Student dupes stuck-up professor by citing their own lectures in an essay disproving them: 'Technically valid but in poor taste'

Advertisement
  • 01
    A professor teaches a lecture while pointing at a projected image
  • 02

    My professor said any source is valid as long as I cite it properly. So I cited him.

    this was junior year, research. methods class. our professor, I'll call him Dr. K, had this thing where he would make bold claims during lectures without citing anything and then get annoyed if students pushed back on it. classic "I have a PhD so my word is the source" energy. at some point he made a sweeping
  • 03
    statement about consumer behavior that directly contradicted something I had read in two separate peer reviewed papers, I raised my hand and mentioned this, and he said, and I quote, "in this class, any source is valid as long as you cite it correctly. the quality of your argument is what matters." okay.
  • 04
    I wrote my next paper arguing the opposite of his claim. my primary source for the counter-argument was a transcript I had made of his own lecture from three weeks earlier where he had said something that, read carefully, actually undermined his newer position. I cited it as: [Last name, First initial. Class lecture, Course number, University name, Date.] formatted exactly according to the citation guide he gave us on day one.
  • 05
    he handed back papers with written comments. mine said "interesting argument, strong structure" and then at the bottom: "this citation is not acceptable, please see me."
  • 06
    I went to see him. I brought the citation guide. I showed him the format. I showed him his own quote. I asked which part of the citation requirements I had failed to meet. there was a long pause. he changed my grade from a B+ to an A- and told me the citation was "technically valid but in poor taste." I have never felt more seen by a grade in my life.
  • 07

    Commenters chimed in with their support.

    SmolHumanBean8 The fact he upped your grade after being proved wrong, Imaoooooo
  • 08
    Poh-Tay-To Kudos to the prof for taking it on the chin
  • 09
    A professor lectures a group of students
  • 10
    Logophage Librarian here. Not sure what citation guidelines you were given, but most style manuals absolutely have formats for citing a lecture. These days, there are formats for everything up to and including a TikTok. On a
  • 11
    side note, the fact that you can build a citation is irrelevant to the ACTUAL worth of any given source- but that's not what your professor told you, is it?
  • 12
    LendersQuiz You are technically correct - the best kind of correct.
  • 13
    IHaveSomeOpinio... Back in the day, I was a physician in the army and attending a military professional education course. We had to write a paper about something that I not only knew backwards and forwards, but had published extensively on. Half of my citations were "IHaveSomeOpinions09, et al." If the instructor noticed, he made no mention of it.
  • 14
    FlyingRhenquest But "Technically valid" is the best kind of valid!
  • 15
    Leading-Knowled... As a journalist used to do something similar. One of my editors had the annoying habit of sticking stuff of her own in my articles and then asking me for backup materials with a source for every fact in the piece.
  • 16
    I started listing her as the source for stuff she'd added, and before long, she stopped adding these "facts," which were usually some random thing she'd seen online-including urban legends.
  • 17
    mistdaemon It really wasn't in poor taste, he just didn't like being proven wrong and it hurt his ego. It reminds me of a class | had in college, the teacher (I wouldn't call him a
  • 18
    professor) had a history in the early time of computers. I had a lot of experience with computers, but decided to go back to school to get the piece of paper since many companies wouldn't hire people, no matter the experience, if they didn't have the paper.
  • 19
    One assignment was to fix a program written in Fortran. The loop was horribly done, as well the math wasn't the best, so I fixed everything, more than he expected, but due to changing the bad math, the answer changed slightly. The teacher marked me off 10 points and claimed
  • 20
    it was because of the loop change. I objected to it and explained why. His response was that he had 50 years. experience and asked how much experience I had. I responded that it isn't the amount of experience, it is what you know. He then said
  • 21
    I could prove to him that I was correct, so I did. I made two versions of the program, one with the bad math and the other with the corrected math, but the loop was the corrected version. This proved it had nothing to do with the loop. He did give
  • 22
    me the 10 points back and said that it was likely the hardest I ever worked for 10 points (it wasn't, it was easy). My response was that it was the point that mattered. But it didn't end there. It seemed that the interaction caused him to be afraid of
  • 23
    marking me down. On a test after that I made a stupid mistake and got the wrong answer, but it wasn't marked down, nothing at all. I discovered that when we went over the test in the class.
Scroll Down For The Next Article