But the wildly misplaced apostrophe in the title is talking to me...
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Pryor's Resarch Paper on Research (MUST READ!)
You may want to check your subject title before you start ragging on other people's bad grammar/misspellings.
I'm more offended by the MUST READ tag.
You're not the boss of me.
I know why it is so hard to read. He meant to title this post Rorschach paper. Ahhh, it all makes sense now.
Please enclose the portions that are supposedly Pryor's in quotes or a source box so that we can read in proper context, then negbang you.
Yeah...apparently I can't change it.
.
At the top of the page under your subject header there should be a tab named "Edit."
You should be able to...
It's been taken care of.
I don't know whether this paper will get him a passing grade at Ohio State, but I do think it would make him a moderator at Scout or Rivals.
This'll be a text book next year at OSU.
I think we're likely throwing stones in glass houses with this.
Zoltan Mesko's, David Moosman's, Mark Huyge's, Patrick Omameh's, Taylor Lewan's, Craig Roh's, or Courtney Avery's house.
Stevie Brown on the other hand...
Stevie struggled with applied geometry... I'm sure his research papers are just fine.
I've actually read an essay of his. Pryor writes better =/
I am guessing OSU has 7 players that could also write a decent freshman paper.
Off the top of my head, those were the business, engineering or 4.0s I could think of.
And...in regards to OSU....I only talk about football players who play for Michigan.
I am guessing OSU has 7 players that could also write a decent freshman paper.
but they're probably all rs seniors. ba-zing!
well done +1
absolutely no disrespect to those guys' houses.
... a dormmate of mine -- several years ago -- got a hold of a basketball players psych 101 paper. It was written at a 2nd grade level. The sad part was he got the same grade my colleague got. This person is no longer a fan of college athletics.
On another note -- don't they have tutors to help with this stuff? How hard can it be to ask for guidance?
Isnt that is one of the things in college you do?
Sorry...I know how to spell Pryor. It was a mix-up. However, the article is much more interesting than my spelling mistake.
explain your rampant capitalization of the title?
but it is distracting when you have the same word twice in your topic header, once spelled the correct way and once the wrong way.
But how do you spell research?
... as shitty as this paper is, its not that far from a lot of freshman papers I've read. I've proofread and corrected a lot of papers that are worse than this that were written by non-athletes.
As a college freshman, I'm not sure whether I should take that as a comfort (as in, I'm a much better writer than a significant percentage of college freshman) or as a sign of the impending fall of western society.
Definitely the fall of western society.
I've had to do peer editing and group writing quite a bit in my time here, and the terrible writers have outnumbered the decent ones without question. I don't know if it's a Michigan thing, or if it's because I'm a former AP English kid that happened to go into the Engineering College, but I cringe almost every time I have to read someone else's text.
The good part, though, is that my half-assed night-before papers still somehow end up being above the standards for my tech writing courses. I'm finishing up my senior tech comm course this month, and I literally haven't spent more than one night on any of the assignments. (I'm getting an A.) My advice to you is to adjust your effort to the minimum to make your grade, and let someone else worry about the decline of Western civilization.
Meh, Techcomm isn't that bad, and the average is like 3.5 anyways. For 2 credits, its a ridiculously light load (especially since it counts towards engineering GPA)
Not sure if I agree completely with "the impending fall of western society," but I do agree that students these days just don't seem to be able to write effectively at all.
Where?
University of South Dakota.
a remedial class. If not, USD may have the dumbest students I've ever heard of. Seriously, not even many students at community colleges would hand in such a thing here.
A school whose business students place in the top 5% nationally is full of idiots.
Anything else you want to comment on? Make sure you focus on something of which you have no knowledge or understanding, that way you can stay consistent.
No offense intended, but I really don't see how your responses rebut the poster's comments who you are responding to.
Fatbastard, who said USD has dumb students.
I understand that, but responding to him by providing a ranking doesn't really rebut his point. Regardless of what their ranking is, if they have students who are writing papers like that, they have dumb students, or at the very least students who are lacking very basic skills.
