iāve mixed cranberry mikes harder and cucumber lime gatorade into a drink i like to call āthe flavorā because like. you drink this shit and your tongue is like āthereās a taste here. you are experiencing a flavorā but when you go to open the door thereās no flavor there. it comes back with an undefined error in the flavor column. itās the missingno of flavors. it so absolutely and definitely tastes like something and that thing is nothing.
this post reminds me of that one time a coldstone employee i knew by the name of jacob fucked up the ratios or something on a watermelon yogurt sorbet and produced an ice cream that genuinely tasted like nothing. not bland not water but nothing - like, the texture was perfect, your mouth reacted as if it was slightly tangy like most sorbets, but you actually tasted nothing at all. and if you mixed it with something it didnāt taste like 100% the other flavor either, it tasted like 50% that flavor and 50% nothing. like a distinct and identifiable lack of taste. my brain trying to comprehend the total absence of flavor became so overwhelming that i quit Ā¾ of the way into one scoop. we called it the jacobās special and every day i long for its return
Reduces need for me to have good transitions (I struggle in my papers, and I struggle in life.)
Grading it would be soĀ easy!
Cons:
I have to remember to assign it beforehand.
I had such a plan to assign them and do a follow up post on Monday after class to talk about it.
And then I stayed up until 3am grading short stories Thursday night and forgot to put it in the assignments for this upcoming week.
So...delayed but not canceled! Stay tuned!
Instead, letās talk about PowerPoints.
I ran some numbers because I love any excuse to do math. (I said what I said.) Iāve noticed that when I have a visual aid like a PowerPoint, students talk more. Unfortunately *adding machine click-clacks* I do not have a greater number of students participating. My hypothesis was that giving them something to look at other than my pasty mug kept brains and eyeballs on the class content, but the data really let me down there.
I do find it both funny and validating that I am not the only person who uses my presentation materials to keep meĀ on track. I am so bad about tangents. The downside of knowing your material and being passionate about it is that you can go off in any direction for an indeterminate amount of time. I will also just straight up forget points sometimes. Iām just kind of a mess without some sort of outline, and my PowerPoint is an outline with pictures. Iām teaching a course right now that compares several different forms of media, so my presentations are full of pictures and YouTube clips.
I definitely stopped uploading them to the LMS, though. Outside of the lecture/discussion, the slides are a bunch of random, bulleted words and some pretty pictures. Theyāre unintelligible on their own. (Shuman would be so proud of me.) I added presentation notes to oneĀ slideshow once before deciding that I really did not want to spend my time doing that. If a student misses class, the class meetings are taped and uploaded to the LMS server. They can listen to the explanation I gave everyone else.
Come for me if you like.
Also,Ā āspeaker notesā are a scam. They only work with projectors, and we all use screen share in 2021. Fix this, Microsoft.
Note: The title is absolutely notĀ in support of person first language. It was purely a stylistic choice.Ā āDisabled studentsā is notĀ incorrect or insulting in any way. Miss me with that ableism and erasure.
So....apparently I didnāt do the assignment ācorrectlyā this week. We were only supposed to check for reading completion and nothing else?
The crazy thing is that I do give reading quizzes. Itās not even like Iām fundamentally opposed to it! I just......
Thatās the lowest effort part of my job. I did not trust that it would be an acceptable response to an assignment.
So, hereās the deal.
I assign two things every class period, a reading quiz and discussion prep questions. The reading quiz is my metric for how many of the students actually did the reading. The results are occasionally baffling, but hey, we take the data and roll with it. I just need to know if Iām going to be rambling at blank faces who have no clue what Iām talking about.
But my brain didnāt want to make one of those. I wanted to do the other thing. The content stuff.
Okay, what are we reading? Why are these assigned together? I see rich images. I see common messaging. Letās goooooooo.
I got excited. Sue me. In my defense, it is difficult to write about the main point of a reading without reading it. Itās not impossible, but if you get it wrong ... Iāve seen some things, man.
āBut neither of those characters is married....ā - me, fifteen minutes ago while grading
Not to disappoint Calder, but Iām not exactly reinventing the wheel. I often feel bad about not being ādifferentā or āinnovativeā enough with my ideas for assignments and activities. I think I have decently interesting topics... I think?
I know itās not my job to āentertain,ā but it is my job to hold their attention and keep them interested. Itās a balance. Right? Oh, no, the turmoil again.
