sheer potentiality

Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey is battling comment trolls lately, so I thought I’d share my experience with comment trolls.

Back in the day (two years ago), my blog was pretty shitty, because my life was, and at the very least, my blog reflected my life. I received some pretty shitty trollish comments at the time, but the troll came back with a response that was so wise, I saw things from his point of view and learned a valuable lesson.

The comment was on my old blog, and I’m not sure whether or not I copied over the post itself to my new blog (I filtered out a bunch of that crap during the transfer), but the comments didn’t transfer at all. So, as follows, is a comment from two years ago on my old blog–the best blog comment I have ever received. Whoever left this, if you see this post, thank you.

Yo, DUDE!
Hey man, I noticed that you took off the comments I wrote! That isn’t fair. Anyhow, your buddy is right about what he said. Obnoxious? Me? Hardly. However, your BLOG does make an interesting psychological experience. My girlfriend thinks it’s interesting, like I said, she’s studying to be a psychologist. Although, your life does seem pretty depressing. Change it. You know what man, I’ll be perfectly honest with you. I can’t stand you. I’ll even tell you why. When I was your age, well a little younger, I used to be the SAME EXACT WAY. However, I realized my problem and looked for a solution. Now I am an A / B+ student in school (college) and I have a beautiful girlfriend who loves me very much. I have many friends and they like me as well. They like me for who I am! People say, “I am who I am and I can’t change!”, from experience, you know what I say… “BULLSHIT!”. You can be whoever you want to be. You just have to work at it! Otherwise, I’m a nerd myself, I love computers, I love Star Trek and I love Web Design. Dude, seriously. Change your life, change your lifestyle. You will see the difference. Also, you’ll probably think… who is this asshole? Who does he think he is. Phil I accept EVERYONE. The only ones I don’t accept are the ones that resemble whom I once was. I hated myself! Oh and uh… NEVER forget your friends. Every Pilot needs a Wingman! Later Phil!

I rather dislike when people sit next to me in class. I’m not antisocial, and I don’t dislike people, but I usually require a large amount of personal space. And that doesn’t really happen when there are people sitting next to me, watching my computer screen, restricting my elbow room, etc. Of course, given that someone has to sit beside me, I would rather someone sit on my left side than on my right, as that way I have the most elbow room. What I truly despise is when people sit on both sides of me. It makes me feel rather claustrophobic, to be honest.

In theory, TA’s are better teachers than professors. This is because TA’s are grad students, and grad students are far closer to our level of experience, knowledge, and expertise than professors. TA’s have, most likely, covered the same topic we’re covering within the past decade of their lives, so they know what it’s like for us undergrads encountering this for the first time. Professors, on the other hand, are often bored out of their minds covering this material. This is especially true of the best professors, who are ideally such geniuses that the material bored them the first time they encountered it, and who can only be truly stimulated at the frontiers of human knowledge. Of course, few professors really achieve that ideal. There are also, I am sure, those professors who are better teachers than researchers, but I am hardly the first to comment on the inefficiency of this aspect of academia.

The point is, that theory about TA’s makes a lot of sense all other things being equal. There are certainly other relevant factors, and this particular class makes me painfully aware that fluency in the English language is most certainly a relevant factor. While this is true of both TA’s and professors, anyone who has been at an American university long enough to be a professor should have become fluent enough in the language to be able to lecture coherently. TA’s don’t necessarily have that level of experience. Thankfully, I seem to be a lot better than most people at deciphering foreign accents, and the TA in this class seems to be getting more comfortable teaching in English.