The "Education" Thread

[Einherjar86]

There's a scene in Native Son where Bigger is nervous about what other blacks will think about him walking around with two young white people. There's definitely a concern about perception, and it hasn't gone away; if anything, it was strengthened during Reconstruction and again in the Civil Rights movement. Historical conditions have yielded skepticism toward whites "infiltrating" black neighborhoods.

 

[Dak]

Or the reverse. Look at the vicious response to the black Republicans elected the other day - from blacks.

 

[Einherjar86]

Reverse infiltration? Certainly. Although this elicits skepticism from whites as well. From a white perspective, black politicians are infiltrating a sphere of influence historically denied to them so as to get reparations (to simplify matters extraordinarily). From a black perspective, black politicians are turning their backs on their family and community and working for the (white) man.

There's a historical consciousness operative in this country that precludes the possibility of black subjects ever truly appropriating a role, or image, or behavior that is entirely their own. Their actions are always conditioned and filtered through a lens of expectations that automatically applies a stereotypical explanation to any behavior, even if only in part.

 

[unknown]

*rolls up newspaper* Stop it! No! You do that in the batshit thread!

 

[Dak]

So would you say we are infiltrating another thread?

 

[Einherjar86]

I honestly forgot which thread I was in.

 

[Einherjar86]

My panel today went really well. The topic was well-received and I had some good and helpful questions afterward. An enjoyable time in Baltimore!

 

[Dak]

My panel today went really well. The topic was well-received and I had some good and helpful questions afterward. An enjoyable time in Baltimore!

That's good. My undergrad conference wound up not being all the beneficial personally, other than the opportunity to present a poster of some of the findings related to my thesis. That portion went well.

The rest of it was all geared towards explaining the graduate school application process, and talking about the different areas of psychology. Might have been more helpful 2-3 years ago in one way or another.

 

[Dak]

The Dolphgrin:

That's how I feel right now. And autocorrect misspelled the title: Dhalgren.

My turn at the Dolphgrin. Had my undergrad thesis (Chap 1-2) presentation today, and my reader said that it was masters level work. Both he and my thesis advisor also said it may potentially be publishable, depending on what the statistical analyses turns up.

 

[unknown]

fukk yea

Yesterday I was contacted by one of the community colleges I work at to head their Summer Bridge program this coming summer. This is a huge opportunity, and even though the program lasts only a month, there's a lot of work that goes into it. It'll look huge on my CV saying that I coordinated a campus wide program as an adjunct.

 

[rms]

what's your thesis on Dak

 

[Dak]

Absolutely unk. My Navy/Marine Achievement Medal is for running a squadron barracks for a year. Supervising the living spaces/amenities for normally 100+ marines but also including two major transient training populations at different points in the year was a big deal.

@rms: Looking at medical student stress and mitigation practices.

 

[Einherjar86]

My turn at the Dolphgrin. Had my undergrad thesis (Chap 1-2) presentation today, and my reader said that it was masters level work. Both he and my thesis advisor also said it may potentially be publishable, depending on what the statistical analyses turns up.

Congrats! Sounds like your reader turned out to be a good one after all...

 

[rms]

Are you interesting in sharing your thesis for my curiosity ?

 

[Dak]

If it gets published I'll spam link it! lol. But seriously, I'll post it if it gets at least submitted. It's only half done right now, no data analyses has been done yet. Also, to submit it for a journal what I currently have written will have to be synthesized down from "thesis size" to "article size".

 

[unknown]

finally fucking done with grading. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to give all six classes a two part final: an in class essay and a paper. One class actually had three parts because they also had a grammar test. Took about a week. My brain is fried now. Gonna drink and turn my brain off tonight. Goddamn

 

[Einherjar86]

Congrats! Grading sucks. I thankfully had no students email me complaining. I only gave out one A this semester; mostly A minuses and B pluses. Then there were a few people at the bottom of the barrel.

 

[unknown]

I don't really mind grading so much...it's more the volume. For my composition classes, their final research paper is pretty open ended, so I'm always interested to see what they choose. None of the colleges I teach at use pluses or minuses, and my two pre-composition level classes are on a Pass/No Pass basis, so that's nice. My grades typically fall on a pretty good bell curve...there's usually five or six A's, a few F's, and everybody else in the middle.

 

[Einherjar86]

Gotcha. I'm not a fan of grading, but I usually do end up with a few students whose work I find genuinely interesting. Unfortunately a lot of my students this semester kind of blew their loads on their second papers, which were by far the best bunch (they were all on Gibson's Neuromancer); but I think that part of that is my fault for not making the final paper assignment clearer.

I only ever once gave a student a D. As far as I'm concerned, you have to really fuck up in order to fail - as in, leave a bunch of work unfinished, or severely half-assed, or bomb a final exam. If a student actually tries to write a paper, and makes it past the word limit (and it isn't full of inane babble about Kanye West or their most recent break-up), they usually get at least a C+ by my method.

 

[Dak]

I've had assignments/tests in certain classes and been like "Wow, sucks to be the teacher having to grade all of these."