Colloquialisms and pronouns in lecture--Why must professors use them?!?

[bomgd3]

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I'm not sure if this is a silly complaint or not, but I just need to put this out there:

Does anyone else get extremely frustrated when professors use slang/colloquialisms as well as too many pronouns in lecture? I absolutely hate it when profs use phrasing like "stuff", "things happen", "goes here", etc. to describe biological processes. If a process is not well understood, give us a disclaimer! If it is well understood, don't dither with imprecise words! And I hate it even MORE when they overuse pronouns, sometimes to the point where it is impossible to tell what they are referring to.

George Orwell had an interesting essay about how good communicators should be direct, and should never obfuscate meaning. I think many med school professors need to go to some kind of boot camp to learn clear, disciplined speech. It's the reason why I don't go to lecture much anymore--a book can explain a topic 100x more clearly than most professors can. Am I alone in thinking this? Why must they make things harder for us? 🙁 Or am I just dyslexic or something?

 

[thechad]

George Orwell had an interesting essay about how good communicators should be direct, and should never obfuscate meaning. I think many med school professors need to go to some kind of boot camp to learn clear, disciplined speech.

O Rly?

 

[adaptation1]

There is a reason. Lock yourself in a lab for 20 years, with minimal human interaction. You spend most of your time reading papers on stuff no one really cares about, written in abstruse scientific jargon. See how quickly your communication abilities dwindle, and you begin to sound ridiculous as you struggle to fit in colloquialisms into regular conversations. I feel like my verbal abilities are approaching unintelligible these days, with broken sentences and stutters. I'm a mess.

 

[da8s0859q]

I absolutely hate it when profs use phrasing like "stuff", "things happen", "goes here", etc. to describe biological processes. If a process is not well understood, give us a disclaimer! If it is well understood, don't dither with imprecise words!

Why must they make things harder for us? 🙁 Or am I just dyslexic or something?

What in the world? You're going to have to cite an example or two.

Myself, when it's pointless detail that will be of absolutely no importance for Step 1 or clinically, I almost want to bring them a bottle of scotch and a great big "thank you" for cutting out the meaningless banter and substituting in the word "stuff." Some biochem pathways, for example.

 

[ProtossCarrier]

professor probably trying to condense 20 years of research into something dumb med students like us can understand.

 

[bomgd3]

I guess better example would be like when profs say "Then that goes there, and that goes there and that stuff gets upregulated" all while gesticulating wildly with the laser pointer. Really hard to understand, for me anyways.

 

[GoSpursGo]

You were just looking for an excuse to say "obfuscate"

In all seriousness, a book can blather on about a topic for as long as it likes; a professor has an hour. If they substituted what actually happens for "stuff," they'd never finish in a reasonable time. The fact is that if "stuff" isn't really medically relevant--and a lot of stuff from the first couple years aren't--then there's no reason to force everyone to listen to it when the handful of people who really care can go look it up on their own.

 

[EgotiStick]

I kinda appreciate the "imprecision" and speed of medical school lectures compared to the soliloquys I endured in undergrad.

How many times do you learn and digest a biochem pathway during the slides in a lecture anyways? I'd prefer they just point at it and say "on test, know this" *gesticulate* "next slide, not on test, would prefer you know though" *more gesticulating* ...

ps- excellent vocabulary in this thread.

 

[MossPoh]

One of the reasons I like medicine so much is because I've never had the patience to dive to indepth in a particular topic that I spend years researching it. It is mind boggling to me that people can focus on one particular tiny protein in a fruit fly for years. I appreciate the people that can do things like that, because I sure as hell can't.

 

[tco]

I kinda appreciate the "imprecision" and speed of medical school lectures compared to the soliloquys I endured in undergrad.

How many times do you learn and digest a biochem pathway during the slides in a lecture anyways? I'd prefer they just point at it and say "on test, know this" *gesticulate* "next slide, not on test, would prefer you know though" *more gesticulating* ...

ps- excellent vocabulary in this thread.

So, you like it when they put up something and say, "You can read it just as well as I!"

Then, they can cover 65 additional slides containing an equivalent amount of material in the same lecture?

Yuck.

 

[bomgd3]

I have a really hard time memorizing things that I can't make sense of. I always have trouble remembering various protein names, for example, unless I can somehow see it as part of a logical process. And I have a bad habit where if I don't understand something in lecture, instead of writing it down I will stop and think about it until the professor is hopelessly ahead of me 🙁

 

[MilkmanAl]

You were just looking for an excuse to say "obfuscate"

In all seriousness, a book can blather on about a topic for as long as it likes; a professor has an hour. If they substituted what actually happens for "stuff," they'd never finish in a reasonable time. The fact is that if "stuff" isn't really medically relevant--and a lot of stuff from the first couple years aren't--then there's no reason to force everyone to listen to it when the handful of people who really care can go look it up on their own.

Seconded. Chill out a little. Missing the details of enzyme cascade x won't exactly destroy your future practice.

 

[Knicks]

The complaints in the OP are pretty annoying, too.