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Appologies in advance for the rant!

As some of you may know I am currently back in college, living the life of a filthy sponging student, whilst I learn a spot of carpentry. On my course there are 12 people, they are all a decent bunch, but as with all groups you will get a few who let the side down.

In brief the winner of our first 'student of the month' was a lad who is consistantly late, argumentative with both fellow students and lecturers, managed to hang a door upside down despite the ends being clearly marked, and has injured himself (to the point of a hospital visit) and another student (via dicking about with a tape measure).
Our lecturers justification for the award was that he had shown improvement and the award was designed to encourage improved performance. I can't help but feel that this is a slap in the face to several others on the course, including one guy with 100% attendance, another who has completed all of his practical tasks 7 weeks ahead of schedule (the guy is a machine!) and another who helps to organise and present our health and safety lectures. These guys amongst others have put in a lot of extra effort only for the course chimp to be put up on a pedestal.
Either way there was a general feeling of apathy towards things this afternoon.

I guess my question is what are your views, do you think it was right to try and encourage this guy with an award he didn't deserve or should it have gone to a more deserving person in the hope that this would have encouraged others to better themselves?

Have any of you found yourselves in a similar situation and what was the outcome?

Student of the month? My guess is they probably created that award to give to cretins like him. It sounds like something a nursery school would do. Do you get stickers for good work?

The prof totally dick slapped the people that worked safely and properly.

Injuring someone else is the worst thing you can do at a job site.

whatwhat wrote:Student of the month? My guess is they probably created that award to give to cretins like him. It sounds like something a nursery school would do. Do you get stickers for good work?

Sometimes it feels like being in a nursery, all of us are supposed to be mature students but some on the course clearly fall into the category older students.

I can certainly think of some sticker designs and awards I would like to hand out, none of them suitable for this site.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

kronk wrote:The prof totally dick slapped the people that worked safely and properly.

Injuring someone else is the worst thing you can do at a job site.

I couldn't agree more, he only appologised after being ostrasized by the whole group for not doing so straight away.

Well I say just let him have his moment. This will after all be one of the highlights in his life.

If anything it'll give him no reason to improve. What's probably going through his mind is, "Hell, I can not only get away with being a total douche, but I can get an award for it!"

Sort of the opposite of an incentive to improve.

This too shall pass, Mr Squilverine.

kronk wrote:Injuring someone else is the worst thing you can do at a job site.

I would have thought that killing someone else at a jobsite would be worse.

Ahtman wrote:

kronk wrote:Injuring someone else is the worst thing you can do at a job site.

I would have thought that killing someone else at a jobsite would be worse.

How do you kill someone without injuring them? Do you mean giving them aids or something?

"We're blood brothers now!"
"Yeah about that... you now have AIDs..."
"O.O"

whatwhat wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

kronk wrote:Injuring someone else is the worst thing you can do at a job site.

I would have thought that killing someone else at a jobsite would be worse.

How do you kill someone without injuring them? Do you mean giving them aids or something?

Not surprisingly, I think you are confusing trauma with injury. It is possible to physically injure someone without killing them, so the distinction is important both legally and personally.

Ahtman wrote:

whatwhat wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

kronk wrote:Injuring someone else is the worst thing you can do at a job site.

I would have thought that killing someone else at a jobsite would be worse.

How do you kill someone without injuring them? Do you mean giving them aids or something?

Not surprisingly, I think you are confusing trauma with injury. It is possible to physically injure someone without killing them, so the distinction is important both legally and personally.

Lets not get hypercritical about my ironic hypercriticism of your original hypercriticism. That would be silly.

Going by that sentence, I don't think you know what hypercritical or ironic means or how to apply them properly.

Perhaps not by urbandictionary.com's standards. No.

Hey maybe you are thinking I meant hypocritical. Because you were being hypercritical. And I've never met an American who's definition of irony went beyond the coincidental sense, so I'll let you off on that one.

whatwhat wrote:Perhaps not by urbandictionary.com's standards. No.

Hey maybe you are thinking I meant hypocritical. Because you were being hypercritical. And I've never met an American who's definition of irony went beyond the coincidental sense, so I'll let you off on that one.

And here I was under the impression UK had decent education system. Though I suppose there are always those who fall through the cracks. You can spell irony and hypercritical, which is something that you can be proud of. Someday you might use them properly so you don't have to insult others for noticing your ignorance.

For someone with Kermit the frog in their avatar you aren't half miserable.

How would you like me to say it? Your were being meticulous? Picky? A pain in the neck...causing me to respond with ironic return. Go back to school yourself.

Geez ahtman's troll post have increased significantly recently even for his standard. Come on this is warhammer board , for anyone that is bored they should work on warhammer stuff not trolling , am i right!

This is true. perhaps he finds being captious more fun than warhammer.

LunaHound wrote:Geez ahtman's troll post have increased significantly recently even for his standard. Come on this is warhammer board , for anyone that is bored they should work on warhammer stuff not trolling , am i right!

I don't think pointing out that most people would consider death worse than a broken are trolling. At least Whatwhat had a point relevant to the thread. I'm not sure feigning disgust at someone posting by posting is really a very good argument. Perhaps you should practice what you preach?

squilverine wrote:
I guess my question is what are your views, do you think it was right to try and encourage this guy with an award he didn't deserve or should it have gone to a more deserving person in the hope that this would have encouraged others to better themselves?

Have any of you found yourselves in a similar situation and what was the outcome?