Does anyone else feel like this past year has just drained them of ideas? Ever since the globe went into crisis, Iām just constantly exhausted, and Iām struggling to come up with innovative ideas of any type. Assignments, research topics, nail art, all of it. Iām fried. I copied a line of swatches from Instagram onto my nails today. Iām so ashamed.
Is there any way to make life just stop for a little bit? Do I mean a vacation or a coma?
For reasons I completely understand yet resent, Tiktok loves to send me videos several layers deep in drama, and this week I got a big olā scoop ofĀ āāNobody cares that the properly tagged non-con fic triggered you.ā
And literally every response video I have been sent agrees, as do I. The tone of the original video was extremely rude, but dilftiddies had a point. (I canāt do anything about the username, guys. He calls himself what he calls himself.)
Now, I do not doubt that this video was prompted by an actual complaint. (Feel free to dig through the video comments if you reallyĀ want to see the fic in question for some reason.)Ā I do not doubt that there has been pushback against his statement. I also fully understand that anecdotal evidence is not the be-all-end-all and that my fyp is curated for my interests and opinions. Yet, as I scroll through his comment section, Iām only finding things like,Ā āThe only time you should be upset is if itās not properly tagged. If it is, and you still read it, itās your fault you read it not the authors [sic].ā
Lukianoff and Haidt would have us believe that the world has gone mad with trigger warnings aboutĀ āclassismā and that theĀ āreasonable person testā has gone out the window. I wonder if they realize that, to many social media users, they sound like this comment instead:Ā āTriggered drama queens right now:Ā āBuT wHAT wiLL I cOmPlaIN aBOUt??āā
What I have found are people who have reasonable explanations for being upset about things. I have also found people who donāt like being told to stop being rude. People who crack like an egg only tend to do so when theyāre already going through some kind of health challenge.
Are there students who make unreasonable demands or unconventional demands without adequate explanation? I donāt doubt this at all. But I do doubt that itās an epidemic that forewarns us of the collapse of society. I had a student recently as if he could - while in possession of the answer keys - redo all his quizzes. ...no, bro. Sometimes the students are just out of pocket. It happens.
Also, in polite society, we generally donāt bring up sensitive subjects without context or prompting. Without, I donāt know, letās call them āwarnings.ā Disney+ tells me if a show is going to have violence or cussing in it before I put it on for my niece. When I get my Nexplanon replaced, my doctor asks if I want to see the incision before saying,Ā āHey, check this out!ā Itās a pretty normal course of action in most of life to check someoneās comfort level.
Let me tell you a secret. Millenials didnāt always have this luxury.
For millenials and gen z, tagging upsetting content is not a matter of coddling. Itās a way of respecting others to responsibly manage their own consumption.
There was a time before trigger warnings, content warnings, moderation, terms of service, etc. There was an era of Limewire, Rotten.com, Newgrounds, etc. Quizilla had pornography at one point. Yes, a quiz website for minors which was eventually purchased by Nickelodeon was loaded with erotica. Before the age of fifteen I had seen death, violence, sexual deviancy, and all manner of crime and trauma. Most millenials had. AĀ āprankā we used to pull on each other was to send a link with an innocuous URL and have the victim end up watching violent gore or pornography without consent.
We donāt want trigger warnings because weāre soft. We want them because we see Mr. Hands when we close our eyes at night.
We want them because we know what itās like to be disrespected, and we donāt want to do it to anyone else.
I wonder what bell hooks (intersectionality queen) would think about me being open about being a hot mess at 20. I fumbled my way through high school and basically flunked out of college.
And - to an extent - I donāt hide it from my students.
They donāt need to know everything, but have you ever seen the tension release from an entire class of freshmen? I have. It was when I told them what I got on my SAT essays. (I took it more than once. I was in a really toxic competition with this guy in my AP classes. Yes, I was a mess in AP classes. Like Taylor said,Ā āLong story.ā)
Do I have the self esteem to call myself self-actualized? Absolutely not.
But I do feel like I have learned many lessons in my academic career that are valuable to pass on. Iām like a walking what-not-to-do. Any time I realize thereās the potential for a student to do something dumb, I can head it off with specific advice. Itās like Minority Report,Ā but for procrastination and poor citations.
I love and respect the instructors Iāve had who go for the immovable-object-of-wisdom-and-perfection look, but guys, I have pink hair. I donāt think anyone would buy it.