So having some students who struggle to write effectively more substantially supports the idea that the school has "the dumbest students" than outscoring 95% of the nation on a comprehensive test? By scoring in the upper echelon of schools nationally, I make the claim that the school must not be full of idiots, thereby refuting fatbastard's claim to the contrary.
Are you really sure that you want to use an evaluation mechanism that ranks students highly who write more poorly than this as the evidence to support the quality of your school?
The ETS exam, which I refer to, is a widely accepted and used exam to gauge the success of a student's undergraduate learning, including schools like Penn, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.
I don't know what else to tell you, a handful of students struggle to write effectively at every school, and Terrelle Pryor is one of them. Not the worst writer in the world, but definitely needs a LOT of tutoring.
i donut no muck abot USD or it's stoodints. I does tink, tough, dat ef yu got stoodints dat rite like dat, whu r naught taekin rumedeal klasses, den may be them r note two intelijent?
Because a small minority of students can't write effectively, the entire student body is unintelligent! I get it now! Thanks so much for your insight and for clearing that up for me. Clearly when the university outscores Ivy League schools on a regular basis on the EXACT same test its just a recurring fluke and not indicative of the student body's intelligence as a whole.
I tried to find some evidence of your claim that the University of South Dakota is good at business.
No-show on Businessweek (undergrad b-school):
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/
Unranked on US News (grad b-school):
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/...
Considering that US News ranks down to like Tier 4 schools, this is a pretty bad sign indeed.
I think that you're referring to this wikipedia article, which contains the following quote:
For the 2006-07 academic year, the Beacom School of Business boasted graduating seniors who collectively scored in the top five percent in a national exit exam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_South_Dakota
Unfortunately though, just like football 40 times and the GRE, national exit exams don't correlate that highly with actual on-the-field performance.
He didn't hurt nobody.
removed - dp
This doesn't sound like something TP would write. Are you sure he didn't let one of his kids use the computer while he was doing homework?
(I have no reason to believe he actually has kids.)
I can hardly wait to see what his Wunderlic score is.
Apparently the comparisons to Vince Young seem to be more valid than anyone ever thought.
There's a high probability this is fake. And if this is true I take no pleasure in knowing Pryor's school system failed him.
I first saw this "research paper" posted on a Facebook group a few days ago. I was skeptical then, I am skeptical now.
Same here, I thought it was hilarious but didn't quite believe that it was real. Funny, nonetheless though.
In order for a school system to "fail" a student, that student has to actually put forth some effort. Though not in equal measure, an education is available to anyone who wants it.
This is the type of gross oversimplification that helps ensure our education system is highly inequitable. You should really explore the "not in equal measure" part of your statement, you just might get educated.
This can explain why so many children in America have subpar skills in reading, writing, and mathematics. It cannot, however, explain this paper.
The paper above is fairly representative of the type of structure that is taught throughout a public school curriculum (although there are several errors in that respect, to be sure, but they are trivial compared to the paper's other problems, particularly in the introduction). The paper begins with a set of general statements and then transitions into a personal narrative, which serves to give examples about the value of the topic. The main body describes the various applications of research, and the conclusion espouses the virtue of research in a broader context, something also typical of the methodology espoused by public schools.
What really struck me about this paper is how mind-bogglingly stupid the content of this paper was. In addition to the simplistic and poor sentences, the paper simply does not express any remotely intellectual idea. Furthermore, none of the points in the paper serve any overarching purpose. Instead, it seems that he just spewed out random anecdotes without any purpose in mind.
Now, perhaps the education system can be blamed for failing to teach how to make a more concise paper. However, the utter lack of intellect shown here suggests that the author simply isn't very smart.
For the record, my thoughts on the matter would hold true for any collegiate undergrad. My feelings are not influenced by the fact that it is the Buckeyes QB who (allegedly) wrote this. The possibility that Pryor wrote this just makes it funny, rather than sad, although I am well aware that there are likely Michigan athletes who are not very smart too.*
*Case in point: http://imagesocket.com/view/caribbean1e42.gif
As a teacher I know how important a role parents and attitude play in a kid's education. I know there are inequities in opportunity, but it's extremely difficult to teach someone who doesn't want to learn. I have 4th grade students whose parents are in prison. They're more interested in watching South Park and playing Grand Theft Auto. It's not the child's fault, but I know I'm not the one failing him.
