Tag: UConn

Why do I even try?

I handed in a travesty of a paper for one of my classes recently. I had absolutely no interest in the topic, and it barely applied to the theme I’m supposed to be sticking to this semester. I knew it was bad, but I had to hand in something, so I gave it as little effort as I could, and handed it in. A day late. And a page short. In a larger font and typeface. I got an 81, meaning it could have been higher, if it hadn’t been docked for being late. I actually tried on the first paper for this class, too. I don’t get it. She isn’t an easy grader, and people got lower grades than I. I don’t even know why I bother trying anymore.

Burnt Out

So while most of my classes this semester are interesting, and some are actually productive (I’m learning things), there is a lot to do. I never go over the top with essays (except in the rare case that I’m actually qualified to talk about something), but they still take a while. I guess I don’t completely half-ass my work, but I’m far below an average student. Even with this stellar work ethic, I’ve had loads of work to do that last few weeks. I’ve spent all of today working on various assignments, and I’m still not where I should be.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been recently reading articles pointing to the growing irrelevancy of college degrees. Nothing new really, it’s just starting to come from more legitimate sources. My head physically feels like it’s about to pop. I need to stop caring again.

I noticed today that my process of getting to work is really depressing. I start out thinking about the project as a whole, and my mind usually wanders to other unrelated subjects. Then I’ll just sit around and stare at my project for a while, and tell myself that I won’t do anything else until it is done (and I don’t). Once I’ve finally beaten myself into submission, I can get to work. Psh

Class

Last semester, I really liked my classes because there wasn’t any bullshit in the way of learning. We could just show up, listen, and learn. It was wonderful. And after my second class of this semester, I realized what makes the difference. In my first class, most people were taking it as a Gen. Ed. (it’s actually in my major), so they didn’t care about the subject. The class was structured with this in mind, with lots of busy work and other needless projects that will not foster any learning. In my next class, the professor sat down in front of the class, and talked with us, encouraging us to contribute our ideas to the class. There is one test in the entire class, one large paper, and two small papers. That is the extent of the work we need to submit in the class. The rest will be reading and discussion in class.

The difference is between making students learn, and assuming they want to. In the latter, there is no work challenging students to prove that they’re actually trying, it is assumed. This makes class much more enjoyable, and makes a lot of sense.

Whoops

So, I’m on a new (physical) server now, with the same great company, but the switched killed my last two posts. It’s ok, they were just boring photo posts.

Anyway, started class today, and I wanted to write them down so I don’t forget them:
Contemporary Native Americans, Cross-Cultural Communication, Studies in Literature & Culture, Hist of Latinos/as in U.S., and Philosophical Foundation of Human Rights.

Also, while I’m at it, last semester’s:
Poetry, The Short Story, Sociology of Gender, The City in Western Tradition, and The History of Urban America.

What I’ve learned in Sociology

Finally done with classes this semester. This semester had by far the best classes I’ve taken. One was Sociology of Gender, which I have to admit I had never spent much time thinking about. It quickly became my favourite class of the semester, and I’m glad I took it. But I think I learned something from my classmates that I hadn’t expected to learn.

Apparently I was not raised like everyone else. I’m not sure how much I can take from this class at face value, but if I believe what they say, I was raised by hippies. I’m not sure if everyone else in the class just answers how they think they should, or if they’re sincere. We’ve certainly been trained to give the “right” answer. This class often talks about gender roles in the household, eg: women cook, men do manual labor, women take care of children, men make the money, etc. That wasn’t the case in my family.

Tasks were shared between my mother and father. If I was sick at school, and someone needed to take me home, the parent with fewer obligations came to get me, it was not automatically the mother (an example used several times in class with much assent from other students). My dad cooked a lot, and when he didn’t, he would do dishes. Apparently this is not normal.

I’m not claiming that there were no gendered activities in my house growing up. My dad would mow the lawn, chop wood, and build things. My mom would cook larger holiday meals, sew Halloween costumes and so on. But these were not steadfast rules, and I remember stacking cords of wood with both my parents, and helping both prepare Christmas dinner (ok, I probably didn’t help).

I dunno, maybe I’m taking extreme examples that were used in class to prove a point too literally, or maybe I have an ultra-heteronormative sociology class. Either way, I think more than anything else I learned how ‘progressive’ my household was/is. Weird.

My thumb hurts

I wrote so much this weekend. It’s my fault, but still, it sucks. I had to just about fill a marble notebook with little reflections on 60 short stories we read this semester. They were good stories, but we were supposed to be writing these as we read them…and I didn’t. So over the course of this weekend I wrote nearly 10k words. And now my thumb really hurts.

Sidenote, I don’t use either of my thumbs to type. Thank god.

Communitas

On Thursday a lot of my classes didn’t really have too much to do, and several let us out early. So I found myself with some time to waste before my next class. Usually, I’d nap, but it wasn’t really enough time to enjoy a nap, and I didn’t really feel like it. I dropped by the office of the professor of my next class – he had mentioned something on Tuesday that had sparked my interest. He told us about Peter Goldmark (the guy who invented the LP) and a project he attempted later in his life. He started something called the New Rural Society, with the intent of replacing cities with small rural communities connected by new technologies. I had googled it and not found much (I did find more later), so I asked him if there was anything else he could tell me about it.

The project was started in the late 60s, and launched in the early 70s, but didn’t have much support. The idea was to have rural communities connected by telecommunication, using technology that was available at that time in new ways. Businesses and government agencies could have employees working remotely across the country, in smaller, sustainable towns. There were two test sites that had any real development: somewhere in Montana (my professor didn’t remember where exactly) and Windham County, CT. He actually worked with Fairfield University on a lot of this project, and there are records of the New Rural Society on file there.

He also told me a story of a project someone created in the 60s down in Appalachia concerning libraries. Libraries are usually large centralized structures that improve depending on the size of the community they belong to. Appalachia was very poor and sparse, and could not support decent libraries in each community, but it had an incredible infrastructure of train tracks because of the mining industry. So someone made a library on a railcar, and moved it from community to community, harnessing the power of all of the small communities combined to make a decent, mobile, library. He also made an interesting sidenote, “…and they wonder why people watch TV instead of reading books. TV comes to them!”

Before I left he gave me a book, called Communitas, which seems to be right in the vein of what we were talking about. I’ve only been able to read the introduction so far, but it seems to be questioning the fundamental problems with urban society (instead of thinking about how to improve transportation for commuters, thinking about why people need to commute).

These are all things I’m going to be posting a lot more about.

Almost Done

And its a good thing too. I’ve hit that point in the semester where I’m restless again. I’m used to it by now though, and I can ride through it without getting too bummed about sitting around wasting my time.

I only have four days of classes left. And I have Thanksgiving break in the middle of those four. Then finals. This semester was easy. In fact, it just goes to prove my complaint about the educational system. Now that I’m actually in upper level classes, bullshit work is not required of me, and for the most part all I have to do is show up, listen, and think. That’s the way it should be, all along the road.

Though, this does have detrimental effects on boring classes. My poetry class (which is about reading, not writing, poetry) is tedious, and over analyzes otherwise enjoyable poems. I’ve found myself reading the assigned poems and then skipping class, opting for a nap on a couch in the lounge a few floors above.