I don't know if my instructors appreciate my humor, but I have a lot of fun doing it, and it's great at reducing stress. Picture below is from one of my assignments for a typography class. Enjoy. (click the "Show" button) Stress will literally kill you, giving goofy-but-correct answers on tests will not.
Bonus: My final for Intro To Logic about a year ago was great, for the "show example" type questions, I created logic statements involving velociraptors, zombies, Mustangs, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Good times.
EDIT: Okay I should clarify that you still want to work hard, get the best grades you can, and make the most of it, I just meant don't be one of the stereotypical bookworm kid that is sweating and stressing 24/7 or during every minute of every test. It helps relax sometimes and live a little.
Maybe it's been too long since I've been in school and I have since gone full retard, but how can you get 100 points total if they ask you for 4 answers for 20 points each?
Fuck school.
Get only shit jobs for years.
Deal with depressions.
Stop sleeping for 5-6 days.
Go to a hospital.
Think about where you will be in 20 years.
Reconsider your way of life.
No one's saying you have to be the best in everything and you should certainly find "your" way to deal with things. But dont ever get the idea school or learning is nothing worth. Its one of THE most important things. It is not even so much about school in general, but just to the act of learning. You should have fun in learning new things. Doesnt matter what it is really, if it is history, math, different langauges. But it will help you to achieve your goals eventually. The target should be to do one day something that makes you happy and where you feel satisfied. Believe me, or dont. Both is ok. But I can tell you, you dont want to be where I have been. You dont want to stand up at 5 a.m. in the morning to spend the next 11 hours sitting infront of the assembly line doing something that someone with only half a brain could do while he is sedated. I have done a lot of shit jobs in my life. And now things are very difficult and I have constantly to kick my self in the butt, fight for every penny I have just to be allowed to learn what I love and enjoy, and all of that only because I didnt cared even one inch about what I wanted to do in the future, when I was still 17-18 years old.
Maybe it's been too long since I've been in school and I have since gone full retard, but how can you get 100 points total if they ask you for 4 answers for 20 points each?
Fuck school.
Get only shit jobs for years.
Deal with depressions.
Stop sleeping for 5-6 days.
Go to a hospital.
Think about where you will be in 20 years.
Reconsider your way of life.
No one's saying you have to be the best in everything and you should certainly find "your" way to deal with things. But dont ever get the idea school or learning is nothing worth. Its one of THE most important things. It is not even so much about school in general, but just to the act of learning. You should have fun in learning new things. Doesnt matter what it is really, if it is history, math, different langauges. But it will help you to achieve your goals eventually. The target should be to do one day something that makes you happy and where you feel satisfied. Believe me, or dont. Both is ok. But I can tell you, you dont want to be where I have been. You dont want to stand up at 5 a.m. in the morning to spend the next 11 hours sitting infront of the assembly line doing something that someone with only half a brain could do while he is sedated. I have done a lot of shit jobs in my life. And now things are very difficult and I have constantly to kick my self in the butt, fight for every penny I have just to be allowed to learn what I love and enjoy, and all of that only because I didnt cared even one inch about what I wanted to do in the future, when I was still 17-18 years old.
Oh I totally agree, I don't mean to imply that school isn't worth it. I'm in way too much debt and will be 29 by the time I finish my Associate's mid-2014, but that's why I'm in school to begin with. I was tired of working assembly lines and callcenter customer service. Like I said in the OP, I am getting good grades, I have 3.8 GPA right now; I'm not the drunken frat kid going to school on daddy's trust fund
What I meant was, if you can fit some humor into your homework/exams/projects it helps a lot. At least for me anyway. I'm not trying to belittle school or my instructors, I just think it helps calm the nerves by being silly sometimes.
For what it's worth, I am sorry things ended up that way, that does sound like a shit deal. I can emphathize with your situation a bit: the whole reason I didn't get back to school for 8 years after high school was because of dumb decisions, drugs, mental illness (probably caused by the drugs), bad relationships and stressful jobs. Finally I just got too tired of it and dropped everything to go back to school, which is why I have so much debt right now. (Loans and aid instead of saving up first.) Believe me if I could go back to about fifth grade and redo all the interim years, I'd do almost everything differently. I'm probably not old enough to truly "get" what you're saying though, so feel free to think I'm full of shit
Humor can be very ... problematic though. If the people dont like your humor or something. But I am not just talking about a test here. We also have classes about marketing and all that. Where you interact directly with customers. You can create a lot of antipathy with "wrong" humor, and the issue isnt that you have a wrong humor, they just dont like it.
A joke can do wonders here and there. True enough. But I personaly would tend not to use it, because its very difficult to do it right, and you never know if the people on the other side actually will like it.
Humor can be very ... problematic though. If the people dont like your humor or something. But I am not just talking about a test here. We also have classes about marketing and all that. Where you interact directly with customers. You can create a lot of antipathy with "wrong" humor, and the issue isnt that you have a wrong humor, they just dont like it.
