Questionable Questions/People/Writings
Nov. 21st, 2009 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyrasantae
Week 12
If I were to write this post in some kind of temporal order, my previous post would cause some disruption.
I've also been somewhat stressed-out and ill all week so I really can't remember any details. Since Thursday night I can't eat anything without getting heartburn or something. Probably some stress-related response. I sure hope it is just that. I spent most of today in bed, and since I don't have any assignments due immediately after the weekend (a rare occurrence, it seems, and a welcome one), I knuckled down and upgraded my computer to Windows 7 earlier this evening. It went pretty smoothly, and I'm just wrapping my head around some of the differences. Consider this my official "first post" from W7.
On Monday I checked out some books from the library for my essay. I didn't really have a clear idea of what I wanted to write about, but I knew it was going to be about Chinese-Canadian students and their parents, so I got a stack of books.
I also pulled out this book just because I could. It kept my interest for a little while. It's an ethnographic study of the social interactions in two each of London and Helsinki middle schools, and though it's researched and written with a feminist agenda, it wasn't heavy-handed like FAILCLASS lessons. Or I may just be predisposed to enjoy reading it because of my interests. Whatever.
Tuesday's class was supposed to be on the relationship (or lack thereof) between one's education and one's work. The class was split to discuss a few items regarding this, but more of the items were really about the relationship between one's gender and one's work, which is - again - something that's discussed in SOC 301 and I really really don't think it's a good use of time to rehash that in this class in a sloppy manner.
I got the grade for my presentation. I think she's just an easy marker. The typed comments didn't really say anything about my actual presentation skills ("well prepared"... the night before?) or the critical content. She was appreciative of my token minority status in her class (not that she used those words or anything), so that the assigned readings about Asian students weren't completely lacking in relevance to everyone else; and also there were a couple of sentences on how she totally had similar experiences of Asian expectations from her parents in China. La la la.
In Thursday's class, just about everybody showed up bleary-eyed from working on their essays. I don't think anyone actually wanted to write it. I finished mine right at midnight, so I was able to get some sleep, though I slept in until 7:35 and had to run to get coffee and get to class (speaking of coffee, if I continue to get coffee each morning I have FAILCLASS and collect stamps on my loyalty card, I'll get a free coffee on the last lecture! why is there an extra day of class this year?). The presenting student, "Joe" (actually Geoff -- ... uh never mind), talked about the part in the textbook about teachers and professionalization (I kind of actually wonder why we take it for granted that teaching deserves to be a profession anyway?). The book uses the word "proletarianization" as a section heading. The class laughs. Geoff laughs. Marxists really don't have anything better to do than to make up words like that. The teacher's discussion questions were still on the job market (for teachers) and gender differences. Seriously. Let's get on with it.
I'm starting to get instructor evaluations in my classes, and David and I are trying to think of what kinds of comments we'll write for this class. We can't totally rip on our teacher; she is putting in effort, and we want to give her credit for that. Maybe she needs to focus the course on a variety of viewpoints, and to think clearly through the objectives for each lesson. And not so much reading.
A little more about my essay: since I didn't actually look through my books until Wednesday afternoon, I felt super-panicked, but at the same time not worrying too much. Strictly speaking, my essay doesn't have a lot of "critical analysis" and is a bit more descriptive, but IMO that's still sociology. Since she'd wanted electronic copies as well as paper copies, I decided to use only physical, paper books as references in my essay. Then emailed the essay too. (Because either we give you paper copies and you'll have to scan them or type out the URLs to check our references; or we send you copies by email and you print them off yourself to write on them. I'm not convinced of why we should give all of that to you on a platter.)
I have to confess that my faith and my pride have been hurt a lot lately... there's this guy who's been coming to Scandie club for the last few weeks and he's just really obnoxious and a real bully. Obnoxious about his Finnish citizenship (I'm choosing my words carefully here) and obnoxiously proud of his delinquent/social parasitic behavior, for a philosophy student. At least other difficult Finnish men I've dealt with have had moral compasses.