I think the key is to make it clear that youāve come out on the other side.Ā āYes, I was a disaster, but now Iām a super successful adult. That means you can do it too!ā Thatās what Iām going for.
When I started teaching I was warned that if Iām too open and approachable, especially as a young woman, people might take advantage of that, but under this fluffy, neon exterior lies a firm, somewhat bitter center that has absolutely no reservations about taking off points.
That noted, I do have to say that the discussion of Bob, our theoretical, thick-headed student has been living in my head, rent free for several days.
Bob doesnāt want to change his mind. Bob is firm in his convictions. Bob is the worst nightmare of that part of me that wants every student to achieve full comprehension and have an enlightening experience. Bob vexes me.
I told my girlfriend about Bob. She would like to stop hearing about Bob. I think she prayed for the first time in years when I announced my conclusion about Bob.
āEntering that classroom is entering into an agreement, for both me and Bob. If Bob doesnāt want to be open to learning things, why is Bob here? Heās not interested in fulfilling the contract. If Bob is in this classroom in bad faith, why does the onus fall on me to kill myself over it? Sure, I should have a few tricks up my sleeve to try and compel him. I taught math to people going through puberty. I have become the queen of dissecting faulty logic. But if Bob is determined to resist, I canāt achieve mind control.ā
Itās probably not the ideal answer, but accepting Bad-Faith-Bob is part of my self-actualization journey.
DEHUMANIZED: When Math and Science Rule the School
Today in class I had the opportunity toĀ āteachā an article with the above title by Mark Slouka. It is biased and filled with imagery and provoking language. All of these things I have been taught to avoid by the history students of today. This is definitely in an attempt to make our writing more scientific, but that does not mean that this article did not hold truth within it. The basic idea is that the humanities are slowly being strangled out of existence as the US culture pushes for a production of workers rather than students. A lot can be said about this and I had many questions I wanted to ask my classmates that I did not get the chance to because of the time limit, but ultimately Slouka states that the humanities have hard-headed and un-budging base within them. There are people who refuse to be wiped away and thrown into a world of business and sciences. They create their own ecosystems around them and the fruits of their labor may not be immediately quantifiable, it does provoke thought and challenge the status quo over and over again.
I would like to post some of the questions I wanted to ask here and see what others believe about it. The top one is: Why is every crisis in the American Education system cast as an economic threat but never a civic threat? How can we describe a civic threat? All of the conversations Iāve had about issues in the education system talk about the detriment to funds and whether or not something is worth being kept on to save a budget. What is a civic threat and why is it never addressed? I believe that in the world of politics we are slowly beginning to address such a question by posing the statementĀ āStop asking if bills are bi-partisan and start asking if they helps people.ā - Sarah Groh from Twitter
Perhaps this can be how we start addressing the detriment to the American Education system in terms of civic threats. Start asking what happens to the students of classes are taken away and maybe we can find a balance between the economic threat and a civic threat.
None of this is to say that STEM does not have its place and that people cannot be happy taking this course of action in their education. All it is trying to argue that the humanities create a space where conflict and humanization are rolled into one. The conflict that the humanities present to the world can create a better and more ethic society. As the STEM and technical fields increase, I do believe that the humanities should grow with them instead of being something that have people askingĀ āwell, what are you going to do with that?ā In order to get to this point where the humanities and sciences are on the same footing in society some challenging of social norms and fighting are likely going to have to occur. Thatās just my opinion though. Iād like to hear thoughts from others!
You asked why itās always framed as an economic issue and not a civic issue, and I think itās because it is.
You can check out my latest post for my fuller feelings on this system, but have you ever read about what happened with Mussolini and Montessori education? He wanted to make it the official education system of Italy because Maria Montessori was Italian, and fascists are all āGrrr, national pride!ā But then he realized, āOh, crap. This system makes terrible fascists.ā None of the teachers would cooperate, and Maria had to flee the country.
If you want a country of people who will be good little homo economicuses and will violently embrace the status quo, an education in the humanities is your worst nightmare. It flexes intellectual muscles that you donāt want people using.
So it is absolutely an economic threat for those in power. Bills that āhelp peopleā arenāt bills that let donors stay rich.
First off, I never want to work in administration. I wanted to teach and write, not explain why we should pay for things.
!RemindMe in 5 years when I have a mortgage and kids.
Now for a complete pivot.
