danielford

They choose the topic. I'm fine with anything in biology, medicine, chemistry, and even some social science topics. Some of them run into trouble and others don't depending on what they choose.

I've considered removing the assignment a few times, but there's no skill more essential to success in science than the ability to synthesize different research articles into a coherent whole. I wouldn't feel like I was doing my job if I stopped assigning it.

Community colleges like the one I work at can't afford the journal fees. One of my assignments involves reading several peer-reviewed articles on a narrow topic and writing an explanation of the research. Every semester I have students that struggle with finishing this assignment because the articles they need are inaccessible.

> We didn't know how to talk or study or dress or think the way our peers did. It took me years to learn.

Please tell me everything about this. I teach at a community college and my students come from the middle class, the working class, and the place I can't see.

Yes that's wrong, but the paper that corrected this misconception wasn't published until January of 2016. I think you should give them at least a year to update before unleashing the disapproving scowl.

The most disappointing YC-backed product I tried was Stypi.

I teach community college and sometimes I wonder about the thought processes behind some of my students' papers. Paul Graham linked an essay he wrote in Stypi, where you could watch him write it in real time. This was clearly the greatest computer-assisted tool for teaching writing ever, and I immediately incorporated Stypi into one of my writing assignments. I wanted to know how much my students proofread, how they structured essays, and what they struggled with as they wrote. I was so excited about it that I wrote the entire assignment in Stypi and linked my students to the replay in case they were interested.

It was a disaster. So many students lost essays in browser crashes or were flat out unable to use the software. I ultimately had to apologize to my class, give everyone an extension, and cut Stypi out of the project.

Apparently they were acquired though, so I guess they made someone happy.

When I was a kid I put water wings on my ankles so I could walk on the water like Jesus. I fell over within 0.5 seconds of entering the pool and they held me upside down with my feet sticking out. I remember thinking I was going to die right up until my Mom jumped in and saved me.

I teach at a community college, and as it was explained to me by our financial aid office, student aid isn't paid out until a few weeks in as a mechanism to prevent financial aid fraud. Every year people sign up for classes, collecting their financial aid money, and then never show up. Community colleges are the primary target for this type of fraud, since we have open admissions.

The federal government is not okay with this, so they instituted a system of mandatory reporting where we have to keep track of whether or not a student shows up during the first few weeks. That way they know who not to send aid to when that time is up. If we fail to properly report this then the college is expected to send money to the federal government to make up the difference.

So it's not a trick on our part to get you to use the campus bookstore. I personally encourage my students not to use the bookstore, since I think marking up the prices on textbooks is inappropriate. I've also pushed hard for the adoption of open textbooks in my department, but it looks like that's going to be at least two years away.