Study, Study, Bake, Repeat

And that’s the thing. A lot of these zoomers are mentally stuck in high school and think teachers aren’t people and have no lives of their own outside the classroom, so they should have to bend over backwards to accommodate students who feel like they have no obligation to meet the requirements of courses they signed up for. It’s the same thing when students are outraged that they face penalties for missing deadlines (when they don’t have accommodations from the university for a disability, of course), but teachers don’t make deadlines because they hate students, it’s because they have deadlines, too, and need to have the assignments turned in to give students grades! You don’t have deadlines because your teacher is a bitch, you have deadlines because that’s how the adult world works, and it doesn’t revolve around you.

Some of these zoomers even lie to get out of their responsibilities, too. Recently, again, a student emailed my mom like “oh I’m late to your class every day because I have a class before that, which ends in the first 5 minutes of your class, and my professor won’t let me leave early :(” And my mom was like, “….The university’s computer system literally would not let you register for a class with a scheduling conflict like that. I double-checked this with the head of the department.” And then the student got real quiet 🤡

Some people are just dicks, of course, but my mom thinks the increase in this behavior is from the pandemic. Her colleagues have been lamenting similar behavior in their classes, too, like students refusing to turn on their cameras for virtual classes and just not doing in-class activities online. They really just sit there with no microphone or camera all class, do nothing all senester, and expect to get full participation points or whatever.

It’s to the point that me and my whole division had a long meeting discussing the sudden influx in immaturity and disrespectful behavior and how best to wrangle it. There’s no pattern or predictable measure for who’s being troublesome—any income, any race, any gender, ALL of those categories have at least two or three individuals that are overwhelmingly destructive and unmindful. The only common factor is that it’s THIS year’s batch—the one fresh out of over two years of pandemic high school.

we saw some of the wildest levels of entitlement from both the parents and students. it was absolutely the kids whose last in school year was in 4th grade, and now they were in school, being expected to do 6th grade work

we have the kids who literally delight in telling teachers oh im gonna get you fired since you wont let me copy from my friends, who lie on teachers saying that we dont offer help, or explain things to them-meanwhile, when you try to sit with them to do the work or explain further, they spend the whole time speaking to their friends or cursing you out for asking them to focus

1800–1802 John James Barralet

There is a trend amongst depictions of the founding fathers to show them as literal christ figures, a trend that started very early in the nation's life.

I'd also like to point out Washington & Lincoln Apotheosis, artist unknown, about 1865, the same year as lincoln's assasination

The personification of America in the form of Columbia, a goddess of both the land and the concepts that America tends to inhabit. A pre-anime Hetalia. She was often used in depictions of Manifest Destiny, a religions ideal that stated that America, by God's will, must go from coast to coast.

American Progress by, John Gast, 1872. Note the indigenous people cast in literal darkness, away from the light. The religions deification of America relies upon colonialism and white supremacy

FYI–

Q: Nicholas Lezard has written ‘Rowling can type, but Le Guin can write.’ What do you make of this comment in the light of the phenomenal success of the Potter books? I’d like to hear your opinion of JK Rowling’s writing style

UKL: I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a “school novel”, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.