As a former middle school and high school educator, and as a current college educator, I agree that kids' parents play a formative role in their education. But you did imply ("an education is available to anyone who wants it") that getting an education is simply a matter of "wanting it." I would argue that the contexts in which kids grow up, including social and educational systems, have a large impact on their choice to play video games or watch TV rather than do homework. So, while you are not the one failing him, his choices are born on the spot, created in a vacuum. His choices are shaped by the social and educational systems in which he is raised - there are years of history behind those choices you pin on him.
Yeah, I didn't mean to imply it was the schools alone. The main point was that it seems really wrong to point the finger and laugh when I'm sure he didn't have the academic advantages growing up most the users on this board did.
blueblueblue:
I don't disagree with you, but too many people are quick to blame teachers or schools. A previous poster said that Pryor's school failed him. I'm sure there were teachers in that school who would have been glad to help him if he wanted it. Education is a two-way street. Johnathan Kozol has written extensively about the role that money and environment plays in education. My point is that there are many teachers (and schools) doing the best job that they can in a tough situation.
I live in an area with many HS youths that read and comprehend at elementary levels and I do think the teachers in this district bear some responsibility because many of these students are passed regardless of their performance or lack there of.
I don't know the district Pryor attended in Pennsylvania but if other students struggle like this than the teachers did them no favors in allowing them to pass their classes instead of holding them accountable for unacceptable work.
Point taken, I dont think we are in disagreement.
And yes, grammar and punctuation have become an absolute secondary consideration in their society. It's kind of hard to blame the average 18 yr old who can't articulately express his ideas when they're not even aware of what's wrong with their grammar in the first place. They write a paper and you throw it back to them covered in red ink, and they honestly look at in shock and awe-- they don't realize it's so poor. So who's at fault: the school, the home, the society?
I think ultimately as an educator you need to compare their first term of work to their last... That's the only true way to measure the 'system' or the role of the instructor. Comprehensive progress will give a true measure of a student's will to succeed, capacity to learn, and drive to make something better of him or her self.
Or in my case, if they're wearing scarlet and gray, you just fail 'em without reading a word of it.
that's entirely false. i took two semesters of education law, and have toured schools in the northeast, midwest and the south. i've researched teacher quality, teacher pay and class size. and i've seen no evidence whatsoever that could be used to support your argument.
I'd bet there are plenty of successful students from his high school whose system didn't fail them. When a kid sucks in the classroom, please don't automatically blame the teachers, schools, systems, etc.
Chances are about 99% that the kid (or any kid not from a poor background) is uneducated b/c he chose to be.
From a statistical standpoint, it is clear that some school districts inherently harm a kid's chances to succeed while other school districts are beneficial. Furthermore, it is obvious that when we simply look at certain school districts, getting a legitimate high school education can be highly difficult.
That said, we do tend to use these trends to evaluate individual situations, even when the trend doesn't even apply. For the record, Jeannette High School scores a 5/10 on Great Schools ( http://www.greatschools.net/pennsylvania/jeannette/Jeannette-City-School... ), which is about average throughout the country. This is by no means good, but it isn't exactly horrible. I think that it's safe to say that Pryor just isn't that smart.
At least he's doing his own work. I think.
Not bad, huh?
So he's got that goin' for him...which is nice.
He must of had Reggie Germany write this paper.
He must of had Reggie Germany
must of had
must of
Everyone kills people, murders people, steals from you, steals from me, researches stuff, writes about researching stuff, whatever.
Well if he does decide to go into Criminal Justice, at least he'd have a good start to a thesis:
"Everybody murders..."
EDIT: Beat me to it ^^^
That made my head hurt just trying to read it.
I believe you, though. You just can't make something like this up.
