You know what really grinds my gears...

Okay, so I'll admit that I shamelessly stole the title of this post from Family Guy. However, since FOX decided to shamelessly steal the money of their loyal fans by creating a direct-to-DVD movie about Stewie's search for his father, only to turn around and air that movie as a "special" 90 minute season final last spring, I feel justified. Anyway, enough about corporate greed (although I must admit it is nice to see Wal-Mart desperately trying to stay afloat as the weight of its bloated body drags it down. I'd say it's a toss-up between Wal-Mart and Halliburton as to which is the most evil, but that's another post). Yesterday, the Mister Speaks got a little overly serious. Okay, there were a few humorous moments mixed in (veiled references to sexual acts spring (there's another one) to mind), but on the whole it was a rather serious post. I apologize. Seriously. I had no business bringing you down like that. Part of my job is to be uplifting - to give you something to do on a boring day at work (although if I'm giving you something to do at work, does that mean I'm entitled to part of your paycheck? You know, the Wife and I are grad students...we could really use the money). So, on to what really grinds my gears.

You know what really grinds my gears? Stupid people. A couple of incidents brought this to mind. First, I work in a hospital at night answering the phones and directing calls. Sure, I could have done this right out of high school, but I thought six years of post-secondary education would be a big plus. I was right. It has allowed me to become telepathic. How the people that call know this, I'm not really sure, but it must be the brain waves that I send through the phone the instant I pick up. I don't have any real proof of my telepathic abilities, but it is the only plausible explanation I can come up with for why I get numerous calls every night asking to talk with "a nurse." Well, okay then. There are probably at least 30 here at any given time, possibly more. And since I can read your mind, just as you obviously can sense that I'm telepathic, then I must know exactly which nurse to direct you to. Makes sense, right? I mean, there's no difference in what a nurse on the ortho floor and a nurse in labor and delivery can tell a pregnant woman, right? Ahh...stupid people. They're almost as much fun as drunk stupid people. Now, I also regularly get calls right about the time the bars close asking if this is the cab company. Hmmm...let me see, so when I answered "Thank you for calling Columbia Regional Hospital, this is the Mister, how may I help you?" that didn't tell you that this isn't the cab company? Or, for those that are tipped off by this cleverly coded message alerting them that this is not, in fact, the cab company, did I somehow give the impression that I am directory assistance? I must admit, I've never called directory assistance, but I'm pretty sure that if I did, they wouldn't answer with a hospital's name. So why then do stupid drunk people insist on asking me for the cab company's number?

I can excuse drunken stupidity, I can even excuse stupidity if caused by medical trauma. However, I can not excuse the stupidity I have witnessed on numerous occasions amongst the student body at Mizzou. This was once again brought to my attention as the Wife graded papers for the law school class that she TAs. Let that sink in for a moment - in this case, I'm not even talking about undergrads. LAW SCHOOL. Anyway, one of the papers had a passage whose source was Wikipedia. Okay, I'll admit, I've used Wikipedia if I needed a quick answer to a question. But I would never dream of using it as a factual source. It is too open - I could go post an article claiming that I was a 19th century ruler of Djibouti, and unless some responsible person came along to edit the post, the potential exists for some poor 8th grader (or even law student!) doing a report on Djibouti to end up with completely false information in their report. Why does this grind my gears so? Because it represents just one more instance I have seen in my time here of students at the college level using inappropriate sources or, even worse, cheating. Here's a hint: A research paper should cite more sources than a show on the History Channel. An essay examining themes in a book should say more than a review of the book on Amazon.com. A paper comparing and contrasting two books should definitely not be cobbled together from plagiarized information taken off two or three websites. I don't know what frustrates and angers me more: That it seems most students are too lazy to do the work, or that most are too stupid to think the teachers will notice. Of course the real problem is that far too many of these people graduate and go on to take jobs from people that worked much harder but did not have the same opportunities. And one of the things/people I blame is Wikipedia. Making that much information available is, in my mind, a good thing. But the unregulated aspect of it makes it troubling. There are no safeguards outside of the good will of those that post on the site to ensure its factualness. And there is precious little to stop students from using the site to plagiarize nearly every report they ever need to write. Have an assignment on the Civil War? Wikipedia has you covered. Need a summary of Moby Dick by tomorrow? Go to Wikipedia. Of course, much of the content of Wikipedia is plagiarized in the first place from respected scholars' work. That, in and of itself, raises numerous ethical questions about Wikipedia before one even begins to look at how the material can be used in the classroom. So, who are the stupid people that really grind my gears in this case? Students who cheat themselves and the system, and the teachers that let it happen. That's right, I said teachers. For it is only when teachers fail to hold students accountable, and fail to question the propriety of a website like Wikipedia making available what amounts to prepared term papers under the guise of collaborative learning, that the collective knowledge of mankind dwindles.

Okay, I promised funny and I didn't deliver. I'll try to do better tomorrow. The best I can give you today is this: Anyone else find it ironic that an article (the one above on Wikipedia) examining, in part, the need for greater editing at Wikipedia contains such an obvious error (see the 8th paragraph)? Moral of the story? To stay off the list of things that grind my gears, stay smart. Don't worry though. Reading this blog is easily the smartest thing you can do.