Emily has an interesting post about whether or not MUC has prepared us for what we want to do, and about how, to paraphrase and oversimplify, it hasn’t because she hasn’t felt challenged in many classes. I feel the same way and actually have recently been thinking and talking to certain professors about how much this bothers me. I was talking to Rodney during some downtime at the Writing Centers Conference about how easy it’s been to really just coast through most of my classes and pull off A’s without really doing much work other than what it’ll take to slide by. Sure, this is mostly my fault, and I’m willing to accept all due responsibility for my failure to step up and perform, but I can’t help but think that professors are at least a little bit to blame for making my coasting possible… Which brings me to where I am today.
Rodney and I have been putting together an AS200 directed study, where we look at some of the major literary movements in 20th century America, and then read a lot of contemporary stuff, in search of how we’ve formed “The American Cultural Identity” and looking at different perspectives on American culture. We’ve been talking a lot about the reading list for the course, and we’re putting a lot of really interesting and fun stuff in there. We’re going to do Hunter Thompson (of course). I want to read Fight Club and American Psycho as well, and Rodney wants to do Pynchon. I also want to do some Vonnegut and Capote. (If anyone has any other ideas for interesting things to read, feel free to let me know). Anyways, as we’ve been talking about this, I flat out told him that I didn’t want this to be a course that I can just coast through, and I want this to be a course where I have to read and I have to be prepared and I have to work my ass off. I want to have good discussions, and I think that as long as I’m continually challenged, I’ll be able to learn far more than most of the other classes I’ve taken.
This brings me to one of the things that I’ll always love about MUC… that as a student, I can develop personal relationships with faculty members and that they do care about my learning and are willing to take on additional work and courses to help me out. It’s a very personal, very individualized education, and I think that I’ll forever be grateful for that.
2 comments:
What's equally interesting (and maddening) is that for every one Emily or Andrew, there were 100 or so folks who were, how do I say this, completely un-interested in being challanged. And since you and Emily &c. are only one voice out of many in teaching reviews, you have a system set up whereby the faculty have to pay attention to the many and not the few. In the 10 years that I was there I reduced the number of books i assigned, even in upper division classes by well over 50%....
That is maddening, especially for me, since I've grown up in a system where most of the important stuff I've learned has either been self-taught or taught by a teacher who has really gone out of their way and made a hell of an extra effort to get to me through all the bullshit. It just doesn't seem fair and/or right that those of us who are tired of a failing educational system where lessons and learning is continually compromised and "dumbed down" (for lack of a better term) in order to accomodate those who really don't give a shit have to come to a place of "higher education" and "continued learning" and deal with the same stupid bullshit and the same ignorant types of people. We have dreams of college as this promised land where we're pushed and we're challenged and we learn and everyone sits around reading great lit and talking philosophy and is steeped in arts and experiences and we become "educated" (whatever that means) here. And then we're let down.
Sure there's occasionally a saving grace, but for the most part, it pisses me off.
I'm in a ranting mood tonight, can you tell?
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