Grey's Journal:
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I am looking for decision in my life right now. I want classes that I can either passionately throw myself into, or classes that I can say 'I hate this, it is not for me!' and move on to something new. But so far my graduate economics classes are neutral; as middle of the road as a yellow line. I can't say that I never want to do this when I grow up, but nor can I say it's totally uninteresting. But I can say I don't like the grading system in the UK. One paper and one test, both at the end of the semester. That's it. In high school, there was homework every day and a test every week. Plenty of feedback on my progress and lots of numbers to average. If I did badly on a test, it was no big deal. There were 12 tests a quarter. In college, I was shocked to have only three tests a semester. My final grade depended on the capricious whims of the fates on three days. That didn't seem right. Suddenly, noisy neighbors, fights with girlfriends, sickness and forgetfulness could ruin my grade if they happened at the wrong time. Plus, three data points does hardly an average make. But now, it's even worse. 50% of my grade hangs in the balance on a single day. At least with three tests, if you failed the first one, it served as a warning shot - in the foot. It crippled you, but after rehabilitation you could walk again one day. "Wow," you say after getting a zero on the first test. "I better try harder for the next ones." And so you do, scoring two perfect hundreds. Those three average to a final grade of sixty-six. One point above failing. All is well. Not here. If I screw up on one test, it's over for graduate school. I'm in a one year program, so I don't have the wiggle room of four years of college to make up for past errors. Doing badly on the first (and only) test is like a warning shot to the head: no warning shot at all. But as one professor was explaining the one-test policy, I found a small spark of hope. "A passing mark in the UK," he said "is 50%" Though I wasn't aware of it, I made a very loud, involuntary noise expressing my delight at that low number. I didn't hear the noise, but I know it happened because my professor smirked, turned to me and said, "This is no cause for celebration. You will find we are much harder graders than you are used to." Gone was my hope. To add to my dismay, the tests at the end of the year are essay tests. Handwritten essay tests. This is bad news. My handwriting is horrible. I'm used to doing my writing on a computer. I have grown accustomed to the fluidity and flexibility of a word processor. When I first write something, it's like a newly opened puzzle box. Random ideas are scattered about in no useful order. But through the magic of cut and paste, I can put my essay together. That won't work for a handwritten essay. Paper and pen's permanancy ensure that what I write will be immutable. I might as well chisel my answers onto a stone tablet. I plan on getting around this difficulty by bringing real paste and a pair of sissors to my test. There is also the matter of my spelling skills. The ratio of time I spend spell checking a document to the amount of time I spend writing that document would make a brave professor of English weep. However, I'm one of three or four native English speakers in the entire postgraduate program. This, I hope, will make my strange spellings and wandering sentences seem less horrible by comparison. It's a bit Machievellian, but if I don't expect to do well, I can only hope that my competition will do worse. * * *
I'm three weeks into classes, and I still disbelieve they have actually begun. My brain keeps comming back to the same thought: 'classes can't have started already. I haven't even bought a notebook'. I've been thinking this thought at the beginning of every academic year since college. The problem is, I never get around to buying a notebook. I don't really like notebooks, or the whole note taking process. As soon as I start to write something down, I think of the quote by R. K. Rathbun: "A lecture is a process by which the notes of the professor become the notes of the students without passing through the minds of either." If the professor is giving a lecture from her notes, why doesn't she just give me a copy of them. This way I can pay attention to what she's saying instead of trying to write at human-speaking speed, or playing the fruitless 'what's important' guessing game. Because of this frustration, in college, I stopped taking notes. Everyone else got nervous when I didn't put anything on my desk. It's like they thought I'd lost my mind and was about to pull a gun out of my bag and kill everyone. Such is the power of social norms. I learned to bring a pad of paper that I used as a prop to assuage the fears of my professors and classmates. Occasionally, if the teacher said something really, really important, like 'this will be on the test' I'd write that down, but it was pointless. I lost the paper almost immediately. But I still had the guilty I-should-buy-a-notebook feeling right to the bitter end. "It can't be time for the final exam already. I haven't even bought a notebook." My graduate classes are small. About ten people each. And, perhaps I'm just going crazy, but I swear that one of my professors gives his lecture looking at me 90% of the time. I think I will bring a stop watch to the next class and record the amount of eye contact. I'll keep you posted. With such small classes there is difficulty catalyzing the class to leave during a boring lecture. The kind of lecture where the professor doesn't realize he lost the class twenty minutes ago. I look around and see everyone staring into space or carefully cleaning their nails and I find myself dreaming of the chinese place down the street from me (redundanty named 'green jade') as the professor puts up his fifth 'just one more slide'. In moments like that, someone has to take action. A quick loud zip of a backpack and the 'thuwmp!' of a closing textbook, could often get others to do the same. The whole class would be packing and heading for the door. That doesn't work with eight to ten people. Firstly, I'd lose the anonymity of a large group. Secondly, I would look like an idiot, unzipping and re-ripping my backpack several times trying to start a chain reaction. Well, it's time to bring this journal entry to a close. Thwump! Zzzzzip! |
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mailing list. Copyright © 2003 Wellington Grey  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. |
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