TIL: Today I Learned

[Traitorfish]

It is a lot, more than I've ever written. It's for my senior seminar course, which is required to finish with a bachelor's in history. I've read so many conquistador accounts of the conquests that I'm surprised I'm not sick to death with Indians, Incas, and Spaniards. But I somehow managed to stretch it out so much that I think the 30-page limit isn't enough.

Add to that a 10-pager on the exceptionally dull Puritans of New England and numerous other papers, and you get a weary Phrossack. At least my 10-pager for modern Japanese history is on the Japanese invasion of Mongolia, which should be fun.

TIL I learned that American students write more papers than can possibly be healthy!

Do you have to do a research dissertation on top of all this, or is that saved for those incautious enough to sign up for a postgrad?

Sounds like some of the term papers I routinely typed back when I had my home-based typing business. November was usually a well-paying month for me (I charged by the page).

Hm, I wonder if this is a North American thing, or just a not-Scotland thing? Other folks, help me out!

 

[Cutlass]

Twenty-five pages is a lot of pages. My papers come up to, like, eight pages. Twenty-five pages sounds more like a dissertation.

I had any number of term papers in that approximate size.

 

[Traitorfish]

Then that's a lot of very long papers! Only one of my papers is even half that length; most are probably about a third. The only thing I have to write of that length is my undegrad dissertation, which is considered so weighty as to have a quarter of the final year devoted to it.

 

[Civ'ed]

Good god is university really that bad?
*clutches to the fact that longest essay to write this year is 4,000 words*

 

[Tee Kay]

And while I haven't quite reached certain papers yet, I recall them discussing how the role of disease has been greatly exaggerated in the Spanish conquests. Its demographic effects took years to really hurt the Aztecs and Incas, too long to have a part in the conquests. Disease definitely reworked the demographic landscape over the course of the next few decades for the big civilizations and centuries for other North American peoples, but in the short term, not so much.

Disease only became a factor in Mexico in the later stages of the Battle of Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs had all their neighbours against them by that stage.

With the Incas, epidemic smallpox arrived before the Spanish. The Empire that Pizarro found was one that was thus one that was already considerably weakened.

 

[madviking]

my undergrad thesis is only 10 pages at the moment, probably picking up a few more pages along the way until i turn it in in may

 

[PhroX]

Then that's a lot of very long papers! Only one of my papers is even half that length; most are probably about a third. The only thing I have to write of that length is my undegrad dissertation, which is considered so weighty as to have a quarter of the final year devoted to it.

My dissertation (for a Civil Engineering degree) was about 90 pages...

Fortunately, the longest non-group work report I had to write outside of that in 4 years was about 5 pages.

 

[Kyriakos]

I vaguely recall the uni essays i had to write for part of the mark (the other was the exams in the end of the year) being around 2000 words each, so roughly (iirc) 8 pages (factoring space given for footnotes, etc).

There were 3-4 essays for each course (or the same with 2 essays for each half-course), so 12-16 each year. Therefore i suppose i wrote approximately 35 essays for my BA, ie 70.000 words or a small novel.

Which does seem a bit much, although for a Philosophy degree an essay being less than 2K words is a bit of a joke, tbh. Naturally i postponed even reading the course up until 15 days prior to the deadline. I was by all means a bad student, just more intelligent so i could still get the degree in this pitiful manner...

*

At least 10 times i must have written the 2K words at 3-4 hours of an afternoon in the uni computer, after travelling there with train from London, without much of a plan prior to that. Those were the non-days. Although, to be fair, i was not expecting to be given the Degree by the end of this.

 

[Smellincoffee]

..that Turkey enacted genocide on its Greek population following the Great War. I had heard of an Armenian genocide, but not of the Greek or of the invasion of Smyrna and the fire that followed.

 

[Kyriakos]

^That is all propaganda, those people died because they fell to the sea trying to reach the ships which were a bit distant so that ally neutrality would not be violated. It's not like they were people, anyway. And the eastern aegian is known to have piranha, explaining the blood too.

The fire started itself as well. Some argue the butterfly effect made the march of 1 million people in the eastern anatolian desert create a flame in Smyrna which ended up burning it.

 

[Zack]

Good god is university really that bad?
*clutches to the fact that longest essay to write this year is 4,000 words*

It depends on your major, but if you pick a liberal arts major you can generally expect to read and write a buttload.

 

[cybrxkhan]

TIL I learned that American students write more papers than can possibly be healthy!

Do you have to do a research dissertation on top of all this, or is that saved for those incautious enough to sign up for a postgrad?


Hm, I wonder if this is a North American thing, or just a not-Scotland thing? Other folks, help me out!

At my 'Muricae university, I usually end up writing up somewhere between 5-15 pages per course (though that may or may not be split between several essays), so I estimate about a total of 20-30 pages per quarter. Of course, these essays are quick hacks and not designed to be super-awesome research.