āA Mathematicianāsās Lamentā gave me emotions. Apparently Lockhart expanded this into a whole book. I might buy it over break and upset myself further. I think I need to break this down into parts.
Why Do You Need to Know the Quadratic Formula?
One of the more surreal things Iāve experienced more than once is finding out that a student didnāt realize that the equation they needed for their homework was listed in the section of the book associated with the homework questions. You know how sometimes someone asks you a question, and you donāt know how to answer that question without the person hating you because there is no tone that will soften how blunt you need to be? Yeah.
As it is, K-12 math functions as a place to practice certain skills that are just really easy to teach in the context of arithmetic. Seeing a situation, identifying the problem, identifying the formula or algorithm needed to solve it, identifying the relevant data, and executing the algorithm. Thatās the juice. (I grew up in the 90s. Leave me alone.)
Itās like the textual analysis hill I will die on. Kids need to know how to do that. Iām sorry if Dr. Lockhart doesnāt like his beloved math being used for that, but I love her too, and sheās a big help here. He talks about how horrifying it would be to reduce fine arts education in the same way. Um...fine arts education is just being eliminated altogether. And as a musician, I am 100% fine with music being reintroduced to the public school curriculum as a way of teaching children pattern recognition, listening skills, and dexterity. Bring it on.
Pythagoras is the Real Bean Dad
My hot water heater ruptured a couple years ago. Went boom. Leaked everywhere. Mushrooms grew. Girlfriend and cat went through the rotted laundry room floor.
My father decided that it was my fault because I, a new adult who has never been in charge of a free standing structure before, did not keep an eye on something that I didnāt know needed keeping an eye on. It was the prequel to Bean Dad.
This is why I get nervous when people like Lockhart start talking about letting childrenāsĀ ānatural curiosityā direct their educations. You canāt get curious about things that you donāt know about yet. Any productive system is going to involve some amount of direction and deliberate introduction of topics. I canāt avoid making a connection between this approach and the Montessori method. It sounds beautiful in theory - until a child who should be reading canāt even spell their nameĀ yet.
I donāt love this anti-structure trend that I keep seeing. Actually, as an autistic person, I abhor it. For the most part, we love structure. We want it in an IV.
Curious people will be curious about things. We will be curious about things you show us. We donāt have to stumble into something to be interested in it. You just need to tell us the interesting parts. Show the kids how to derive the quadratic formula! Tell them about Pythagorasā bean cult! Tell them about the time NASA forgot to double check their units and murdered millions of dollars in equipment!
Itās Not EvenĀ āMath.ā
āYou guys donāt even do math in high school.ā This is one of the truest things I professor has ever told me.
Itās not math. Itās arithmetic. And Iām comfortable with that. I said earlier what I feel students can get out of a well-managed education in these matters. Should we rename it? The part of me that likes to be precise says yes. The part of me that is practical and just wants to let language evolve naturally says no.
I was quite intrigued by the article I read for class last week that asked a question Iād never really considered before: what is the point of a teacher? I get annoyed when I hear people say teachers areĀ ānothing but glorified babysitters,ā but Barreās op-ed really got my wheels turning. What is the point of a teacher? If humans can learn on their own, why do we assume a guide is necessary in formal education? I think Barreās explanation of the two types of teachers answers the question well.Ā
The teacher-as-author and the teacher-as-tutor are two common types of educators, especially on the college campus. While Barre finds both models to be useful in some aspect, I disagree. I believe the teacher-as-tutor is the only true way to teach, particularly if the course is below the graduate level. The difference is that the teacher-as-author is an academic while the teacher-as-tutor is an instructor. There is certainly value in academics and their roles in the bubble of academia, but often the two roles are conflated when really, the academic is there to provide access to knowledge, rather than to make sure the student absorbs it.
As a graduate student, I see benefits to learning from academics. In our classes, most of the learning is self-facilitated and the professor is there to provide guidance and correction. At anything below the graduate level, however, the students expect and should receive an instructor. This person should be equipped to ensure students achieve growth and advancement, not just to provide access to knowledge.Ā
Youāve inspired an annoying hot take, so apologies in advance.
Iām finding it more and more distressing that the university system assumes that content producers and content disseminators should be the same people. Yes, somebody who is making headway in a field will have intimate knowledge that they can pass on to learners, but that doesnāt mean they can necessarily teach worth a whit. Also, teaching material can give you plenty of practice and insight that can allow you to move forward with research. But weāre forcingĀ the overlap instead of letting it happen organically. Most full professors are teaching both graduate and undergraduate courses, and as youāve noted here, those can be two wildly different tasks.
