Comment on The Joy of Discovery by carriekilleen

Thanks for the post! While the joy of learning and discovery has prodded me to stay in school yet another few years for my PhD, I am DEFINITELY excited about summer break, breaks in general, and not working. Call me a hedonist, but I do great things with leisure time and, if left to my own devices, I would never leave summer break. With that testimony aside, I do not find it that surprising that students hate going to school and/or forget their goals coming to college. While I agree with you that part of the problem stems from boring classes that don’t make you think, lectures gone horribly wrong, etc., I also think a big part of the problem is that many people do not feel like they have a choice in whether or not they go to college. Society and their parents expect them to go to college, and they are seen as low-class or a failure if they do not. Thus, most students probably do not have any sort of goal in mind when the come to college…they don’t have to, they just know that they have to go. They are only interested in the final outcome, because having a degree is all they know they are supposed to get out of college. So, I guess I think that students are, in effect, forced to go to college. I think that part of the solution is allowing students to actually assess what their goals actually are and also promoting other options aside from traditional four-year universities.

Comment on When our education system cares only to final outcome, why should I do my project before the deadline? by carriekilleen

Thanks for the post! In several classes I have taken that involve a final project or research paper, the professor had us turn in either an outline, first draft, annotated bibliography, etc., partway through the semester, with the intent of preventing procrastination disasters. I always liked that extra nudge to get me at least thinking about my project. However, I am not sure about assigning more frequent project updates, reports, or other “checks” to make sure the students are still doing what they are supposed to do. For one, the students may still procrastinate, in that they do the reports the night before they are due and, while they may not be procrastinating on the project, they are still procrastinating. On a similar note, and people are different, but I told my advisor I did not want to have weekly or regularly scheduled meetings with him to go over my dissertation research–for me, progress doesn’t really go at regularly-scheduled intervals, so some weeks I have nothing to say, other weeks I might accomplish quite a lot. And, while I agree that education should value the learning process over the final outcome, students need to learn to be adults and manage their time effectively, so I am not sure if giving them a step-by-step roadmap to success (in the sense of weekly reminders that they should be working on their projects) is always the best idea.

Comment on Why I decided to attend Virginia Tech by carriekilleen

Thanks for your post! I attended an R1 university (University of Georgia) for my undergraduate and Master’s degrees, and even though UGA is definitely not a small, liberal arts college, I felt like I received a fairly liberal-arts-esque education because I double-majored in a B.A. and B.S. Even though I now focus on the more science-y hydrology, all of my time spent in Spanish literature classes has done me lots of good, especially when it comes to writing and crafting an argument, which is also really important in science. Since I’ve been at Virginia Tech, I’ve already audited one Spanish class and hope to audit another one next year to keep up my language skills, but also because I enjoy discussing the portrayal of gender and power in nineteenth-century Cuban poetry. A well-rounded education is possible at STEM or R1 universities, especially with the minor, double-major, and certificate options available.

Comment on Teacher evaluation: how much it shows the truth? by carriekilleen

Thanks for the post! I agree that teacher evaluations are problematic, and, as a student, I am guilty of providing sub-par feedback. I would say, however, that students do not always provide a more negative view than reality on the evaluations. I think a lot of students also tend to mark in the “good” to “excellent” range on most of the questions to get through the evaluation quickly (guilty as charged: this is what I do), only taking the time to mark something different if they either really think something was done well or poorly. I have also thought that evaluation of teaching by colleagues (other professors) would be worthwhile, although that would be adding another responsibility onto already full plates.

Comment on Smarter, Dumber, or Lazier? by carriekilleen

Thanks for the post! I think it’s interesting how technology changes our skillsets. With the example you gave of spelling, I was always a really good speller, but with autocorrect, I find that I am getting worse. I rarely ever have to type an entire word anymore, so I am no longer practicing spelling the word correctly. Is spelling that essential of a skill to keep? Maybe so, maybe not, but I think the example shows how technology shifts our abilities, for better or worse.

Comment on Power to the students by carriekilleen

Great analogy, Sheryl, and I totally agree. I was always felt like the professors were being lazy in the entirely student-led classes…student-led discussions were a convenient out for the professors to not prepare anything for class. These classes also made me confused as to why we were in class with someone who gets paid a lot of money to teach–there was no teaching going on, and we could have had the same experience at a coffee-shop, tuition-free.

Comment on Power to the students by carriekilleen

Haha you didn’t miss out on too much controversy; I had referenced a list of microaggressions, saying that while some of these are clearly things we should avoid, others are pretty normal conversation topics. One of the no-no’s was asking someone where they are from, as this question can make that person feel like they do not belong. I thought that was silly, because someone’s home/origin is an essential component of their identity and, thus, asking about it is an exceptionally normal activity.

Comment on I Cannot Play the Pianoforte by carriekilleen

One of my undergraduate majors was in Spanish, and your post made me think of some linguistics classes I took. It’s very interesting to think about what is considered “correct” when it comes to dialects. On the one hand, some sort of standard is good so that we can all communicate and understand each other. On the other, should we really be encouraging people to change the way they talk, when their speech is often a product of their culture and heritage? For example, a Southern or Appalachian accent is often undesirable, especially in academia, because it is not regarded as “proper English.” There are now many efforts to preserve various local dialects as well as native or pidgin languages, as people are beginning to realize their value. Thanks for the post!