The hard part of this for me is that it actually makes me hope TP winds up being successful in football, because I can't see any other future for him with this kind of composition skill.
I've always wanted one.
--> A blue one with nice plumage, by the way.
I'm bored at work right now, and this just made me bust out loud laughing. My fellow employees have been coming by my office giving me weird looks as there's no one else in here with me to make me laugh. Nothing's made me laugh this hard in ages and I don't even know why it's so funny.
... you might enjoy the sequel:
I'm normally very conscientious (sp?) when it comes to sending emails, but I just spammed my contacts with these pictures.
I'm tired of all of these false allegations.
I don't have any buckets. Not a one.
:(
May be it's just me, but I find that posting this is pretty classless. I understand the whole "he's an athlete that will make more money than everyone in this thread combined so let's take shots at him while we still can" mentality, but still...
I bet the average football player at Michigan probably writes at the same level.
I am still wondering what makes this a "MUST READ" - and in all caps too. No, seriously. Why do you think this is so important for us to read? So we can make fun of the culture and school system in which Pryor was raised? So we can have some reason these days, any reason for god's sake, to look down on him, and, using false logic, the rest of OSU? Does this really make you feel like you are better than him? Be classy (I wont say "stay" classy because I have no evidence yet that you have ever been classy).
Yeah....I understand why you'd be upset about this. I just thought I'd post it for a good laugh.
Where, in all of that diatribe you just made attacking the OP, did you show any evidence of class? Was it during the part where you made personal jabs at the character of someone you've never even met? Sorry if I take your whole post with a grain of salt. It's called a sense of humor. Have you ever been to or seen a comedy show? The entire thing is making fun of others. You must be one of those people that sees and episode of Family Guy and says "MY WORD! How unequivocally abhorrent!" Ohio State is our arch rival. Terrelle Pryor is our arch rival's quarterback, who also happened to snub Michigan in the process of becoming our arch rival's quarterback. Making fun of him is all a part of the rivalry. Loosen up a bit man and don't be so judgmental of others. Take your nose out of the air and just let it go. There's other issues that call the OP into question, such as the fact that this might not be his paper at all. But that's not what you attacked. The fact is, it's just all in good fun, so why do you have to try to bring someone else down just so you can make yourself think that you're better than them. And I realize the parallels between that and what you said in your post. The difference is you just meant yours as a personal attack, whereas he meant his as a joke.
Ummm. Wow. Talk about a diatribe. Talk about irony.
If you think the OP's post was not a personal jab at TP, then you are in dreamland. And my statement that troubles you so much - that I don't have "evidence yet" that the poster has class - was not saying he or she doesn't have class, just that the post was not evidence of class. And I have not seen any other posts by this person. Perhaps you should lighten up also?
the English language.
Pryor learned his grammar in a house of corrections.
The following is a true story:
An older female friend of mine was doing homework in the UGLi in the fall of 2004, when across the library she noticed none other than Braylon Edwards typing a paper. After he had been staring into space for some time, he asked her if she could help him edit his paper. As she looked at his paper she noticed the title "The Caribbean Language". Thinking this might be a typo she read and edited the entire paper. What she learned that day was that there indeed is a "Caribbean Language" and it is beautiful.
Now, do any of you know someone who can speak Caribbean?
The point of this story is that our star athletes are not necessarily the smartest people on the planet.
At least they don't go to OSU.
"Avast matey! Would ye care to parley before I enter ye red zone?"
Our star player invented a freakin' language man! You try to do that. No wonder Braylon had focus problems before his senior year, he was busy developing the world's most recent dialect.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the paper wasn't about the patois of Jamaica and the Lesser Antilles?
If you say "bacon" with a Jamaican accent, you're actually saying "beer can" with an English accent.
I lived next door to David Terrell on the second floor of Adams House my freshman year. He used my computer one day to write a paper for one of his classes. Sadly, that computer has long since bitten the dust so I no longer have the .doc file.
