what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff

Good questions. Each term maybe two or three students complains (in a casual, off-hand way; they're not pissed off) to me in person that they prefer it when I talk and they can "absorb" (as they put it). Occasionally a student will write this on an evaluation too. I don't think these students are motivated by laziness; they wouldn't bother talking to me or completing their evaluation. I think it's more that they're in the habit of coming to class and being passive learners, and my classes break that habit. As a result they're jarring.

I don't do multiple choice but I have colleagues (in both math and phil) who do. But arguing about what's right in my phil classes is all we do, so in a lot of ways my class is "learner-centered". My dean will be happy to hear it as my university is "student-centered" (however that's to be understood I am not sure).

yeah I think presentations of 20 minutes or longer are necessary to make them worth the bother, and for them to help the student learn how to present better.

thanks euler, very interesting.

-- an aspiring college professor

xp to self: oxford undergrad physics takes the following approach to presentations: in a four year course, students must give one presentation of ~20 mins in the 2nd year. this is worth a fraction of a % of the final classification, is aggressively curved so everyone who turns up and doesn't faint gets 50-80/100, and alcoholic drinks are served. i think this is about right. the students get the fear at least once and everyone else whose time is wasted gets free booze.

20 mins seems about right. like you say, 5 mins is too short -- there's little time for anything to go badly wrong and less need to think about structure, so they don't need to try. but a 1h presentation by someone who hasn't at least attended a lot (like more than 20) 1h academic talks is a pretty awful experience. most undergrads and masters students will not have this experience until much later.

within the humanities lectures are a ridiculous pre-15th century anachronism.

Full disclosure: for some reason in undergrad I ended giving a lot of talks; maybe it was something that the university promoted? By senior year they were full class presentations, e.g. 50 minutes. So I was forced to work at this. By the end I was pretty good at it. And you end up giving professional talks pretty quickly in grad school. My quals my first year involved a 30 minute talk on an advanced topic, and then I gave a 1 hr version of it to the logic seminar a few months later. I gave my first conference talk at the end of my second year, and then we're off. Not only does this have cash value qua professional development, but you become a better teacher as you start to think of public presentation as normal and don't get nervous about it.

I think MORE than 20 minutes sort of borders being a waste of the other students' time though. Whatever public speaking and organizational skills you get out of a 40 minute presentation will still exist for a 20 minute presentation, and you might have to be more organized to keep from going over anyway. (I'd be more tolerant if this weren't something happening in TWO CLASSES EVERY WEEK, which may be an extreme circumstance.)

xp bison: definitely not tl;dr and really useful - thanks very much.

kind of wanna get an MPH but i should stop this whole going to school thing

mphs are quick

meal patrick harris

good one, max

yeah and i hear from someone who has done both that it's a joke compared to a jd and i already have one of those and it wasn't that hard so

but i should prob wait a few years at least, or not do it at all

i just miss science and i want to know more things and looking at admission requirements it appears i have all the prereqs covered (statistics, social sciences, stuff) except the "recommended" one biology course but i think i can figure it out. i'm smart. arrrrrghhhhhh

just finished a draft of paper II. off it goes to my co-authors! yaaaaaow!

the last one was kind of worthy, this one is half the length and has a CONTROVERSIAL CONCLUSION. exciting!

harbl do health law or something and feel out what yr interested in, then do mph

i don't wanna do health law though! more intersted in like, crimes and stuff, mental health, addiction. but yeah i'm gonna try and wait 2 years and save up some money. i'm not even 25 yet. i have time. *sigh*

harbl do health law or something and feel out what yr interested in, then do mph

― butt sound insanity (gbx), Thursday, October 8, 2009 5:26 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

meal patrick harris?

miles per harbl

u guys are masters of comedy

still getting my comedy bachelors :(

ok don't do health law! do stuff w crime and addiction and stuff. which btw is v v interesting.

all things i have considered getting add'l degrees in:
ethnomusicology
straight up musicology (some ethno included)
mba
jd
accounting/finance
maybe another bachelors in computer things

but yeah, like harbl, i have to stop myself.

I am in Jew School and taking an ice skating class. Does this count as grad school y/n.

only the ice skating class imo

no it sounds like a much better plan than grad school!

Ice skating is awesome. I think I'll start a thread about it!

my grad school had a lot of jews so i'm gonna go with yes, it counts.

tza: uTexas has a good not profit management thing if that is your bag and Austin is Seattle without clouds or rain.

i don't need more nonprofit education, tho.

Austin is Seattle without clouds or rain

xtreme challops

btw, still sunny in seattle for all u hatas out there.

still a million degrees in austin for all you texas stans out there.

on another note, it's snowing in iceland today! (was there less than two months ago...and it's already winter?)

you know where Iceland is right?

friend in denver said it was snowing there, too!

what the fuck am i getting myself into with this snow stuff

i'm making an academic poster that is 90% cannibalized from papers i wrote over the last two semesters, and trying to work on a group project due a week from yesterday where no one from my group is communicating about how the hell we're going to do this thing

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, October 8, 2009 2:46 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

;____;

fucking hate group projects

also this poster is only supposed to have about 300 words of text!?!? i've cut and cut and still am barely under 600 and that's without the bibliography. how am i supposed to say anything substantive in 300 words?

i've had really good luck with group projects til now, guess it was just my time for a shitty one

twitter it--ask WGW 4 tipz

sorry i am not being helpful

i watched the monks documentary last night and they were talking about how they kept reducing the numbers of words in their songs until there were hardly any words left. what i am saying to you is, have you tried shaving your head?

i do need a haircut

tza: uTexas has a good not profit management thing if that is your bag

Is this an MBA program? A friend of mine did non-profit management as part of an MBA program somewhere in Texas. Now she's decided she wants a phD in art history.

totally kicking myself for not doing the joint mfa/mba option (no one EVER does it, adds an extra year, i can't imagine adding all the mba work in only 1 extra year tbh, and i assumed i'd have a job when i left school since EVERY prior class was all employed by graduation (thanks a lot, economy!)).

http://www.andrewjchinnici.com/files/2007.03.01/thesisskull.gif