STARTING 4/8/17: Six Word Saturday is now being hosted by the lovely Debbie at Travel With Intent.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Advertising Stupidity

Lately I've been struggling a bit with my Intro to Advertising course. It's self-paced and I'll probably be done this week. Except for the final exam which is FREAKING ME OUT.

A few times, I've had no idea what the professor was looking for and turned in work that I was very unsure of - but she loved it. "You've displayed a clear grasp of the concepts in this chapter."

Then this past week, I turned in an essay worth a big chunk of my final grade. I was very sure of my work. In fact, I might go as far as to say I was proud of the analysis I had written, including the clarity with which I supported my assessment. Result? B-. "While you make some good points, I feel you have completely misidentified the approach used for this commercial."

Say WHAT?!?!?

Now my confidence is shaken. I debated writing back to her saying I disagreed with her critique. I'm finding myself afraid to turn in some of my other work. And the final exam which was FREAKING ME OUT? It's now FREAKING ME OUT ZOMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!

Uh huh.

In my usual fashion, I respond to criticism by taking it to heart, learning from it, making adjustments and moving forward criticizing back. No, not the professor. But I've found our textbook to be so poorly edited that it makes me want to scream. Besides the constant issues with "of" where it should say "or" or singular when the word should be plural, I've recently come upon these two glaring examples of stupidity:

"broadcast media: media, such as radium television, and interactive media, which transmit sounds or images electronically"
"Senior executives could care less about which shipping method is used..."
Radium television? Oh, and do NOT get me started about "could care less". And if you don't understand why "could care less" is wrong, please go read this post and save yourself a punch in the face.

Anyways, since the book is poorly edited, I'm sure that must mean it is not credible. And since the instructor chose the textbook, that also means she is not in a position to criticize me. So I win.

But I still have to pass that stupid exam.

10 comments:

TMC said...

Cate, FTW!

Caty said...

Ugh! I despise poor editing in a text book. I hope your final goes well. Good luck!!

Toriz said...

Just don't worry about it, do the best you can, and as long as you get a good enough grade to pass, then it doesn't matter. Besides, all you can do is try your best.

Intense Guy said...

I often hit typos and bad editing in books and it derails my reading...

"Radium" television most surely would have caused me to hiccup and then go WTF? and then reset/restart reading.

I think I would have asked the instructor what "radium television" was in class... and carped on any other glaring crap in hopes of getting a message across that the book kind of sucks.

betty said...

wow, you would think that the instructor herself would have caught these editing mistakes and not think so highly of the book itself. I have to admit advertising sounds very interesting but I'm sure stressful. However, I think you would be good at it. It is hard to discern though what a client might be looking for, which apparently she was looking for something different than you wrote on that B- paper you got

(I had to stop following your blog because for some reason every time I would go on it, my computer would jam up; I think it might be because you had a lot of extra things on it that took forever for my ancient computer to load; but I re-added myself and it seemed to load quicker this time but I also cleaned up my computer and got rid of a lot of things so it runs better)

betty

Jan Holt said...

You'll rock that final! Sorry I've been away for so long. It's great to have time to get back on the blogging wagon.

Sending you best wishes for your final exam!

Eternal Lizdom said...

I'd reply back and ask for clarification.

I'd also lean heavily on the understanding that advertising is a bunch of BS and as long as you can BS on the test, like on previous assignments, you'll do awesome.

C. Beth said...

I like Liz' comment; asking for clarification could be useful. A B- would totally bother me too!

"Radium television." Sounds dangerous.

holly said...

just gritted my teeth reading "could care less." I couldn't hate that phrase more.

Shirley said...

I totally agree with you that textbooks should be vigorously edited! Also, NEWSPAPERS and online news outlets! OMG!! I've stopped reading entire articles because of grammatical or spelling errors!

I'm sure you'll do great on your Final exam, Cate! Just take a deep breath between answering each question.