Five days till freedom.
Dec. 16th, 2005 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedYou might have thought, from the large number of comments I have been leaving every-which-where recently, that my semester was over. You would have, in fact, been wrong, as over the last four days I have had, in fact, two eight-page papers and a lab report to write, a lab presentation to give, a math problem set (group theory) to do, and a final this morning to take. I bombed most of them. This weekend, however, I will redeem myself on a take-home physics final and ten-page lab report; and I will also attempt to learn an entire semester’s worth of electrodynamics by Monday.
IF YOU SEE ME ONLINE, KICK ME.
In conclusion, here’s a comment I left![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
svz_insanity explaining exactly what my problem with history 416 was this year, in response to a her remark that if teachers graded in a color that wasn’t red – purple, say – life would be less stressful.
***
But then purple will become the new red, and the cycle will start all over again. XD
On related note, I'm taking a class this semester taught by a visiting professor from the Netherlands. It's on the history of European intellectualism and it is HARD because none of us has the background in well-known German philosophers our prof expects of us. Two days ago, on the last day of class, he summed up the course (the most we have heard from him all semester, as it's a discussion seminar and he prefers to let us stumble through unaided) with the following:
"If you have emerged from this seminar thinking that nothing makes sense, that you are lost in a sea of varying modes of thought, and that it is now impossible to analyze or write formally any of your opinions, for fear of overlooking some contradictory stance or of being trapped within your own presuppositions; if you are now questioning the basis and bias of everything you have ever learned...
"In this case something has gone very, very wrong."
He went on to suggest that perhaps, if we can't handle multiple interpretations of a subject, we should see if we don't have an affinity for math. Since we obviously don't belong in the humanities.
Aha. When the seminar started there were over twenty people, and now there are only seven including me, the smallest class I've ever been in**. Everyone who's managed to stick with it has been having problems, not just in his class but in all of their other classes. My final paper, which I should be working on right now as it is due tomorrow, is on intellectual identity crises! After class, we all got together to commiserate, and I eventually suggested that maybe a part of the problem -- not all of it -- was a cultural misunderstanding.
Because in America we practice the cult of self-esteem. Teachers go out of their way to avoid implying that students are not capable. They never, ever say that maybe if a student is having problems, it's because the student is not good enough, will perhaps never be good enough. In fact the only person I think emerged from that seminar unscathed was Noriko, who is a Japanese exchange student and presumably used to these things.
So my point -- there is a point, I swear! -- is that if your teachers are too nice, it is only going to lead to problems later when you find one who isn't.
By the way, I finally managed to work through my can't-write issues yesterday -- just in time to completely bomb the final paper, since there are only 12 hours left before it's due. This paper was supposed to prove to the prof that I am NOT AN IDIOT, too. *wails and gnashes teeth*
**If you are a current high school Senior or Junior! And you are considering applying to a large university, which you feel won’t be so bad because you have a book that says the average class size is small! Be aware that those numbers include independent study students, specialized courses, and (in this case) graduate school courses. In other words, they're a big fat dirty lie.
IF YOU SEE ME ONLINE, KICK ME.
In conclusion, here’s a comment I left
svz_insanity explaining exactly what my problem with history 416 was this year, in response to a her remark that if teachers graded in a color that wasn’t red – purple, say – life would be less stressful. ***
But then purple will become the new red, and the cycle will start all over again. XD
On related note, I'm taking a class this semester taught by a visiting professor from the Netherlands. It's on the history of European intellectualism and it is HARD because none of us has the background in well-known German philosophers our prof expects of us. Two days ago, on the last day of class, he summed up the course (the most we have heard from him all semester, as it's a discussion seminar and he prefers to let us stumble through unaided) with the following:
"If you have emerged from this seminar thinking that nothing makes sense, that you are lost in a sea of varying modes of thought, and that it is now impossible to analyze or write formally any of your opinions, for fear of overlooking some contradictory stance or of being trapped within your own presuppositions; if you are now questioning the basis and bias of everything you have ever learned...
"In this case something has gone very, very wrong."
He went on to suggest that perhaps, if we can't handle multiple interpretations of a subject, we should see if we don't have an affinity for math. Since we obviously don't belong in the humanities.
Aha. When the seminar started there were over twenty people, and now there are only seven including me, the smallest class I've ever been in**. Everyone who's managed to stick with it has been having problems, not just in his class but in all of their other classes. My final paper, which I should be working on right now as it is due tomorrow, is on intellectual identity crises! After class, we all got together to commiserate, and I eventually suggested that maybe a part of the problem -- not all of it -- was a cultural misunderstanding.
Because in America we practice the cult of self-esteem. Teachers go out of their way to avoid implying that students are not capable. They never, ever say that maybe if a student is having problems, it's because the student is not good enough, will perhaps never be good enough. In fact the only person I think emerged from that seminar unscathed was Noriko, who is a Japanese exchange student and presumably used to these things.
So my point -- there is a point, I swear! -- is that if your teachers are too nice, it is only going to lead to problems later when you find one who isn't.
By the way, I finally managed to work through my can't-write issues yesterday -- just in time to completely bomb the final paper, since there are only 12 hours left before it's due. This paper was supposed to prove to the prof that I am NOT AN IDIOT, too. *wails and gnashes teeth*
**If you are a current high school Senior or Junior! And you are considering applying to a large university, which you feel won’t be so bad because you have a book that says the average class size is small! Be aware that those numbers include independent study students, specialized courses, and (in this case) graduate school courses. In other words, they're a big fat dirty lie.