But how do we deal with bullies? I wish I could just ignore him but he's in my space, the space that I have normally on Thursdays to visit my friends, and I can't just ignore him if I'm needing to discuss things with my friends that I don't trust with anybody else, least of all someone like him who turns everything I say back against me because he thinks it's funny. To fight back - the other choice? I fear that I may lose my faith completely, fragile enough as it is. Sometimes sitting here I'm just so angry that I almost want to throw all of my Finnish books and papers out.
Auttakaa minua! D:
If I were to write this post in some kind of temporal order, my previous post would cause some disruption.
I've also been somewhat stressed-out and ill all week so I really can't remember any details. Since Thursday night I can't eat anything without getting heartburn or something. Probably some stress-related response. I sure hope it is just that. I spent most of today in bed, and since I don't have any assignments due immediately after the weekend (a rare occurrence, it seems, and a welcome one), I knuckled down and upgraded my computer to Windows 7 earlier this evening. It went pretty smoothly, and I'm just wrapping my head around some of the differences. Consider this my official "first post" from W7.
On Monday I checked out some books from the library for my essay. I didn't really have a clear idea of what I wanted to write about, but I knew it was going to be about Chinese-Canadian students and their parents, so I got a stack of books.
I also pulled out this book just because I could. It kept my interest for a little while. It's an ethnographic study of the social interactions in two each of London and Helsinki middle schools, and though it's researched and written with a feminist agenda, it wasn't heavy-handed like FAILCLASS lessons. Or I may just be predisposed to enjoy reading it because of my interests. Whatever.
Tuesday's class was supposed to be on the relationship (or lack thereof) between one's education and one's work. The class was split to discuss a few items regarding this, but more of the items were really about the relationship between one's gender and one's work, which is - again - something that's discussed in SOC 301 and I really really don't think it's a good use of time to rehash that in this class in a sloppy manner.
I got the grade for my presentation. I think she's just an easy marker. The typed comments didn't really say anything about my actual presentation skills ("well prepared"... the night before?) or the critical content. She was appreciative of my token minority status in her class (not that she used those words or anything), so that the assigned readings about Asian students weren't completely lacking in relevance to everyone else; and also there were a couple of sentences on how she totally had similar experiences of Asian expectations from her parents in China. La la la.
In Thursday's class, just about everybody showed up bleary-eyed from working on their essays. I don't think anyone actually wanted to write it. I finished mine right at midnight, so I was able to get some sleep, though I slept in until 7:35 and had to run to get coffee and get to class (
I'm starting to get instructor evaluations in my classes, and David and I are trying to think of what kinds of comments we'll write for this class. We can't totally rip on our teacher; she is putting in effort, and we want to give her credit for that. Maybe she needs to focus the course on a variety of viewpoints, and to think clearly through the objectives for each lesson. And not so much reading.
A little more about my essay: since I didn't actually look through my books until Wednesday afternoon, I felt super-panicked, but at the same time not worrying too much. Strictly speaking, my essay doesn't have a lot of "critical analysis" and is a bit more descriptive, but IMO that's still sociology. Since she'd wanted electronic copies as well as paper copies, I decided to use only physical, paper books as references in my essay. Then emailed the essay too. (Because either we give you paper copies and you'll have to scan them or type out the URLs to check our references; or we send you copies by email and you print them off yourself to write on them. I'm not convinced of why we should give all of that to you on a platter.)
I have to confess that my faith and my pride have been hurt a lot lately... there's this guy who's been coming to Scandie club for the last few weeks and he's just really obnoxious and a real bully. Obnoxious about his Finnish citizenship (I'm choosing my words carefully here) and obnoxiously proud of his delinquent/social parasitic behavior, for a philosophy student. At least other difficult Finnish men I've dealt with have had moral compasses.
But how do we deal with bullies? I wish I could just ignore him but he's in my space, the space that I have normally on Thursdays to visit my friends, and I can't just ignore him if I'm needing to discuss things with my friends that I don't trust with anybody else, least of all someone like him who turns everything I say back against me because he thinks it's funny. To fight back - the other choice? I fear that I may lose my faith completely, fragile enough as it is. Sometimes sitting here I'm just so angry that I almost want to throw all of my Finnish books and papers out.
Auttakaa minua! D:
