People who use "outside the box" always sound like they're stuck inside the box, but don't realize it.
There's an ST episode for anything:
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Words or phrases that annoy you (even if you can't explain why) . . .
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There's an ST episode for anything:
Here's word that is relatively new to me in the cloistered world of academia that makes me seethe: 'target'. We're not making widgets on an assembly line* and yet...
* (Fair warning: rant follows). The 'business model' has invaded higher education like a bad rash. Most business fail within years of founding. My university is over 600 years old - show me a business with such longevity. Clearly we were doing something right before the suits took over. Maybe businesses should consider the collegiate model.
* (Fair warning: rant follows). The 'business model' has invaded higher education like a bad rash. Most business fail within years of founding. My university is over 600 years old - show me a business with such longevity. Clearly we were doing something right before the suits took over. Maybe businesses should consider the collegiate model.
So if I understand correctly, you’re targeting the business community? And business, as a form of trade, has been around a lot longer than any university by millenia. Yes, no SINGLE business has lasted that long, but business itself? Yeah.
* (Warning Will Robinson, here’s my rant). And isn’t the point of higher education to prepare graduates for, oh say, a career in business? Like a physician, MBA-anything, lawyer, any engineer, every accountant, even teachers, pilots, historians, journalists, whatever. I’m guessing here, but I’d expect the number of graduates who stay within academia (also a business) to be proportionately small. Even academia research is driven by business (archeologists, gene-splicers, cosmologists, and so on). I fail to see how the world of academia can be considered so cloistered from business to not be a part of it…or respond to its needs which ultimately drive academia. What value is it to the degree-holder to have not learned something useful to engage in gainful employment, other than the comfort s/he may take from having learned something others may not. OK, this is going off the rails here so rant over.
May want to “target” some other “target.”
That's precisely the problem though. The fact that the point of a higher education is to prepare people for the market, when that never was the only function (and it was simply not the function at all in its earliest days). But it's gotten to where now studying literature or art or philosophy or any of the humanities is seen as "worthless" and higher education has become a kind of social gatekeeping, where four-year degrees are required for jobs that don't really utilize anything taught--and higher education is increasingly expensive and unaffordable and yet "required"...sort of illustrates that this symbiotic relationship between academia and business has been a detriment to both. Personally I'd like to see more valuing of education for its own sake.
I am just saying applying business terminology to academic context doesn't work and is counterproductive. Businesses are great and I have had multiple industrial collaborators and we encourage our students to consider entrepreneurship (basically considering whether ideas in the lab might be turned into business IP). However, universities are not businesses - technically most are charities - and students are not customers, they are members of an academic community. The purpose of the students' education is to change how they perceive the world at a time in their life when routine life pressures don't press down so hard on them that they don't have the opportunity to think deeply. Their education is something they take with them no matter what their future employment status is. And using this academic model has done plenty to invigorate business, including the internet you are using and the idea of HTML.
I apologise if it sounded like I was anti-business. I am not. Some of the work in our unit has contributed to medicines being approved (a distressingly rare occurrence), and for everybody involved that was a highlight of their career. I do think the collegiate model (decision by consensus, peer review, community building, having a physical campus, tenure, etc.) might be something businesses should consider as an alternative to top-down management, but that is another discussion.
This thread is too long, so maybe these have been mentioned:
1) I listen to Podcasts and quite often the format is a host and an expert, and the host paraphrases what the expert says and then asks a pre-agreed upon follow-up question. The host is basically just wasting time - the expert could just present everything.
2) People in a discussion group on Podcasts saying 'Listen' at the beginning of their statement. Incredibly condescending to me, in a semi-formal setting.
3) 'I could care less'. Ugh.
4) Using the word unique as a collective term. 'They are among the most unique'. I don't think you can have a qualifier for unique. It is, or it isn't.
5) 'Identify as'. I understand that more recently this has been adopted to cover someone's sexual or gender identity. Now I am seeing it pop up in other areas: 'Do you identify as a 1st generation college student?' What?!
1) I listen to Podcasts and quite often the format is a host and an expert, and the host paraphrases what the expert says and then asks a pre-agreed upon follow-up question. The host is basically just wasting time - the expert could just present everything.
2) People in a discussion group on Podcasts saying 'Listen' at the beginning of their statement. Incredibly condescending to me, in a semi-formal setting.
3) 'I could care less'. Ugh.
4) Using the word unique as a collective term. 'They are among the most unique'. I don't think you can have a qualifier for unique. It is, or it isn't.
5) 'Identify as'. I understand that more recently this has been adopted to cover someone's sexual or gender identity. Now I am seeing it pop up in other areas: 'Do you identify as a 1st generation college student?' What?!
'I could care less' is one of mine as well. Only because they actually mean 'I could not care less".
Agree with both @VulchR & @KaiFiMacFan on academia (and I write as someone who once graced the groves of academe but was eventually enticed out from the the joys of the proverbial Ivory Tower), and agree, passionately, on the misuse of business vocabulary and language (yes, "target", I'm looking at you, among others) in areas where it doesn't belong, and has no valid place, such as academia.
From the macOS dictionary app under "unique" (bold emphasis mine):
And I agree with that. For example, say if only two models of cars in the world have a specific feature, when pointing it out on one of those vehicles, I might say, "This feature is pretty unique. Only one other vehicle in the world has it." If it were the only car that had it, I'd probably say, "This feature is totally/absolutely unique to this vehicle. No other vehicle in the world has such a feature." etc. As long as one accurately states the facts and gives clear context, no one should be confused by that usage.
"Well, I don't know about that" 😂
Seriously though, point taken; I think the word has evolved from its original meaning.
Honestly, I could not care less about people who say/write "I could care less"...
In scientific articles, the use of the word 'novel' for phenomena or techniques that are anything but.
A call to "Reign in the banks" as an online campaign seeking public support put it in their literature.
You "rein in" a horse, by pulling on the reins to slow the animal's motion down, whereas a crowned monarch or ruler "reigns".
Grrr.
You "rein in" a horse, by pulling on the reins to slow the animal's motion down, whereas a crowned monarch or ruler "reigns".
Grrr.
This one bugs me too, especially as it makes whatever identity you're describing seem transitory, which is often the opposite of what you're trying to convey. Just say "am". You're either a 1st generation college student or you aren't. We don't need to replace "I am" with "I identify as".
You mean when "Right?" is used as a shorter version of "Is that right?"?
If you tell Chuck Norris that you are a carate champion in your area he would probably say: "Is that right?"
From what I understood you just described a "positive" original meaning of "Right?" that the previous poster actually likes.
I tried to give an example of a "sarcastic" "Right?" that the previous poster finds "annoying".
To state the obvious, because it obviously needs to be stated:
There is a difference between "Right?" and "Right."
Several of the above use the question mark when it seems the period is needed. When uttered to express agreement, the questioning intonation is typically not used.
There is a difference between "Right?" and "Right."
Several of the above use the question mark when it seems the period is needed. When uttered to express agreement, the questioning intonation is typically not used.
A questioning intonation is definitely used in the "(I know,) right?" example I used. I hear this all the time. The voice goes up on the word "right."
Person 1: "It's freaking hot out there today?"
Person 2: "I know, right? I almost called in sick today to work because I didn't want to step outside."
This is when agreeing with an opinion, not purely a statement of fact, such as:
Person 1: "Daylight Savings starts this weekend, correct?"
Person 2: "Right. This Sunday."
”Got me all up in my feelings” or “all up in my feels,” or any variation of those. 🤮
I see.
Gregg2 is right though about the confusion around the question mark. The question mark literally invites interpretations depending on the intonation used.