A joke can do wonders here and there. True enough. But I personaly would tend not to use it, because its very difficult to do it right, and you never know if the people on the other side actually will like it.
Humor can be very ... problematic though. If the people dont like your humor or something. But I am not just talking about a test here. We also have classes about marketing and all that. Where you interact directly with customers. You can create a lot of antipathy with "wrong" humor, and the issue isnt that you have a wrong humor, they just dont like it.
A joke can do wonders here and there. True enough. But I personaly would tend not to use it, because its very difficult to do it right, and you never know if the people on the other side actually will like it.
I'd chalk it up more to professionalism. It really depends on the job, too, I think. In most lines of work it's not tough to get a decent read of a client in relatively short order and tailor the experience you deliver. Missteps happen, but you can usually tell who's going to be too stiff to take a risk with. Crni, though, works in a field where a lot of the back-and-forth takes place via text, where it's easier to misread someone and a lot harder to build up goodwill.
No. This has nothing to do with skill. If the person on the other end, doesnt like your humor, then he doesnt like it. I think we can agree that Dave Chappelle is "funy". But you can do what ever you want, there will be people out there that dont like, outright hate him. Maybe because he's even black? What do I know. And no matter if he's throwing out his best jokes. This people will not be conviced and still hate his humor.
And now you could run in to a similar problem while doing a presentation showing people your concept for the design they asked from you. See. Its not like this is only coming from me, but actually people that have years of experience in communication with consumers. If you have a funny personality, because thats how "you" are, then by all means! Use it! Nothing is worse then to try to be something you are not. Imagine the punk trying to wear a fancy suit, figuratively speaking. That just seems unreal and not trustworthy compared to someone who is giving a honest picture of him self. But humor just for the sake of beeing "witty" or funny? That rarely if ever works, as far as presentations goes where you try to sell people your ideas (at least in my business). People pay hard cash eventually for what you show them. They are not there for entertainment in the first place. Of course that doesnt mean that you have to act all the time like you have a whole broomstick up your arse.
But That's why its better to just be your self and to play save, if possible, because you never know what the guy on the other end is thinking. Quite often you also compete with people here about the jobs. And its better to let the quality of your work speak then your words alone, the field that I work in (graphic design) has the advantage that you can very easily spot the good stuff almost on the spot.
Try to see it from this angle, one day you might go to a company, because they look for someone who should do their corporate design or upgrade it, you spend some time working out new concepts and making it rady for a presentation to show what the costs will be and what you want to do. Now there might, lets say 10 people there watching your presentation, and from those 10 people there will be very often someone who is not satisfied with you (pretty much the norm here ...), not because of "you" as a person, he doesnt know you after all, but because his work mates chose your agency for the job and not the one he favoured. That alone will give you already a bad stance sometimes. And now you come with a joke, and it might happen that the guy who's not liking you and your presentation will use it to rip you appart. Thats what the reality can be. - this will probably happen either way.
Show what you have and do it as best as you can.Its about professionalism. Just how Yams said, it depends a lot on the jobs as well If you are doing something in house for example, or if you are the guy in the agency send to the customer. If you know the people already, and they are familiar with your work, then you can do a different kind of presentation, maybe in a much more relaxed atmosphere.
Sound advice, no doubt. But it seems a very specific situation. Like that happened to you or in front of you and you had an inner face palm for the poor guy. Poorly executed humor is always sad. To me, it's no reason to be completely "gun shy" about it in a business/sales setting. In the same situation you discribe, there could be a bunch of different factors having nothing to do with humor that could cause douchbag X to write you off completely.
There are a lot of different personality types out there. Being able to read them is a skill, ask anyone who does stand up or gets paid to try and be funny. Same for atmosphere. The situation you are discribing kind of falls apart here because you are talking about a guy walking into a room to present a product without even attempting to read atmosphere or personalities. More betting on farts IMO. Also, although not related, the hallmark of bad comedians.
like I said, its not always about skill or poorly executed humor. Again. If the person infront of you simply doesnt like you. Then there is barely anything you can do. We have a pretty good teacher and he is trying to prepare us for such situations. He has a lot of experience, particularly as far as Marketing goes, and he is still runing his own company with his wife. He is very witty and in general a pretty funny person to say that.
But I am in a different position here anyway, I want people to chose me for the quality of my work, not because of my smooth talking. I am a graphic designer after all. In the end it doesnt even matter what grades you have, only the quality of your work. Can you do the design in time? Can you deliver good quality? They dont expect extremly skilled talkers here hell they dont even expect skilled artists here. What they want are people that can do the job.
The situation you are discribing kind of falls apart here because you are talking about a guy walking into a room to present a product without even attempting to read atmosphere or personalities.
No, I am talking about a person who is walking in a room where you have someone that simply doesnt like you, because you are coming from some agency he didnt chose. He wants you to fail with your presentation. And this is not rare. Again, this has nothing to do with skill or reading personalities. He simply wants you to fail. No matter how good you are.
For the case you missunderstand me or my intentions, I am not dissagreeing with you. Just giving you me opinion on a specific situation.
