“Why does everything feel slow because I like going fast?” asks Flash Coleman, a freshman bitching about relativity at WLU.
Flash is one of many autodidacts disillusioned from ponderous professors presenting bibliography formats and significant digits. Thus, he prefers reading and viewing accelerated videos.
We reached out to Dr. Ravi Gandhi, Flash’s Astronomy 101 professor, for comment.
“You’re saying a video on the YouTube can lecture better than me? Next thing you say is the Bermuda triangle doesn’t exist!” he laughed in his thick Indian accent. “If a student doesn’t attend my lectures, they lose marks because lectures are for students to engage with my material.” explains Ghandi who only reads off his slides and never surveys/interacts with the class outside rhetorical questions.
The instructor clarified that profs who get the lowest ratings on ratemyprofessors.com are those who speak too fast for the students to write everything down. But, when asked about recording his lectures, posting relevant course material online, or encouraging students to use AI assistants to answer questions, Ghandi replied “I could do that, but then what would be the point of having lectures or teachers? Oh, wait.”
It's common to teach students like Coleman to note important topics for increased retention. But, Coleman struggled with simultaneously paying attention, separating “fluff” from important material, and writing it all down.
“I think everyone who follows this prehistoric note-taking philosophy suffers,” Flash suggests. “People should pay full attention to the prof and extract key terms and concepts from his or her notes after class.”
He further implies students voluntarily suffer because teachers present unoriginal text-laden slideshows leisurely and monotonously.
“They don’t engage the class like they’re supposed to. Like Mark Whalberg, y’know? I think the problem is deeper with professors required to teach with no will to do so.” Right Flash, the problem is with the “system,” not you.
Despite Flash’s entitlement, recent research notes an attention-span deficit in youth: “TikTokers” have adapted by using quick jump-cuts, to engage the viewer and the film industry adapted by accelerating and reducing pauses between dialogue. Lecturers were part of many groups who didn’t adapt to reduced attention-span.
“Back in my day we used to watch everything at the speed our lord and saviour, Jesus Christ, intended” commented a 29-year-old graduate from WLU. “Ever since Harambe died, things have gone south.”
When we asked Flash what he was looking forward to for the rest of his degree, he replied “hopefully another pandemic, so I don’t have to deal with this in-person bullshit.”