Work, Play, School, and the Summer
1.) I beat Mass Effect. I want to play more. Instead, I've got real-world stuff to do. I also wanna replay Psychonauts, because it rocked, and play some TF2 now that I'm
2.) No idea how my summer's going to run. My best-case scenarios are one of the following:
(a) Get a business internship at the Watervliet Arsenal. It's not exactly my desired field (private-sector product development), but it's a hell of a lot closer to it than either Target or preschool, it pays significantly more, and it has opportunities for promotion and possibly a job after graduation.
(b) Work at preschool in the mornings and take General Chemistry II, which is a night class.
In either of those scenarios, I could quit Target and have weekends largely free to do things with people. Last summer, I had to turn down a depressingly large number of invites out because I was working pretty much every single weekend and my demographic doesn't make plans four weeks in advance to hang out on Friday night (nor should it, because if it did, the plans would fall through 85% of the time, and I would be disappointed).
However, I realize those might not pan out, so I have a backup plan:
(c) Work at Target so I can buy textbooks next semester, wherever I am. Possibly take Gen Chem II.
3.) I have even less idea how next semester is going run.
4.) Someone on my friendslist TAs classes at her university. She posted something about how she's letting a student do extra credit work to improve her grade. I think this (a) good stuff and (b) the kind of thing that's, realistically, necessary in today's world.
"I think it's great that you're giving [your student] a second chance (and this is from my perspective as... well, not the best student ever, by a long shot). You're allowing her the chance to prove two things:
1.) She has achieved the pedagogical learning goals set forth in the course.
2.) She's willing to expend effort in order to prove that she has achieved the goals.
Is there really anything else that the grade you give her needs to reflect?
Plus, if I recall, your classes are godawful early in the morning (7AM and 8AM, amirite?). Biologically, she's probably coming out of the stage where 3AM to noon is an optimal sleep schedule, and she's also probably trying to socially interact with peers on the same sleep schedule. Culturally, college students (self included) act like and are treated as basically slightly more mature children (hence the increasingly-defined "young adult" demographic). You can expect more maturity than a middle- or high-schooler, but the majority of college students aren't ready and don't want to be adults yet. None of this is or should be an excuse (which is why you're still holding her accountable), but it's not the kind of thing that I think should be unforgivable. College is a learning experience, and making mistakes is a pretty common way of learning how to do it the right way around the next time.
However, this is my point of view, and again, I'm not an optimal student, so this is biased. I've spent my last week doing an extra-credit assignment in order to pass my computer science class, and I'm about to spend the next week and a half catching up on lab reports in order to pass my Physics class."
I bang on a lot about how I don't like academia as it exists today, mostly because I think I'm right, and partly because if there's an argument I'd missed, I'd like to hear it.
This kind of situation highlights one of the things that bothers me most about academia, and higher education* in particular. It's more-or-less universally required of everyone, or at least everyone who wants to be a contributing citizen of this country. Increasingly, people don't go to college because they want to expand their education and learn things and add the human race through increasing knowledge. They go to college because it's either tacitly implied or explicitly stated that they're going to spend the rest of their lives working at McDonald's for minimum wage if they don't.
Now, I understand the theory behind classic liberal arts education-- something about educating a voting public. But when it's increasingly required to have paid large sums of money to take (for example) a writing class, a literature class, two science classes, two social science classes, and an art class, and then pass all of them, in order to get a job that pays a reasonable living wage (and here I mean "the kind that includes the little niceties of life, like health insurance")? There's something wrong.
Especially if you aren't looking at a career in academia (and most of them probably aren't), I feel like the bulk of a college degree serves as a hazing exercise: get through it, and employers will note that you got through it.
And that's why I think it's important that this person, along with many other professors and TAs teaching at the undergraduate level (and including two of my own professors this semester), offer their students chances for redemption if we screw things up during the course of the semester.
Because college students are basically kids, and we're in college to learn, whether we want to or not. We should be allowed the opportunity to fix our mistakes and prove that we've met the goals of the course, because fucking up is part of the learning process.
...Here I am looking at the professor who essentially failed me because I refused to support her opinion that capitalism was wrong in my papers (and so stopped writing the papers), and then refused to let me redeem myself. I liked her very much on a personal level, and I am very grateful to her for making me think deeply about social issues. However, it would have made my life a great deal easier if she had allowed me to pass her class.
_____
*By "higher education" I don't mean "continuing to learn after high school", I mean the kind of education that costs $48,000 for the cheap degree (assuming $12,000/year for attending a state school, which is kind of a low estimate IMO). The kind that gives you a pretty piece of paper afterwards.