I have written a ~29 page paper on the Manicheans and China, though. That was a lot of work. BUt then again that was the whole point of the "class" with me writing a research paper under the guidance of my professor.

It depends on your major, but if you pick a liberal arts major you can generally expect to read and write a buttload.

Yeah we liberal arts majors do is write write write read read read write write write. Even if you cut down on the reading, its still a lot of writing writing writing.

 

[Zack]

Yeah we liberal arts majors do is write write write read read read write write write. Even if you cut down on the reading, its still a lot of writing writing writing.

Yep, it's one of the reasons I never ever make fun of liberal arts majors like so many other STEM majors do. I would rather boil my testicles into a nice stew than write all those long-ass papers. I had to write a seven-page paper for a philosophy class a few weeks ago, and I was grumbling and whining about it the whole way. So much bullcrap you'd think I was bovine.

 

[Phrossack]

TIL I learned that American students write more papers than can possibly be healthy!

Do you have to do a research dissertation on top of all this, or is that saved for those incautious enough to sign up for a postgrad?

I'm actually not sure about undergrad dissertations or theses. I'm still two semesters from finishing undergrad. There is a hell of a lot of writing involved, but since I know people who do all that plus head the student newspaper plus have a job plus volunteer for everything imaginable, I try not to complain as much as I otherwise would.

Disease only became a factor in Mexico in the later stages of the Battle of Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs had all their neighbours against them by that stage.

With the Incas, epidemic smallpox arrived before the Spanish. The Empire that Pizarro found was one that was thus one that was already considerably weakened.

Yeah, Huayna Capac and others died of some kind of disease shortly before the Spanish reached them but after the Spanish had landed in the Americas. If Huayna Capac had lived to face the Spanish, or had he survived long enough to pass the royal tassel on to an adult Manco Inca, things could have gone very differently indeed. The absence of the Inca civil war would have made things very difficult for the Pizarro brothers and Almagro.

 

[Borachio]

Found a neat video involving the Traveling Salesman Problem.


Link to video.

Yes. Interesting.

Uhm. It's a long time since I looked at the Problem. As far as I know no perfect solution to it exists, still. Which is strange, since it's a really easy problem to pose.

The "solution" I learned had something to do with spanning trees. Or something. I can't remember now. Isn't it funny what you can forget?

A good solution to the problem would actually be useful. But you're as well just getting a map and drawing a route for yourself by hand. If you are an actual travelling salesman and not some quantum physicist, or somebody interested in abstractions. Whatever.

 

[Kennigit]

People need to use wordcount and not pages as a measure of length

Well, approximate wordcount and figure count, unless specified a particular format (eg Publication in XYZ)

 

[Joecoolyo]

Yep, it's one of the reasons I never ever make fun of liberal arts majors like so many other STEM majors do. I would rather boil my testicles into a nice stew than write all those long-ass papers. I had to write a seven-page paper for a philosophy class a few weeks ago, and I was grumbling and whining about it the whole way. So much bullcrap you'd think I was bovine.

I much prefer writing, to be honest. As long as I'm given ample time (don't assign a paper 2 days before its due, that's just pure evil professor) and they're spaced out enough, I'm in total control of everything.

I never feel in control of other assignments to the same degree as I do with papers.

 

[Hygro]

People need to use wordcount and not pages as a measure of length

Well, approximate wordcount and figure count, unless specified a particular format (eg Publication in XYZ)

most formats amount to about 250 words a page.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

TIL I learned that American students write more papers than can possibly be healthy!

Do you have to do a research dissertation on top of all this, or is that saved for those incautious enough to sign up for a postgrad?


Hm, I wonder if this is a North American thing, or just a not-Scotland thing? Other folks, help me out!

In my case it was an "it depends on the program/instructor" thing. Most of my clients were nursing students, followed by social work, rehab, history, English, anthropology, and miscellaneous ones such as chemistry, pharmacy technician, various take-home exams, and economics. And then there were the non-college students who were at university in either Edmonton or Calgary who either were already clients from their time at RDC and still wanted me to do their papers or who others had recommended me as a reliable typist.

Some of the nursing, history, and anthropology papers could get pretty long. But keep in mind that the APA format in use back then tended to stretch papers due to the wider margin required, and there were whole pages taken up for bibliographies and footnotes. The appendices didn't count toward page count for the purpose of the paper.

Good god is university really that bad?
*clutches to the fact that longest essay to write this year is 4,000 words*

The average NaNoWriMo contestant who is on schedule can have 4000 words done by the third day (out of 30). Mind you, NaNo stories don't have to be good, or even especially coherent.

 

[Takhisis]

Oh, I can churn out three thousand words or more in a single afternoon. Of course, it's easier if I don't have all these exams and papers and essays that the teachers insist on.