The paper was about Komodo Dragons and was every bit as bad as this alleged paper by Pryor. My friends and I decided that when we were in 6th grade we could have done a better job. Unfortunately, I think this is par for the course for a majority of people in the states.
TP is lucky, he won't need the writing skills. I sincerely hope DT invested his money wisely.
"TP is lucky, he won't need the writing skills."
Uh.... why not?
Generally professional football players make significant cash and can hire someone to do that for him. Or just marry someone to do it for him.
Then again, he may not even go to the NFL. He might use his Criminal Justice degree to become a lawyer.
I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about research, not a paper, not a paper, not a paper, but we're talking about research! We're talking about research, man. Research!
You supposed to be a franchise writer, and we in here talkin bout research.
Does anyone remember the Left Behind at the Fishbowl blog? There were some prominent discoveries of papers by football players not to mention the Michigan student body at large.
So yeah, glass house, etc., etc.
I do! Funny stuff. But also appalling. [Insert lament about the state of education nowadays.]
That site was fantastic. The football players' "entries" were always the best.
Personally, I liked this one:
http://ahfb.blogspot.com/2006/11/hygiene-of-swedish-and-american.html
Probably because I'm Swedish.
I love how the first two sentences of the introduction smoothly lead up to the third:
In the way that the Swedish culture and our culture believe in hygiene is almost two worlds apart. Our everyday routines of hygiene are completely different from the ones of the Swedish culture. Cleanliness was thus a moral problem an obstacle of equality and improvement (pg. 175).
I agree that this is in all likelihood a fantastic fake. However, papers like this exist all over high school and at many colleges - it highlights the extreme lack of writing skills in America today. My sister was a TA for a frosh writing class when she was in grad school (at a well-regarded good undergraduate institution) and the stuff she had to grade was just laughably incompetent. It was stuff you could have literally not made up if you tried.
Our esteemed blogger and his mod buddies could correct me if I'm wrong, but the #1 for good writing is to KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY BEFORE YOU START WRITING. There's very little examination of the ideas themselves in today's education, so tons of students have no idea what their point is. If they did, they might view writing as work with a purpose instead of a painful experience of academic constipation.
Also: my high school Engrish teacher (who was from Ohio, grrrr) taught us that the "five-paragraph paper" originated at Michigan as a weed-out course, to examine if students could...deja vu...express and argue an idea clearly and succinctly.
I would like to see a four-paragraph essay on the merits of research from Tate for comparison. Also from Cone. Cone's paper would have the option of being in rap form.
that says he takes full responsibility for the assignment and getting it in on time.
God have mercy on us all.
I overheard words like McCafé, French Fries, etc.
at least there was only one spelling or grammar mistake in that sentence.
The glass is half full.
Having taught several semesters of college-level writing classes, I can say that this "incredibly bad writing" phenomena isn't restricted to athletes.
...but this should either be "this [] phenomenon" or "these [] phenomena."
The data I have says that your criteria for making this correction is accurate.
Not everybody's the perfect researcher in the world. I mean, everyone falsifies data, fabricates results, plagiarizes you, plagiarizes me, whatever.
(This one's for you, jonny_GoBlue)
Thanks for the laugh, I do 'preciate.
No one Plegerizes like me though... ;)
This whole discussion reminds me of how much I miss watching Dhani Jones read poetry in the Arb on the U of M TV channel.
Andy Katzenmoyer is the professor.
He should co-write a book with BigKatz.
But seriously, and unfortunately, about 1/4 of the students in classes I taught at Arizona State wrote at a similar level.
I think this explains the dumbification of America:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2682654/idiocracy_opening_sequence/
EDIT: Wolverine, you beat me to the Big Katz reference while I was looking for the Idiocracy clip!
I was surprised no one mentioned it before I did.
I don't care if this paper belonged to Pryor or not, its funny regardless. And to the people who think this is "classless" I will throw a big-fat C'MON your way. Don't think for one second that a buckeye wouldn't post something like this about a U of M student. I love it...anything to make the qb of our rival look any worse after his team has lopsided thier way to a nice winning streak against us has my approval.