A lowly grad student myself, I have no economically viable solution to propose at the moment.
What is the point?: Letās start 2021 with an existential crisis.
Story time.
I teach a liberal studies class that I didnāt even take when I went to this same school. (I tested out with AP credits.)
So on the first day of class this semester, I asked my students why they were taking this class. I made it clear thatĀ ābecause I have toā is a completely acceptable answer. They did not disappoint in that category. In all fairness, thatās how a lot of my liberal studies and elective classes were picked as well.
Then it was my turn, and I had a far more articulate, thought out answer because I had the unfair advantage of knowing that the question would be posed ahead of time.
I teach post-secondary literature because storytelling is built into the human brain. Itās a universal activity. And in standard college prep K-12 we get taught all of this mainstream, pre-formulated literary theory. Now, that is absolutely necessary - to prepare you for the next step of then doing your own analysis.
We have to analyze stories all day long because of the aforementioned built-in story mode we have, whether the story is a movie plot, where your boyfriend says he was last weekend, or whether there are space lasers aimed at California. If you canāt process that information, youāre screwed.
Now, if we turn to my inner self, you will find not a confident woman of letters, but rather a terrified millenial who remembers when Tom sold MySpace for $580 million and still canāt believe that people give her money, actual US currency, to guide people in an activity that is overall beneficial but does not 1:1 correlate with a skill youād find on an Indeed.com listing.
Yes, you are becoming a more complete human being with your gen ed requirements. Yes, you will be a far less insufferable employee and coworker. Good luck spinning that in your interview. I might have to turn you over to the Comm people for that one.
And what am I even doing? Modeling and giving opportunities for practice. Employing Socratic questioning. Exposing students to new things.
Hold on. Iām actually talking myself down. Cool.
Iām about to tell on myself a little bit. That Baurlein article? The angsty one bemoaning the loss of the idealistic, probably-never-all-that-real, mentor-mentee relationship? I feel that. I have a lot of difficulty with interpersonal relationships (unexpectedly deep moment), but man if I didnāt wish for more direct guidance in how to become what I wanted to be.
I was a little bit ready to throw hands with Drezner at the beginning of his rebuttal.
But heās right. I know heās right. The demographics have shifted, and we live in a very different social and economic landscape. It feels like the BA is the new high school diploma in a lot of ways.
Tiny digression: I found a job listing for a secretary position that required a BA and said something likeĀ ātop 20 university preferred.ā I diedĀ laughing and saved it. Iāll post it if I find it.
In our current world, post-secondary education is utilitarian, not a leisure activity. I remember reading The HelpĀ and being flooredĀ that girls would walk away from a university education to just get pregnant and organize toilet donations.
I just found out that my late grandmother went to college. If that woman ever had a job, I was never told. Meanwhile, in the year of our Lord 2021, Iām hyperventilating at the prospect of not immediately finding a job in my field. (CPCC, call me!)
My father is suggesting I learn computer coding. My mother keeps asking if itās too late for med school. ($300 and four hours of my life āwastedā on the MCAT.) A lot of people theorize that my generation was the last one that went to college out of any sort of optimism. Itās bleak! I understand why Iāve got these kids reading Jane Austen purely out of obligation.
John Mulaney is not helping, by the way. (4:25 is your relevant clip. It stings.)
And after they read it, presuming they donāt lie to me and just Spark Note it, are we having a deep, meaningful conversation about the language and themes? Sure, if you consider an intimate gathering to be your thirty closest friends. Especially if only like three of those friends are chatty, and theyāre all trying to talk to you instead of each other. In that context, the British mentor system described by BarreĀ is a dream [and a source of anxiety (interpersonal difficulties, remember?)].
Every one of those anxious party guests has their own way of learning as well. Will I ever learn a Rubix cube by watching someone solve it or by reading an explanation? Absolutely not. I can make that unequivocal statement right now. I have to hold it, and I have to do it myself. But I still need a teacher. I just need the teacher to give me the steps and then step back and let me make a mess of the cube for a bit, step in if Iām going way too far in the wrong direction. The teacher is still necessary, though.
Maybe we need to go back to the one student, one teacher model. Like the Sith. That would really drive up tuition prices, though....
