10% of our undergraduates believe...

[hairyears]

Following on from a conversation in the Pembury Tavern*, I note that it is the start of the academic year: some of you are helping the new intake of undergraduates with inductions and orientation; some of you will be teaching them; and a few of you will actually be among them

Comments

[khalinche]

Um. 'Class of (year)' tends to refer to people who graduate in that year, so unless you were referring to their high school graduations, the freshers matriculating now will be Class of '14 in England and Class of '15 in Scotland and the USA. (I don't know how Welsh or Irish universities work).

And, I'm sure you meant this as a knowing wink at lack of knowledge, but Paul McCartney is Stella McCartney's dad, not husband.

[hairyears]

Point 1: fixed.
Point 2: erm...

[ext_208701]

Cambridge colleges always refer to your matriculation year, as I think do Oxford. I'm Pete Stevens (Clare, 1996) because that's the year I matriculated. I realise the new universities in the colonies have different traditions but if the styling is suitable for John Havard (Emmanuel, 1627) it'll do for me.

[purplecthulhu]

English and Welsh universities do a mixture of 3 and 4 year degrees, so by this reckoning some will be class of 14 and some 15. And some will change...

[purplecthulhu]

- Osama bin Laden isn't real, he's just a bogey man who did something nasty to the two towers in a Lord of the Rings movie.

- The space shuttle Challenger never existed

- The Beatles were a dry run for the Monkees (sorry that was class of 1994)

- The Berlin Wall was built by Emperor Hadrian

- Maggie Thatcher is the patron saint of England and much nicer than that nasty Tony Blair (though YMMV depending on social background of the student)

The Norman Tebbitt Conquest

[hairyears]

I wonder how long it will be, until Saint Margaret of Grantham is conflated with St. Hildegard of Whitby? Or Boudicca?

[pfy]

Or alternatively, that Hadrian's Wall was built in the 1960s in case the Russians invaded from the North.

Also:
- Saddam Hussein started a war with Britain by invading the Falkland Islands.
- The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Nazi regime.

[hairyears]

I'll start the ball rolling: x percent of this year's undergraduates believe that Jesus has spoken, in person, to somebody they know, by voice, by visions, or by the miracle of speaking in tongues.

And that they themselves, by the strength of their belief and the power of prayer, can one day acquire their pastor's miraculous ability to heal by the laying on of hands.

Some of these believers have enrolled as medical students.

I doubt that 'x' is as high ten percent in any English university. I fear it will be, someday soon; I doubt that it's as low as ten percent in any university between the Mason-Dixon line and the Rio Grande.

[purplecthulhu]

I just hope that this x% are just misguided, and have not actually seen these things done, because then it would involve something tentacular...

Hang on.... Look at my userpic.... Of course I hope they're involved with something tentacular!

[cartesiandaemon]

like Paul McCartney being famous for being Stella McCartney's husband...

Huh, nowadays I would mainly know Linda, because buy sausasges, and don't buy designer clothes :)

[purplekaz]

A worrying percentage of teenagers seem to think that you can't catch a sexually transmitted infection from someone who's from a "good background" or a respectable family. I've even heard of a few who think there's a cure for AIDS. Very worrying.

[hairyears]

That's deeply worrying. After the successful education campaigns of the 1990's, too...

A grim preduction: at the age of 30, every one of them - the ones who have been taught nonsense about STDs - will know someone who died of a bacterial infection that did not respond to antibiotics.