Not in a professional capacity, but when I was in high school we used to go to football camp every summer. At the end of camp, there were tons of awards given out, all of them meant to encourage good, or better play. One in particular, most improved, was meant to make people that weren't necessarily the best players to keep working (no real point in being the best X, and most improved in a 1 month camp).

Given that you're talking about trade school, I can't help but feel that this award is just another sort of "most improved" sort of thing, especially given that the best student isn't necessarily the one who knows the material best, but the one who learns the most in the relevant period.

Anyway, I've seen this type of thing work wonders for some people. A lot of guys have either low self-esteem, or are legitimately confused as to what they're supposed to be doing, and so benefit from some tangible positive reinforcement. Others know what they should be doing, and don't care. Its the type of thing that's worth trying, because the other participants that aren't struggling aren't going to start doing so because some douche gets an award.

whatwhat wrote:Student of the month? My guess is they probably created that award to give to cretins like him. It sounds like something a nursery school would do. Do you get stickers for good work?

This. It only exists to make those "special" (not talking about the genuinely disabled here) few feel better about themselves whilst still acting like a complete ass to those around them. The other solution is to ask the top students to tone down the awesome a bit, this is generally met by a "no" or "why?".

Squilverine, it's not actually a student of the month reward but a "thanks for being slightly less of a jerk this month" award.

Seriously though this sort of thing annoys me as well, you see the few that work almost without breaks to be the best.Then along comes that guy, for one month he might actually do work or not put the group back about a month through sheer incompetence alone, and for that he will get a reward and feel even more awesome than normal. In my opinion they should get kicked out of the class if they're bad enough to really really need encouragement like this in the first place.

@Ahtman: Can you be injured to death?

n0t_u wrote:Squilverine, it's not actually a student of the month reward but a "thanks for being slightly less of a jerk this month" award.

I think this is the gist of it.

Nah, you can't be injured to death. An injury can cause death, though. As can those circumstances that caused the injury.

Mate, dont get me started on gak like this.

When I was 16 i joined the TA to get some hands on with weapons etc before i tried out for the RM at 18. We did a two week Combat Infantry Course at Catterick and on of the guys was an absolute slow. To the point where i am pretty sure he was an actual slow, he must have been autistic or something.

Anyway, he got an award on completion as well, "best endevour" apparently. You would have thought that would go to someone who performed beyond what was expected of them, for example, the TA being the TA, almost everyone there was entirely useless, and during the urban fighting package, only two people had the bottle to leap over rooftops and actually attack the objective with some bottle. (me and another lad of about 18)

Nothing for us though.

It seems like we constantly reward the idiots. I have noticed that in civilian jobs when you get a moron, he is constantly looked after by the management. There is a guy at my brothers work who is a total douche, so he said he always gets given the easy jobs, or given the most hard working and able guy to work with to "keep him out of trouble"

In the RM, if you sucked (very rare thanks to an ardous 32 week basic training), you got dumped in a store or made to work in the friggin canteen or something on your own where you cant cause any harm. And then inevitably said dill weed would end up putting his notice in to leave because his morale was so low.

Instead of following this sensible mandate in civvie street (give the moron the worst jobs so he keeps phoning in sick, fething up, being late etc) which would allow you to sack the fether, it seems as though being "the worst bloke in the unit" seems to give you an easy ride. Less work, less hassle, more leeway.

Its a fething joke, and lets not even start on the bizzare way it seems to be almost impossible for anyone in the public sector to actually get sacked. My lawyer mate has represented a bin man who crashed into a car while driving under the influence of heroin and he still didnt get sacked! And i saw a documentary about teachers, and they dont get sacked when they shag the students, they just get moved schools!

The nation is in a shambles, and its all down to this nancy boy PC dogma we all must adhere to. The only good thing is that it is the exact same everywhere else.

Rise of the idiots!

mattyrm wrote:Mate, dont get me started on gak like this.

It's 10 am for you (?), shouldn't you get started on breakfast?

Ahtman wrote:

whatwhat wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

kronk wrote:Injuring someone else is the worst thing you can do at a job site.

I would have thought that killing someone else at a jobsite would be worse.

How do you kill someone without injuring them? Do you mean giving them aids or something?

Not surprisingly, I think you are confusing trauma with injury. It is possible to physically injure someone without killing them, so the distinction is important both legally and personally.

In my experience that only happens if you don't employ enough firepower.

I cant see that Dogma, i hope its a variant of booze though.

mattyrm wrote:Mate, dont get me started on gak like this.

When I was 16 i joined the TA to get some hands on with weapons etc before i tried out for the RM at 18. We did a two week Combat Infantry Course at Catterick and on of the guys was an absolute slow. To the point where i am pretty sure he was an actual slow, he must have been autistic or something.

Anyway, he got an award on completion as well, "best endevour" apparently. You would have thought that would go to someone who performed beyond what was expected of them...

I'm pretty sure an endevour award is a nice way of saying "Well...you tried. And we can't send you back to mummy empty handed so take this shiny object."

Kilkrazy wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

whatwhat wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

kronk wrote:Injuring someone else is the worst thing you can do at a job site.

I would have thought that killing someone else at a jobsite would be worse.

How do you kill someone without injuring them? Do you mean giving them aids or something?

Not surprisingly, I think you are confusing trauma with injury. It is possible to physically injure someone without killing them, so the distinction is important both legally and personally.

In my experience that only happens if you don't employ enough firepower.

Heh heh heh.

mattyrm wrote:I cant see that Dogma, i hope its a variant of booze though.

Booze, and Gemma Atkinson.