couldn’t stand (as a student, not a tutor) was the fucking American exchange students who had to take at least one (1) philosophy unit in order to pass ‘back home’. Led to a lot of ‘YAH BET ‘FURE GUNNA WALK AROUND DRESSIN LAHK A HOOR, URE ASKIN FOH’T’ and ‘hurr hurr like, what if Gahd is like, the sun or some shit, what then’. It was a glorious day when a certain media tutor at a certain campus addressed one as a ‘redneck from Texas’. Anyway the whole int’l students rort is imploding on itself now, as it should, it’s degraded our entire education system. Not to Trot it all out, but the ‘user pays’ thing really FUCKED IT for good.

          Like

        • G'day from WA says:

          Yeah at least the mature agers have opinions (usually about everything). The mute 17 year olds are far more annoying. Doing a ‘why are you here’ thing once around a group I received the reply “because I failed the air force test”

          Like

  4. poor lisa says:

    Such stereotypes. I’d like to talk about the 18 year olds who can’t spell or punctuate, need lectures and handouts dedicated to how to subscribe to the lecture podcasts, answer their mobiles loudly in the library after letting them ring 5 times, and kick the back of my chair during entire lectures.

    You bastards. Thanks to these mature-age stereotypes, I always keep very quiet about how I was so bored I read the entire textbook during school holidays; only ask a question once every 3 classes (just enough to get the participation mark); never talk about my kids’ potty training even when the topic is developmental psychology; never tell the kid next to me that I got my first degree the year he was born; sit up the back of lectures and try to be first out the door; and linger in the coffee shop so as to be 5 mins late for every class.
    Somehow they still know I am over 40: how does that work?

    Like

    • Shreiking Wombat says:

      That’s the spirit, Lisa.

      Like

    • shazza says:

      It’s true that lit standards of young students are fucking appalling. They also think because the tutor is old (read over 35) they won’t know about plagiarisation from the internet.

      I would be half way through marking an essay when suddently the writing style and intellect level changes. You smell a rat so google a couple fo sentences, Bam. Theyv’e Nurried a whole section of some academic article.

      I won’t go into the time a student plagiarised a Neighbours plot.

      Like

      • poor lisa says:

        A neighbours plot? Really? I hope it had a sense of community that we are all missing, and that it made you laugh and cry at the same time, and that your emotional landscape was enhanced rather than diminished.

        Seriously, that’s interesting, cos the problem is so rampant we have to submit essays via online plagiarism-detecting software; but I don’t think Neighbours plots are part of its algorithms so that would go undetected.

        Like

      • poor lisa says:

        … and my tutors so far have both been under 25, and they can’t spell either. But at least they know how to podcast.

        Like

      • gregoryno6 says:

        I plagiarised an episode of Homicide once, casting myself as Leonard Teale. Scored an A+ because the teacher said I looked good in a hat.

        Like

      • Bento says:

        I love the Neighbours plagiarism story.

        Like

        • Snuff says:

          It’s an evil genius high distinction all right, Bento. Not only would it elude algorithms; what are the chances of a tutor ever having watched Neighbours ?

          Like

      • I had a student last year who not only dropped pointed comments at every opportunity to the effect that she is a “model” of some description, and who often had to leave class early on this account, but who also in her final essay referenced an obscure book on Coptic monasteries not to be found in any library collection in WA. I was able to find a chapter listing for the book which suggested that none of the book’s content had any bearing on the subject of the essay. There were also repeated spurious references to unit texts. Because Google didn’t turn up any of her essay’s sentences, I couldn’t conclusively prove plagiarism, and still wonder what the Plagiarism Officer made of it all. With the same lot of essays, I got halfway through marking an apparently A+ essay before smelling a rat, Googling some phrases, and then discovering that the entire essay was a clever composite of at least ten separate internet sources. It would have taken said student less time to just write the fucking essay, I’m sure. Her rather more obtuse buddy had the temerity to directly plagiarise from the online marketing spiel of an official company website related to her essay’s subject. Wow.

        Like

        • orbea says:

          same experience here with plagiarism, but its so bloody tiring googling suss sentences for twenty five students submitting three essays a semester

          Like

          • flynn says:

            the advantage of doing the degree pre google. You might have been lucky to find more than two or three references but hardly any-one would have checked them .

