Important Life Lesson # 122. RTFM!

So in Chemistry today the Professor starts off answering questions with the homework that students may have had. Anyway, so it's nice to get the professor to help you out with what you don't understand. Well, there is a group of girls that sit not too far behind me that don't pay attention in class and can get rude and disruptive talking to each other during the lesson. The professor had already gotten a little annoyed with them a couple of weeks ago when they were talking for the first 10 mins of class (not whispering) and told them that if they wanted to talk then to take it outside or at least to the back of the room, and not to waste everyone elses time and money being disruptive. At the end of that day one of them had the nerve to start asking questions in which the whole lecture for that day was leading up to explaining, in which the professor did several times and in several examples so that it became pretty understandable. You could tell the professor was pretty irritated with them and said that in order to get the explination they'd have to see her during office hours or make an appointment. So anyway there are things that indicate that they still aren't paying attention or doing their homework, but they try to make it seem like they do so they asked her to work out on of the questions from the homework in which was pretty randomly picked and I really don't think they were paying attention. The problem in which they wanted her to explain went like this.
"Select the quantity that contains the greater # of atoms in each of the pairs of substances"
a. 0.100 mole C atoms or 0.200 mole C atoms
so you really don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. It's pretty self explainatory even if you don't know what moles are 2 is obviously bigger than 1. So needless to say the professor said something somewhat like this, "you know, if you just read the question you might know how to get the answer." She kind of laughs to herself, then asks the class, "Does anyone know what RTFM means?" She then explains that this term was told to her by a former student she had who had a teacher in high school that was proper, and often got frustrated with some of the students who wouldn't put effort into figuring the problem then came up with the term RTFM (Read The F*^%ing Manual). The Professor then went on to say that she wasn't smarter then the rest of us in what we can comprehend. The difference between her and the average joe was that she put effort into learning and finding out things that she needed to know, and where she wanted to get. The only reason that she could remember all these fancy terms and relations in Chemistry and Math, was because of years of teaching and repitition, but at one time had been a struggle for her.
It reminds me of this news broadcast a while back showing the increase need of Technical support, those so called "Nerds" that you knew back in high school that were now making the good money. When interviewing one of these "Nerds" he said his job is simple. He reads the instruction manual to the computer or electronics and puts effort into understanding them, which the majority of the population doesn't want to do, or claim they don't have enough time to do and that you don't necissarily need a degree to work with computers, just the want to learn and read the manuals that come with them, most things come with a pretty explainatory manuals, and those things that are hard to understand you can now just look up on the internet.

So anyway, I know what she's talking about. Most things aren't rocket science to understand, just the act of reading the manual, question, etc. just one time makes a huge impact in understanding. Though to get full understanding usually it has to be read a couple of times or more (at least the important things).
So remember to RTFM!