That's it. Two in a row. I'm ready for a drink
So I have office hours today for students who want to discuss their grade.
Student one. Comes in whining about his grade in a passive aggressive manner (basically blaming me for why he didn't really learn the material). He's taking an abstract algebra course and he's a finance major. So I asked him at one point why are you taking this course, it's not required for your major. He says well I have so many math courses for all intensive purposes I'm a math major. Which first of all isn't true and secondly intensive purposes? So I asked could you repeat that please and sure enough he uses the phrase intensive purposes again. I said I don't want to be critical but just for your information the correct phrase is intents and purposes after which point he proceeds to argue with me. First he says well I meant the same thing so it doesn't matter. When I point out how ridiculous that is then he says he's right because his uncle used it that way and his uncle is some high-ranking businessman. He leaves unhappy that I won't bump his grade up and I leave depressed at the level of ignorance for a senior level college student.
Student two: She's taking a math history course with me. It's not a particularly hard course although it does require the students be math majors. In any case the students have proved to be so poor referencing books/journal articles as primary source materials that this semester I decided to let them use AI provided they check all substantive statements they are using. So this student did an essay on the history of the cubic equation and says some things that are very clearly AI hallucinations. So I asked her where she got these "facts". She responds ChatGPT. I asked did you check the statements? She said yeah I checked it with Google Gemini. Honestly I was so dumbfounded. Because I had explained to the students that you check AI statements using actual real reference materials (like books and articles that have been peer reviewed and published by experts so we know the information in there is correct). And the thing is she's not even a bad student but I couldn't believe that that was the bar at which students are doing "research".
Sigh.