            Like

      • Shreiking Wombat says:

        “They also think because the tutor is old (read over 35) they won’t know about plagiarisation from the internet. ”

        What’s the internet?

        Like

  5. David Cohen says:

    I had a delightful time in my two Curtin journalism tutorials this afternoon.

    There were eager young minds willing to grapple with complex issues and keen to (respectfully) question the orthodoxies.

    They had prepared well for the tutes and showed passion for their future careers.

    Overall it was refreshing and invigorating.

    I have no idea what you cunts are talking about.

    Like

  6. shazza says:

    I have a hunch this is going to be the best thread ever!

    Like

  7. orbea says:

    Dear Lazy Aussie
    Harden. The. Fuck. Up.
    That is all.
    Regards,
    Gun Maker

    Like

  8. There’s a guy with a punk mohawk in the class.

    Like

  9. Just got home of a Friday night and turned the comp on for my latest installment of TWOP. Here’s the funny thing – I’m a lecturer / tutor at Curtin as well – hahahahahaha!!!

    Like

  10. Hugh Jass says:

    What the fuck is all this about then? Cunt’s…

    Like

      • rolly says:

        The Worst of Curtin??

        How worst can you get?

        Nothing to equal it in the hole of the cuntry.

        Like

        • Curtin is not worst.

          Like

          • No, Murdoch is – by a long shot.

            Like

            • shazza says:

              No, Enid Blyton is.

              Like

              • Wasn’t certain that EB counted as a university, despite its pretensions.

                Like

                • shazza says:

                  Well it’s got University in the title.

                  Like

                  • Apparently they have such things as “degrees”, “classes”, “lecturers”, and so on, so I guess EB counts. Perhaps I rate Murdoch as a worst simply because I have been there so long and have thus had time to discern, or simply to be confronted with, its less desirable features. The dilapidated “Chinese Garden”, with its emptied pond, overgrowing ivy, and rustically collapsed gazebo is truly something to behold. And then there’s those signs they put up everywhere during O-Week picturing some vapid looking young sheila telling us all how “flexible and friendly” the teaching staff are. Or the big plastic “1”s spitted into the grass all over Bush-Court during said week meant to indicate that Murdoch is, indeed, first amongst universities. Or the relatively recent “Discoverers Welcome” corporate iconography, with its meditative depictions of shoeless youths staring out over the ocean with long trails of footprints in the sand………..blahhhhhh.

                    Like

                    • shazza says:

                      I am truly sad and surprised to hear about the dilapidation of the Chinese Garden. My daughter just started her degree at Murdoch and I told her to go have a peek as it was a lovely spot.
                      Is the pub any good these days?

                      Like

                    • poor lisa says:

                      Shazza I think jesper once had something to say about the murdoch tav but can’t remember where. The comment not the tav

                      Like

                    • shazza says:

                      Snuff would know. I believe he said Murdoch smelt like a turd, and the complained that there was in fact a pub on campus, and , “there is also music”.

                      Like

                    • Snuff says:

                      Yes, pl and shaz, as TLA noted here, Jesper was moaning about the fact that Murdoch actually had one, and that there was “quite often also music”. However, after finding himself featured here enjoying its hospitality, the irony was too much for him, and he selectively deleted all of the Murdoch related posts on his blog, which has since been rendered completely defunct. Fortunately, thanks to skink’s wonderful Xtranormal work, we’ll always have this verbatim record of Jesper’s blog entries. Unsurprisingly, given that his “collected works” on the aforementioned blog amounted to precisely zero, he’s now opted for a maximum of 140 characters.

                      Like

                    • shazza says:

                      Thanks snuff. As funny today as it was then.

                      Like

                    • Snuff says:

                      You’re welcome, shaz, and trooper that Jesper is, he’s still giving it to Murdoch here and here, even as we speak.

                      Like

  11. flynn says:

    so many TWOPpers are Curtin tutors…….
    The other issue with mature age students, is that they tend to take out all the prizes too. Expectations are now high LA.

    Like

  12. artheretic says:

    “Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years”

    – George Eliot

    mature age student

    Like

We can handle the worst