By the way, the guy is pretty dumb. Watch him during the Rose Bowl...at times he'll look like tressel just asked him to recite Pie to the 34th figure.
Posting this is not good taste. You argue that a buckeye fan would post this about a UofM player. Buckeye fans lack class. M fans (for the most part) have class. Therefore, posting this is classless.
I knew that would be someone's response. Unfortunately class and humor sometime blur a very fine line.
No offense (and probably playing devil's advocate) but what is classy about your avatar? Even though I enjoy the picture, the "Ohio Sucks" shirt is very similar to some of the "classless" comments that are routinely targeted towards me by osu fans when I'm in my Michigan gear. Just saying...
That's a terrible argument based around a logical fallacy. Not everything a classless fan does is classless. Therefore, you are making a poorly argued point.
I do agree that "Buckeyes do it too" is a terrible argument however.
It seems as though Pryor was failed by the teachers he had before he became a buckeye. It this is real then it is truly sad. Worst of all he will probably end up making millions of dollars even though he is probably at an 8th grade level for most things. When you put too much emphasis on sports this is what happens.
It's important to include Pryor's footnote on Page 2 regarding his reaction to the assignment
If I can't research, I can't research. It is as simple as that. It ain't about that at all. It's easy to sum it up if you're just talking about research. We're sitting here, and I'm supposed to be the fiscal saver, and we're talking about research. I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about research, not a purchase, not a purchase, not a purchase, but we're talking about research. Not the purchase that I go out there and pay for and make every purchase like it's my last but we're talking about research man. How silly is that?
What is this spoofing? It's familiar and it's driving me nuts...
[Edit: Nevermind. I figured it out. Allen Iverson.]
My wife was a TA for an Intro to Urban Planning class with Maurice Taylor in it when we were in grad school. He maybe wrote at a 6th grade level. The prof changed the grade so he (as she did with other UM scholly athletes that were in it) would pass.
Fries are done.
I'll cut TP and OSU some slack. I'd hate to see what one of Mario Manningham's papers would have looked like. No offense to Mario.
That is all.
I never thought about it that way, but I guess research is the most helpful resource to finding out things you want to buy. I'm going to go check out some research to figure out what to get my girlfriend for Christmas! Thanks TP!
"the probability of finding an electron at a given point in space."
Otherwise known as "Tate's completion percentage."
It's one of the fundamental constants.
BOOM! Heisenberged!
Hopefully Forcier is better at finding free electrons in space than defenders that play against us in the coming years.
475nm!
I'm still trying to figure out if Sarah Palin wrote the thread or the research paper on research.
to make you think she is stupid?
I once had a story about a football player edited by a football player.
It was for a 200-level Creative Writing class (prof: Francesca Delbanco -- loved that name).
You'd write a short story and bring it in to class, and then you had to give it to the 4 or 5 other people in your group.
DeWayne Patmon was in the class, but his attendance wasn't exactly stellar (it wasn't during the football season). When he came back after missing a couple of weeks, he got moved into my group.
Thing is, that was the day I had brought a fantastic (i.e. uses fantasy) short story (inspired by playing way too much NCAA 'XX) about an overly stereotypical black kid who was getting recruited by Michigan. My character was bright, but hid it to fit in, and was an extraordinarily good football player. The reason he was so good was that he literally could use magic to make the ball do what he wanted (a subplot was that he would get weak and ravenously hungry after using his superhuman abilities).
What made the story awful was it was full of really stupid (in retrospect) stereotypes. A beat-up Chevy LeBaron, kids drinking 40-oz. malt liquor, badly executed Ebonics, that kind of thing. I was 20 and part of being 20 for me was being really dumb about this kind of shit.
The last thing I was expecting was for a football player to read it. But I had 5 copies, and rules are rules, and Mr. Patmon got handed my shitty story.
I was kind when editing his, which wasn't great writing but had a good story about surviving an Armageddonish hurricane -- the makings of a pretty decent adventure story. Mostly I was doing the best job I could in anticipation of the ass-kicking that overweight suburban Jewish boys get when they seem to be mocking Big Ten defensive backs named DeWayne.