2.) No idea how my summer's going to run. My best-case scenarios are one of the following:
(a) Get a business internship at the Watervliet Arsenal. It's not exactly my desired field (private-sector product development), but it's a hell of a lot closer to it than either Target or preschool, it pays significantly more, and it has opportunities for promotion and possibly a job after graduation.
(b) Work at preschool in the mornings and take General Chemistry II, which is a night class.
In either of those scenarios, I could quit Target and have weekends largely free to do things with people. Last summer, I had to turn down a depressingly large number of invites out because I was working pretty much every single weekend and my demographic doesn't make plans four weeks in advance to hang out on Friday night (nor should it, because if it did, the plans would fall through 85% of the time, and I would be disappointed).
However, I realize those might not pan out, so I have a backup plan:
(c) Work at Target so I can buy textbooks next semester, wherever I am. Possibly take Gen Chem II.
3.) I have even less idea how next semester is going run.
4.) Someone on my friendslist TAs classes at her university. She posted something about how she's letting a student do extra credit work to improve her grade. I think this (a) good stuff and (b) the kind of thing that's, realistically, necessary in today's world.
"I think it's great that you're giving [your student] a second chance (and this is from my perspective as... well, not the best student ever, by a long shot). You're allowing her the chance to prove two things:
1.) She has achieved the pedagogical learning goals set forth in the course.
2.) She's willing to expend effort in order to prove that she has achieved the goals.
Is there really anything else that the grade you give her needs to reflect?
Plus, if I recall, your classes are godawful early in the morning (7AM and 8AM, amirite?). Biologically, she's probably coming out of the stage where 3AM to noon is an optimal sleep schedule, and she's also probably trying to socially interact with peers on the same sleep schedule. Culturally, college students (self included) act like and are treated as basically slightly more mature children (hence the increasingly-defined "young adult" demographic). You can expect more maturity than a middle- or high-schooler, but the majority of college students aren't ready and don't want to be adults yet. None of this is or should be an excuse (which is why you're still holding her accountable), but it's not the kind of thing that I think should be unforgivable. College is a learning experience, and making mistakes is a pretty common way of learning how to do it the right way around the next time.
However, this is my point of view, and again, I'm not an optimal student, so this is biased. I've spent my last week doing an extra-credit assignment in order to pass my computer science class, and I'm about to spend the next week and a half catching up on lab reports in order to pass my Physics class."
I bang on a lot about how I don't like academia as it exists today, mostly because I think I'm right, and partly because if there's an argument I'd missed, I'd like to hear it.
This kind of situation highlights one of the things that bothers me most about academia, and higher education* in particular. It's more-or-less universally required of everyone, or at least everyone who wants to be a contributing citizen of this country. Increasingly, people don't go to college because they want to expand their education and learn things and add the human race through increasing knowledge. They go to college because it's either tacitly implied or explicitly stated that they're going to spend the rest of their lives working at McDonald's for minimum wage if they don't.
Now, I understand the theory behind classic liberal arts education-- something about educating a voting public. But when it's increasingly required to have paid large sums of money to take (for example) a writing class, a literature class, two science classes, two social science classes, and an art class, and then pass all of them, in order to get a job that pays a reasonable living wage (and here I mean "the kind that includes the little niceties of life, like health insurance")? There's something wrong.
Especially if you aren't looking at a career in academia (and most of them probably aren't), I feel like the bulk of a college degree serves as a hazing exercise: get through it, and employers will note that you got through it.
And that's why I think it's important that this person, along with many other professors and TAs teaching at the undergraduate level (and including two of my own professors this semester), offer their students chances for redemption if we screw things up during the course of the semester.
Because college students are basically kids, and we're in college to learn, whether we want to or not. We should be allowed the opportunity to fix our mistakes and prove that we've met the goals of the course, because fucking up is part of the learning process.
...Here I am looking at the professor who essentially failed me because I refused to support her opinion that capitalism was wrong in my papers (and so stopped writing the papers), and then refused to let me redeem myself. I liked her very much on a personal level, and I am very grateful to her for making me think deeply about social issues. However, it would have made my life a great deal easier if she had allowed me to pass her class.
_____
*By "higher education" I don't mean "continuing to learn after high school", I mean the kind of education that costs $48,000 for the cheap degree (assuming $12,000/year for attending a state school, which is kind of a low estimate IMO). The kind that gives you a pretty piece of paper afterwards.