The college choir I’m in is rehearsing a song. In this part of the song, one section sings its part and keeps repeating it while the other sections join in one by one. The altos and tenors are already singing, and we reach the point where the sopranos join in.

Director: “Add the sopranos!”

The sopranos join in, but the tenors drop out. The director notices and stops conducting.

Director: “When I say, ‘Add the sopranos,’ that means the other parts keep singing. It does not mean to drop out and have only them sing. That is not what ‘add’ means.”

One of my friends in the soprano section chimes in.

Soprano: “Welcome to kindergarten.”

Director: “When you’re making a cake, and it says to add eggs to the flour, you do not take the flour out of the bowl and put the eggs in alone. Let’s do it again, and make sure you’re actually singing!”

We get through that iteration and reach the bass section’s entrance. This time, the instructions are different.

Director: “Just the basses this time. A bowl of eggs.”

I teach at a college, but I’m not on campus every day. One day after class, a student asks to have a meeting with me on a day I’m not on campus. I suggest an online video call meeting, they agree, and I set up a meeting and send them a link.

That day, I log on at the appointed time. The student is a few minutes late and seems flustered when they log on. They’re getting their notebook and book and pencil case out of their bag, and they start flipping through the notebook. I wait, assuming they need to find the page with their questions.

Me: “Let me know what your questions are when you’re ready, no rush.”

Then, the student starts to write. I’m not entirely sure they heard me, so I wait a minute.

Me: “What are your questions?

Student: “Hold on…”

I wait. And wait. The student is still writing. They haven’t even made eye contact yet, which isn’t unheard of since the online meeting format can be awkward anyway.

Me: “Did you have any questions?”

They finally look up.

Student: “Yes, let me just find them.”

And they continue writing. I sigh and pull out my phone while I wait.

Finally, after twenty-five minutes of this, I decide that this is the most pointless student meeting I’ve ever had.

Me: “I have another meeting in a few minutes, so I’ll need to log off soon. Do you have any questions I can help you with?”

Student: “No, thank you! I’m all set.”

And they logged off.

I later spoke with a tutoring center advisor who works with that student, who said they like to do their homework in the presence of their instructor in case they have questions. And I should absolutely sit there in silence while they do that. I was pretty annoyed, since that’s a complete waste of my time.

Fortunately, that was the only time the student did that. The next time they tried to schedule a meeting, I was actually unable to fit them in, so I told them to do their homework, write down any questions they needed help with, and THEN come to me. They never did, though.

When I was in college, back in ye olden days, my professor for Chemistry 101 assigned lab partners. We were also expected to “help” each other, tutoring as necessary. He had access to our transcripts from both college and high school.

He assigned me a tall guy we’ll call Bill. Bill was… not good at Chemistry. Every single lab consisted of me telling Bill how to do it, correcting every little thing he did wrong, and basically doing it all myself while Bill “helped” by writing down what I told him (after I spelled way more words for him than you would expect).

Bill would constantly chat about stuff — not chemistry-related stuff, just random stuff. I was venting to my fiancé one day and mentioned something Bill had said.

Fiancé: *Giving me a weird look* “Do you really not know why you were assigned to keep Bill passing?”

Me: “Why?”

Fiancé: “Football.”

This was a big football school, division 1. Bill was their starting quarterback.

He went on to a fairly unremarkable pro football career.

Something similar to this story happened to me in fifth grade. Two smart students and I got to take a pre-test for every math unit, and if we got above 95%, we could skip the lesson and instead play on the teacher’s fairly fancy (at the time) computer, mostly on typing games. (I was probably not as smart as they were, but my older siblings had taught me their math to help themselves retain it.)

This was great fun because the following year, my middle school put us all in a typing class with the stated goal of getting us up to 30 WPM.

I was already at 60 WPM. So, again, I got to play.

Related:
Slow Down, Whiz-Kid; The Computer Can’t Handle It!

Back in high school, I remember learning to make a circuit with wires, a battery, and a tiny lightbulb. The really smart kids also added a switch and learned how it connected and disconnected the circuit.

Present day, my fourteen-year-old turns to me and asks.

Kid: “Do you want to see my homework?”

Me: “Sure.”

They pull out all these wires and three little coloured lights — red, yellow, and green — and proceed to construct something. They’re connecting alligator clips and troubleshooting which bulbs need to be replaced. Finally, they have the whole thing put together.

Me: “Is this for an electrical class or something?”

Kid: “No. It’s for coding.”

And then they plug it into their computer and open up a program they wrote. I stare in wonder as the lights flash on and off. Red. Green. Yellow.

Kid: “That’s not right; these two are mixed up.”

They then reassemble it so they light up red, then yellow, and then green, muttering to themself as they go.

Me: “Hey, even with the signals being switched, that is still really impressive.”

Kid: “What? I haven’t started yet. This program just tests that I wired it properly. Here is my coding homework.”

And then the lights started flashing in a pattern with alternating speeds. I stood there with my mind blown, remembering my school days with the lightbulb, battery, and switch.

Kids these days.