Ranting About Lectures

Every student worth their salt knows what it's like to sit in a boring lecture. I think "boring" is an understatement for some lectures though, especially those on certain subjects like statistics and administration. Which is unlucky really, because that's what we have to do for the next week. Sit in a lecture theatre while some mindless clone recites incomprehensible jargon at us in a monotone voice, for hour long stints. All day. All week.
I don't hate lectures in general, but it's certainly pretty easy to make a lecture boring. For instance, some lecturers have that kind of voice, that low, droning, semi-soporific crackle that either sends you soundly to sleep or makes your skin itch unbearably with the urge to run down to the front and tell him to shut the hell up. Also, lecturers who insist on abbreviating every possible three word term should be shot on sight. I listened to a full 45 minutes of some bloke talking about R&D today before I realised that I had no clue as to what it stood for. Actually, in his defence, when I found out that it stood for Research and Development, I was interested even less.
Also, people who lecture in patronising detail about something we already have to know are fairly irritating. Luckily I fell asleep for the hour on Ethics today, I did all that rubbish at A Level. Everyone still awake was pleasantly reminded that you have to ask the patient before turning them into a guinea pig, and they can even say no if they like. Crazy revelations.
This whole week has been prompted by the School of Medicine's conclusion that we are incapable of writing a good scientific paper as part of next year's assessment, so we should be subjected to 5 days of lectures telling us in great, superfluous detail how it should be done. We actually have sessions on how to do spreadsheets, which will no doubt involve sub-modules on "where the on button is" and "efficient development of mouse-clicking learning outcomes".
I suppose it wouldn't be half as bad if I actually learnt something useful. All the speakers stand up at the front, reel off their piece about ethics, protocol or the Human Tissues Act 2004 and sit down with satisfied smirks. Unfortunately, we have no idea what the hell any of those things has to do with us.
For God's sake, just give us a 10 minute talk with a bullet point list of forms that need to be filled in and who has to sign where. We can deal with the rest. As they should know, we're not totally stupid.