So I was in a meeting at work when the news about O'Connor broke.

[cab67]

17. Don't be surprised.

I teach highly intelligent college students. I've stopped being surprised at what they don't know.

I've met students who appear to believe a President can fire Supreme Court justices at will; who were unaware that WW2 was fought in both Europe and the Pacific; and who found it hard to believe that bats and whales are mammals.

I gave a quiz a while back that asked students some questions about pictures of various animals. The token mammal on this quiz was usually a human, and I often used pictures of celebrities who'd recently died - and that year, I used just-deceased George Harrison. One student wrote on their quiz, "Wasn't he in some band?"

As a grad student many years ago, I helped grade a midterm on which the professor showed a picture of the earth with a big wedge cut out. The point was to have students identify the various layers of the earth - crust, mantle, inner and outer core. A sizable number identified the crust as the atmosphere. One of the other TA's asked a student why they'd done that. The student pointed to South America and asked, "Isn't that a cloud?"

And don't get me started on unintentionally funny misspellings.