Saturday is grownup day at my school. It doesn't do a huge business, as I may have mentioned, in full-time, twentysomething grad students like yours truly and instead caters mostly to part-time, older, going-back-to-get-a-masters types. They're always around, especially in the evenings, but by-and-large are invisible behind a curtain of 19 year old Ugg-wearing girly-girls and frosted-tip fratboys.
On 9:30 Saturday morning, when the undergrads are (A) sleeping one off or (B) crying and driving way too fast to Walgreens in search of a Plan B, we're the only ones around. Graying heads in khakis and polos mix with mom jeans and the occasional pudgy, bearded full-timer in line at Starbucks. The sun shines bright through the wintergarden ceiling and it's quiet enough to think.
I must be old.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
No. 3: On PowerPoint
2004 doesn't seem so long ago. In geologic terms, it isn't any time ago. But something has change in the Ivory Tower.
PowerPoint is in. And I do mean in.
In my entire undergraduate experience, I only had one class that used PowerPoint regularly. This was, interestingly given the figure of speech I just used, my freshman year intro Geology class. At the time, it seemed to me a useful way of clearly getting over the information in a class popularly known as "Rocks For Jocks." It was even a bit novel then. This was in 2000, and PowerPoint, though around, was not the all-consuming rhetorical monster it is now.
Besides that class, I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of PowerPoints I say through for classes. It just wasn't done. At least in the humanities and social sciences, and certainly not at the higher levels.
Well, things have changed.
I have not had a single meeting of any class that has not featured a PowerPoint of some sort, often pushing the 40 slide mark. And these are not all intro classes. I have two upper-level "seminars" (neither of which feature seminar-style seating, but that's another story) that rely heavily upon PowerPoint. And, for the life of me, I can't see how this makes the academic experience better for anyone. In my humble opinion, they enable laziness on everyone's part. If you're the professor, why worry about the lecture? Why deviate? You're already all set. And if you're a student, why take notes? You can print the presentation off the web after class and you're good to go. Note taking skills degrade with the incentive to pay attention.
It's ironic that this drive to "paperlessness" is in fact producing reams of extra printing. I printed a 50 page PowerPoint the other day to catch myself up on a math lecture I missed. If I did that for every class, I'd be pushing a ream myself already. This is regularly done.
But worst of all, it simply destroys public speaking as an art form. Even as recently as undergrad, professors at least made some sort of effort to be engaging. No longer. With PowerPoint, anyone could run a class, more or less, for all the rote repeating the instructors do.
Oh well.
PowerPoint is in. And I do mean in.
In my entire undergraduate experience, I only had one class that used PowerPoint regularly. This was, interestingly given the figure of speech I just used, my freshman year intro Geology class. At the time, it seemed to me a useful way of clearly getting over the information in a class popularly known as "Rocks For Jocks." It was even a bit novel then. This was in 2000, and PowerPoint, though around, was not the all-consuming rhetorical monster it is now.
Besides that class, I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of PowerPoints I say through for classes. It just wasn't done. At least in the humanities and social sciences, and certainly not at the higher levels.
Well, things have changed.
I have not had a single meeting of any class that has not featured a PowerPoint of some sort, often pushing the 40 slide mark. And these are not all intro classes. I have two upper-level "seminars" (neither of which feature seminar-style seating, but that's another story) that rely heavily upon PowerPoint. And, for the life of me, I can't see how this makes the academic experience better for anyone. In my humble opinion, they enable laziness on everyone's part. If you're the professor, why worry about the lecture? Why deviate? You're already all set. And if you're a student, why take notes? You can print the presentation off the web after class and you're good to go. Note taking skills degrade with the incentive to pay attention.
It's ironic that this drive to "paperlessness" is in fact producing reams of extra printing. I printed a 50 page PowerPoint the other day to catch myself up on a math lecture I missed. If I did that for every class, I'd be pushing a ream myself already. This is regularly done.
But worst of all, it simply destroys public speaking as an art form. Even as recently as undergrad, professors at least made some sort of effort to be engaging. No longer. With PowerPoint, anyone could run a class, more or less, for all the rote repeating the instructors do.
Oh well.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
No. 2: My first day
I'd forgotten what college is like. I have hazy memories of incisive round table discussions and awkward, low-level flirting and a general atmosphere of intellectualism and comradeship. I'm quite sure that's all true.
It's not quite like I remember it, though. There was a lot of sitting in a little windowless room, and a lot of avoiding eye-contact. There was shyness and strained good humor during the far-too-long professor-mandated mingling period.
There was a lot of "where'd you do your undergrad" talk, which took me back to 2000 and all the "where'd you go to high school" talk.
The undergrads still interest me. They ride a city bus back to the main campus out of town, and my walk to class takes me past their bus stop. My class starts around the time most of the undergrads are only thinking about what senior is going to buy them a six pack of Smirnoff Ice and a pint of SoCo. They seem so young, huddled in the cold before the bus comes.
