To think *some* people are just fucking useless

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I'm in a WhatsApp group for a uni course I'm doing and the others are somewhat younger than Mme (19-22ish) and OH MY GOD they're useless at stuff.

Everything is a problem that someone else needs to sort out or a reason they can't do something.

So for example. We usually spend all day doing our modules. A morning session and and afternoon one.

Morning one has been moved online and the afternoon is on site. We have 1hr break between sessions. We've been given 3 days notice.

Them: "I can't make it for the afternoon session, I live 90 minutes away! E only have 60 minutes between sessions....Waaaah"
Me: "Kust come to campus as normal and use the library and do the session from there..."
Them: "waaaah, I can't, becaise we're not allowed use teams on my work laptop, it's not installed"
Me: "so, use the web version..."
Them: "but I haven't got headphones... waaaah"
Me: SO FUCKING BUY SOME!!!!

I think it's the combination of feeling like an adult and grown up- yet still being supported by parents etc - so they moan about 'adult' problems which are actually very petty things. I have full on middle aged woman rage now - it feels like everything falls to us to sort out. So that doesn't help.
The entitlement is a whole other thing - I have to work with 2nd year uni students a couple of times a year and this has definitely got worse- they have worse manners than our younger students- expecting to interrupt etc.
GRR Grumble Grumble Grumble

@EatYourVegetables

I don’t believe that in 2021 there’s anyone around who doesn’t have earphones. What did they do for the last year and a half??

I don't have earphones. I don't like them.

This will be familiar to many working in HE.

@LucentBlade

I worked in higher education for close to 30 years. Some students always had this hard done by sort of attitude. As soon as they had a lecture at 9 in the morning the whinging started, they couldn’t make a deadline ever etc. They will probably remain complainers all their lives and become the irritating colleagues, the self centred Husbands, the annoying Mother in laws and moaning Father in laws of the future.

Plus the all students are poor mantra is simply untrue. I had one year where I had a single Mum juggling everything plus working in a call
centre for extra money and a student whose parents bought him a flat outright in Canary Wharf when he was starting his first job. They were poles apart finance wise.

I also work in universities and I'd broadly agree with this. I once had a student who came to ask for notes for the 9 am lecture she'd missed the previous week because and she said this straight-faced as an excuse her mother hadn't phoned her from her home city to make sure she got out of bed. Apparently her mother always acted as a sort of long-distance alarm clock.

In the same group there was a student of the same age who was funding her studies by getting up at 5 am to travel a not insignificant distance to muck out horses at a livery and get to campus in time for a 9 am class, for which she was always well-prepared.

And likewise to extremes of comparative poverty vs wealth.

YANBU but it’s people in general!
Even at work - some people are incapable of understanding basic instructions despite me sending a document and highlighting relevant parts!

A course group WhatsApp is inappropriate for a whinge though. it should be used for important stuff. Maybe they actually don’t like the schedule and want to get the popular vote to change it

“her mother hadn't phoned her from her home city to make sure she got out of bed”

🤣👏👏

Tis a pickle at times, I admit half or three quarters, I achieved things on the rush and last moment , but most of.the time a bit of planning ahead usually helps with activities

This is why I've always hated group work assignments.

To have to put up with excuses, complaining, and have my grade depend on these types is absurd.

Thankfully at work I don't have to put up with them. I'd never hire them and if I inherited one from another team, I'd fire them

Bloomin heck OP!

If you’re not complaint about your fellow students, you’re complaining about your DH, or your HR department… list goes one

So many people piss you off. Unclench your arse. I’m sure you’ll enjoy life more

They’re venting. Doing an online class probably is ‘worse’ from the library than their home. They probably don’t want a solution. They’re just frustrated at the changes. Mute the WhatsApp group if you don’t want to see it.

I’m an academic. Yes some students whine about things that don’t really matter. But so do some of my colleagues, and the worst people I know for it are a couple of ladies in a hobby group (both graduated several decades ago!)

@CantChatNow

I work in a university library. Ask staff - they probably have headphones they can use!

I do recognise the “it’s someone else’s problem to solve” attitude though, literally down to having to explain to students that yes, other students are also allowed to use desks near them, that’s how a library works, if you like to work without people around you have to go home. There is definitely a level of entitlement in some kids that I do think is new to this generation.

Oh I don't know. I'm almost 50 and when I was at Uni one of the male students on our course (from private school) had a meltdown about the fact that he was expected to complete his essay on time when he had a PLAY to perform in and didn't have TIME for this.

Oh I don't know. I'm almost 50 and when I was at Uni one of the male students on our course (from private school) had a meltdown about the fact that he was expected to complete his essay on time when he had a PLAY to perform in and didn't have TIME for this.
So that was 30 years ago, to be clear.

I'm a mature law student and have noticed the same. The amount of people who want to be solicitors / barristers, but can't even string a grammatically and orthographically correct sentence together is staggering. Or asking repeatedly in the chat how to cite other works for their essay when there's tons of books about academic writing!

@Seesaw82

Bloomin heck OP!