When we met again to discuss my paper, he didn't say anything about the racist crap -- he was more interested in allusions I made linking the main character to Jesus.
So then I asked him, apologetically as I could -- what about all the stereotype stuff in there? He was like "whatever, it doesn't sound like anybody I know -- I would have had them talk like everybody else."
This conversation has been the key for me in writing characters who are profoundly different from me: make them not different. I've had main characters be Evangelical Christians, middle-aged workaday dads, teenage lesbians, pretty much everything but 20-something privileged Jewish guys. And each time, the key to getting at their narratives and making them believable has been to ignore all cultural biases and give them my own voice.
I'm sure there are plenty of stories out there about football players, ours or theirs or the other guys', who turn in half-thought-out drek like what's posted above. I just wanted to say that the most important lesson I ever learned about both Creative Writing and stereotyping in general came from a hard-hitting starting safety from San Diego.
While checking the voting details, I noticed stankoniaks has the super human ability to neg the OP more than once. That has to be most satisfying.
Your short story sounds like Uncle Tom's Cabin meets X-Men meets Like Mike meets The Secret World of Alex Mack meets Invisible Man (the Ralph Ellison one).
+1 for using The Secret World of Alex Mack.
Lebaron not Chevy.
He failed to log out of the machine when he was done.
It may not be much of a research paper, but it's pretty good for a "resarch" paper.
I am still sarching for the right words to describe his paper.
I made some jokes, we shared some laughs, it was fun. I'm not innocent because I took part in joking about Terrelle Pryor's paper. But I am rather bothered by someone posting TP's work online. It's kind of an invasion of TP's privacy. Say what you want about the state of college athletics and academic standards and how inappropriate this level of writing is for a college student, but at the end of the day, this is still TP's personal business and I believe that we should try to respect his privacy. Not to blame the victim, but TP should remember to log off in the future. But this also makes me wonder, what if TP had simply gotten up from his computer to go to the bathroom, for example, rather leaving and forgetting to log off? That would be more troubling.
I wouldn't post anyone else's bad schoolwork on the internet. It's unfortunate that the guy at OSU who did this to TP doesn't feel the same way when it comes to athletes.
Please understand that I am quite aware of how much of a hypocrite I sound like. My issue is mostly with the guy who posted the paper, but I feel a little guilty about giving it attention.
I share your discomfort with the posting of a somebody's school "research" paper on the net. At the same time, it's more than mildly irritating when:
-UM academics get smeared in a four part series of articles by the AA News (with questionable methods and no credible evidence of NCAA violations)
-OSU takes one substandard player after another and skates.
TP's paper is the tip of a giant iceberg here.
Chris Gamble scored below the basic literacy level on the NFL's aptitude test after three years of "academics" at OSU, one more than TP.
As I recall, MoClarrett said that he was given preferential treatment in not having to meet the same standards as other students (eg walking right out of an exam and later being able to take an oral exam). Many other academic improprieties were detailed by a teaching assistant--who then then was called "mentally ill," received death threats, was fired, and was driven out of Ohio, while an internal "investigation" within OSU completely cleared the program of any accusations. (coincidentally, none of the faculty on this committee were fired as was the dissenting TA)
So, while I do feel some moral discomfort about seeing TP's paper on the net, it pales in comparison to the moral disgust I feel about the uneven field of media scrutiny that we've been playing on.
He badmouthed the university that (rightly) effectively kicked him out of NCAA football for his criminal activities. He has been in and out of jail since and has failed as a football player. Whatever he says about OSU is questionable.
which were supported by some past players.
And I don't see how his credibility affected the below-literacy scores of people like Gamble.
Also, I found Wojo's column last week interesting. Cryptically, he alluded to what must go on when NCAA representatives get too chummy with the schools being investigated and when the school reps have close ties with people on the NCAA committees.