I can pick out my fellow grad students, usually. My school has a lot of older people going back, but even the people my age are noticeable. They're in the background. School isn't life for us. It's a part of life. And it's serious, because it's on our dime. Or our future dime, we hope.
I was hoping this blog would be funnier, but so far I've been in a very reflective mood. Once I get a week or two in, my trademark wit will rush forth. I'm sure.
It's not quite like I remember it, though. There was a lot of sitting in a little windowless room, and a lot of avoiding eye-contact. There was shyness and strained good humor during the far-too-long professor-mandated mingling period.
There was a lot of "where'd you do your undergrad" talk, which took me back to 2000 and all the "where'd you go to high school" talk.
The undergrads still interest me. They ride a city bus back to the main campus out of town, and my walk to class takes me past their bus stop. My class starts around the time most of the undergrads are only thinking about what senior is going to buy them a six pack of Smirnoff Ice and a pint of SoCo. They seem so young, huddled in the cold before the bus comes.
I can pick out my fellow grad students, usually. My school has a lot of older people going back, but even the people my age are noticeable. They're in the background. School isn't life for us. It's a part of life. And it's serious, because it's on our dime. Or our future dime, we hope.
I was hoping this blog would be funnier, but so far I've been in a very reflective mood. Once I get a week or two in, my trademark wit will rush forth. I'm sure.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Number 1: Thoughts before my first class...
I’d briefly thought of blogging about my return to school after five years away, but thought better of it. Who’d care? Why should I? Am I that narcissistic? But the idea never left me, and when a great friend of mine suggested I do it with my having mentioned it, I decided to go ahead. I would have enough to write about, and it would be good mental exercise.
***
I knew this would be different about a month ago when I went to campus to talk to my advisor. I’d applied to the school without having ever visited before. Not the way to go about it generally, but it was the right program in the right location, so I did what I had to.
Anyway, my campus is actually the satellite campus in downtown which handles most of the graduate programs (The main campus is a bit outside the city in a suburb). Now, it does have most of the grad students, but it also does a brisk trade in undergrads, the realization of which hit my like a ton of bricks when I made the aforementioned trip to see my advisor. Having never actually been to the campus before, I went early to look around. It’s a pleasing place in that modern, sterile, big-atrium-with-palm-trees-and-a-Starbucks sort of way. I was struck by two things: There were computers everywhere and every single one of them had an undergrad on it.
2004 doesn’t seem so long ago. And at the time dear St. George was considered to be a highly “wired” place. Lots of computer labs with modern, powerful computers. I remember clearly when wireless was introduced to the library during my, I believe, junior year (so ’02 or ’03). Since nobody yet had a wireless-capable laptop, the college bought 15 or 20 new laptops with those old-fashioned pop-out wifi cards (the ones with a little green light that blinked, like a mini-router) that students could check out. People did, but for the novelty. What did we need these things for, anyway?
Much has changed.
My new campus is entirely wifi-capable, of course, and the student center has (based on my own unofficial and unscientific census) at least thirty internet kiosks. They’re everywhere. St. George had but one when I graduated.
I used one to register for classes, and it was tough to find an open one. Each had an undergrad nailed to it, the vast majority of them checking Facebook or MySpace or their fantasy football league or whatever, almost none of them performing what could even charitably be called school-related tasks. We have reached a point, apparently, where our young people are so addicted to the internet that a half-hour delay in Facebook-status-updating (the time class ends to the time they hit their dorm room) is now much too long. As I registered, the guy next to me (I guessed he was a sophomore or junior) was on Facebook looking at a girl’s profile and talking on his cell to some other dude about a girl, presumably the girl represented on the page in front of him. Evidently there had been a party of some sort the previous night, and whatever happened was being debriefed in detail. I couldn’t pick up whether it was the guy next to me or the guy he was talking to who was all tied up about this girl. I guess it didn’t matter.
But it made one thing clear to me: If we simplify human life enough that it breaks into three basic phases, college is the last great endeavor of childhood. I spent a good portion of my post-undergrad life teaching high school juniors and seniors about civics, shepherding them around a big city, watching them talk and laugh and flirt and break hearts in hotel ballrooms. These were kids that couldn’t wait to go to college and get away from mom and dad, and have this kind of freedom all the time. Where spending time with that girl on the Facebook page in front of you depended entirely on your having the guts to ask her and her desire to do so. Parents, teachers, nobody would have any say over your life but you.
I’m finding that undergrad kids are still these same kids. Before going back, I always thought that you did a lot of growing up in college. Now I’m finding that, really, it’s what comes after that grows you up. College insulates you from that. I’m very interested to see what comes next.
Next, how did my first day of grad school go?
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