If you’re not complaint about your fellow students, you’re complaining about your DH, or your HR department… list goes one

So many people piss you off. Unclench your arse. I’m sure you’ll enjoy life more

I don't spend all my days complaining... honestly

I'm on the fence. Some people like things being sorted out for them, and won't problem solve for themselves. But thinking of my campus, I'd have been fine getting to a lecture on site, or joining on zoom/teams from home. A whole lecture group trying to find appropriate desk space at the same time, along with other students presumably doing the same or doing other work, would struggle to find it. Do you have the option to ask questions during the lecture? If so, that would rule out some of your options for a workstation. I can see how that would be really annoying.

Can I also say its not a generational thing. In my last job we moved from lots of different shitty run down offices to a really nice especially built building with spectacular views and brilliant central city location with fantastic travel links (bus and train).

Lord, the moaning. Colleagues on the third (top floor), who were perfectly ambulant and healthy, actually wrote a letter complaining about the amount of time they had to wait for a life (3 lifts). There were stairs, use the stairs. Or just leave two minutes earlier for your meeting and wait for the lift. Its really not a big deal.

This is going to be a controversial comment but I do wonder whether many of these young people have been micro-managed by helicopter mothers? To the point that they are unable to function effectively without Mothership intervention!

Most of them don't change when they start graduate jobs either ;)

[quote CovidPassQuestion]**@00100001* YABU unless you tell us more about the free* degree....![/quote]
Degree Apprenticeships!

You get paid to work and study for a Level 6 Apprenticeship and a Full Degree. Most apprentices are on around £16-22k. (So yes, not earth shattering salaries, however they all live at home in my experience). so definitely not poor students eating value noodles etc

They will come out with 4 years work experience too. Companies like Dyson, Glaxo-Smith-Klein and the police etc are all doing them.

The Apprentice is likely to come out with a First Class Honours (They perform significantly better than the traditional student on the same/similar course...they monitor this).

Degrees can be anything from Business Management to Bio-Chemistry, Engineering and Computing etc

Some of my cohort are also on performance related pay as well, they get a bonus of up to £2000pa if they get certain marks in modules (its company dependant though)

It's amazing and a lot of people have never even heard of them.

I was just lucky enough to get asked to do this in my role and jumped at the chance!

I teach and find the oldest pupils the most infuriating. I often wonder if its the spoon-feeding approach we have in education that has created school leavers incapable of independent thinking. (They all emphasis on UCAS and college forms their 'strong problem-solving skills' and 'analytical thinking' btw!)

the 'sacrifice' the student makes is that they must juggle full time work and a full time degree. But it's all quite achievable really. The course I'm ding isn't onerous - they constantly monitor how much work the students are doing out of work/uni etc and will modify the workload as needed, whilst ensuring you're doing enough to earn the credits needed.

@NewModelArmyMayhem18

This is going to be a controversial comment but I do wonder whether many of these young people have been micro-managed by helicopter mothers? To the point that they are unable to function effectively without Mothership intervention!

schools need to take the blame too- we haven't let kids fail, we have made things easier and easier by staff doing more and more. We don't expect the students to do anything - and they have come to expect hand holding- last week, I told a 17 year old about an after school catch up session that they had asked to attend (told them the date and the time, they wrote it down) As they were leaving they said 'Will you put it on the online learning portal to remind me?' They were most put out when I said no as they had just written it down and it was now on them to arrange themselves. We are getting like it with parents as well (as a PP poster said about Scouts)

I expect every group of older people for hundreds of years has had similar comments about the younger generation. some whom will always be immature or useless but some fine and some will grow into being fine. Never mind that some older people are useless and younger ones better.

I think there is a big difference between an 18 year old in year 1 at university however and someone who is 22. People learn a lot of independence at university. My twins are home now doing a law course (LPC) (post grad) and like ich above do have reasonable English and writing skills (no doubt in part due to our family being keen on that and fee paying schools).

Over time younger people go into work and just have to cope and realise they are not the centre of the world and that most people are older than they are and often better as the older ones have experience.

I think my 2 at 23 are fine. Eg yesterday a lecturer finished early so he asked the next one if they could start earlier (and thus get home sooner who agreed and that suited everyone). I felt that taking initiative, making a sensible suggestion and doing something which fitted the whole group never mind the next lecturer. The week before the institution had not arranged cover for a long standing appointment for the lecturer so the group suggested she did that on zoom instead the next day rather than they go in another day that week - that worked fine. We do have remember that going in on another day for this particular group is very very expensive. When my son worked cleaning hotel walls he spent a whole day a week just to pay tube fare from our house to the hotel.

@ThisBear

I'm on the fence. Some people like things being sorted out for them, and won't problem solve for themselves. But thinking of my campus, I'd have been fine getting to a lecture on site, or joining on zoom/teams from home. A whole lecture group trying to find appropriate desk space at the same time, along with other students presumably doing the same or doing other work, would struggle to find it. Do you have the option to ask questions during the lecture? If so, that would rule out some of your options for a workstation. I can see how that would be really annoying.

to be fair, one of the other students ahs organised for the usual room we use to be opened up for us, So we can go there. and we won't be disturbing anyone :)

I don’t think it’s a generational thing. I think there are complainers and problem solvers in every walk of life. And they’re bound to piss each other off because the complainers don’t really want to be offered solutions, they just enjoy a good moan, and the problem solvers can’t understand why some choose to wallow in negativity instead of looking for a way forwards. WhatsApp, unfortunately, seems like the perfect place for them meet.