Was he referring to what happened at OSU? The AD hired at OSU around the time of the OSU investigation of the Clarrett allegations had been on the infractions committee (in fact, I think a chair of it at some point). To go to OSU, he was paid a salary of about a half million a year--more than a 30%raise over the previous AD, as I recall. Wojo raised the question: at what point might a school tell an NCAA official about the possible interest of the school in the official's candidacy for an important job?
I found that very interesting.
Nor am I disputing the literacy scores on the NFL's test. All I am saying is that I wouldn't use anything that Maurice Clarrett says as evidence, because he (and he alone) is clearly not credible.
...especially those of us in Sports Management & Communications knew some not so bright souls. I'd feel like a hypocrite if I said something about T. Pryor.
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
I has
When I was at U of M back in the 80's, my roommate had Gary Grant in several of her classes. Her favorite story about him: one day he sat next her and in the middle of class, leaned over and asked, "How you spell 'bum'?" To which she replied, "Like, a hobo?" He said "yeah", and so she spelled it for him. Tyrelle Pryor is one of many, and they're everywhere, not just at OSU.
See the movie 'Idiocracy'. Reverse evolution has begun.
you guys think that's bad? Try being the only true bilingual guy among your group of friends.. who all happen to be taking 200-level Spanish classes. (after taking 4 years of Spanish in high school of course..)
I'm convinced high school language classes are a waste of time.. the Dept of Education should just give up on that one...
Most high school foreign language classes are inherently problematic in that a lot of people take them and don't learn the language much at all (I include myself here, but thankfully, I'm in engineering school). However, what we are talking about is the significantly more important area of general reading comprehension and writing ability in English.
While this is funny, and I do agree with the sentiment that the kid who posted this to the web should be fitted for his own asshat, it also reminds me of those random times in Angell Hall when I had to print something and stumbled upon some rather, um, linguistically-challenged papers in the printer from other students. And if memory serves me right, at least one was a backup to the UM basketball team. Pryor is an easy target, but figuring out who is a good athlete and a good student can create a rather goofy Venn diagram.
If it was Pryor's paper it would be saying:
"I used the research process to find out what type of job specific major I wanted to major in and what type of job I wanted to do when I graduated from college. Then I remembered that I'm an unstoppable athlete and will be playing in the NFL, not making profits at business or criminal justice."
I'm all for athletes half-assing their work if they're good enough to make a career out of their ability. They don't need to learn how to write boring papers on research, unless that happens to be their hobby. I know that colleges want all their students to become well rounded individuals and I think Pryor will get that training, it'll be on the football field though. Pryor probably spends like 60-70 hours a week on football right? I wish college had taught me to work that hard. I'm sure he understands how to be a team player far better than the average college graduate too.
The thing that strikes me the most is that everything I learned getting my chemistry degree, I could have learned from Wikipedia. Working in research labs was important though. That was the best part of my education.
You can learn organic chemistry from Wikipedia in the same level of detail as you get from the U of M class? (I assume you're a U of M graduate.) While I have many, many issues with the way Orgo was taught at U of M, it's still more in-depth than Wikipedia.
Wikipedia does have high-quality chemistry articles however; no one cares enough to vandalize them or write false information.
lol.. you sort of can.. if you use the notes at the end of each subject page..
I personally got A- and B+ in Orgo without ever opening the text book..
I DONT SEE WUTS SO BAD ABOUT HIS PAPER, I THNIK HE SEEMS SMRT AND WISH I KNEW AS MUCH ABOUT RE-SERCHING STUFF
From someone who's taught at another Big Ten university, a little inside information: by no means are athletes the only people turning in work of this quality.
I'm not going to lie, it seems to me kind of unfair to me that in order to do professionally what he is best at, Terrelle Pryor (and lots of other dudes) has to attend college for at least three years.
Given that most college football players don't go on to make the NFL, and that the average career for those that do is four years, I think the rule ends up doing him a favor. He most likely will not earn enough from football to set him for life.
Wow, it almost seems like Pryor didn't enroll at OSU mainly for academics.
in a thread in existence before I became a MGoUser!
Research!! Yaaay!!