Penultimate fever
Dec. 7th, 2009 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyrasantaeFirst, a better-looking pastry:
I made some notes on my computer regarding Week 14!!
Opening the period on Tuesday was our teacher coming around the classroom asking people what kinds of questions they wanted on the exam.
She also let us do the instructor evaluation forms, but I was soooo tired (I didn't sleep the night before since I was writing an essay) that I didn't really write much - I wrote down my boilerplate "less controversy stuff, more different viewpoints" blab. David writes a lot on his comment form, so I hope that takes care of it.
Then there was some video clip about -- you guessed it -- racism in children's books and impressionable little kids or something; a backdrop to some mother talking about that with the whole "sob story" kind of voice and intonation. I don't see a sob story here, sorry.
There was a little bit of talk about corporate sponsorship and product placement in schools (esp. in the US -- anyone who's read No Logo should be familiar with this kind of stuff -- our reading was from it). Watched the beginning bit of some documentary on the same.
On Thursday, me and the teacher met at the crosswalk...so of course she asks me what I thought of the class. I'm not allowed to say too much because instructors don't see their evaluation comments until after exams are written and submitted. I said that my exams are kind of weird, I have the hardest ones first and the easiest last...and that her exam is right in the middle, so I hope it'll be kinda of medium difficulty.
The truth is that, in my opinion, I have five exams alternating between really hard and maybe a little easier. But this one really is in the middle.
So the exam will be a mix of definition, short-, and long-answer questions. This is what you get when you ask everybody what they want, because everybody has different preferences. To be honest I can't really make a case here for any one type of question over another.
She hands out a one-page summary (a "final-term review"[sic]) of the important questions and terminology from the second half of the term. "Proletarianization" is, sadly, not on this paper. She says that all we need to know is the stuff on this page and the (much more expansive) "middle-term"[sic] review handout from October. She realizes that we never finished going through the "middle-term" handout, and asks if we want to discuss that one or this one.
Of course we do this newer one. Out comes the chart paper and the pens, and breaking into small groups. She stops our presentations at one point to read us some quotations from the reading we had about critical discourse analysis. By having them highlighted on the PDF and putting that on the projector. She does this because she says that the student presenter didn't pick up on the points that she wanted us to pick up. I'm too busy fidgeting to really note down what the quotations were.
Anyway, she hadn't finished grading the papers still, because she needs to take a second look-through to make sure they're all marked fairly relative to each other in terms of "depth of analysis." There's that phrase again. I don't know about you, but I'm just kind of worried that it doesn't really apply well to my essay. She asks if we'd prefer to pick up the papers outside her office or to have the comments and grades emailed to us. People prefer email, though I think regulations don't allow grades to be sent out through email, and I like having that kind of stuff on paper. Why do I have to be so old-fashioned? I let her know my preference and supposedly she'll notify me when I can go get my paper from her. (Edit: Just got an email from her to the class -- sounds like she's going to email my grade to me just like everybody else. Oh well.)
I've got a lot of catch-up reading to do, especially with the articles in electronic format -- I don't want to print them off because they're really long, and it's hard to read every word when it's on a screen.
<sarcasm> Well aren't you looking forward to my wrap-up installment after Thursday's exam? </sarcasm>
I'm starting to find that "Finnish bully" is less irritating, more-or-less equally entertaining, but no less offending to my morality when he's sober (though I suppose that condition doesn't happen often in my vicinity). (If I had to use only one word to describe him, it'd still have to be irresponsible.) That said, I think I'm going certifiably insane because for some inexplicable reason I still want to totally kick his a$$ (or stab him?) even though it'd be totally stupid and suicidal (given his size and other unrelated factors, not to mention the thought of the recklessness of running around outside in -25°C weather in a sweater).
I made some notes on my computer regarding Week 14!!
Opening the period on Tuesday was our teacher coming around the classroom asking people what kinds of questions they wanted on the exam.
She also let us do the instructor evaluation forms, but I was soooo tired (I didn't sleep the night before since I was writing an essay) that I didn't really write much - I wrote down my boilerplate "less controversy stuff, more different viewpoints" blab. David writes a lot on his comment form, so I hope that takes care of it.
Then there was some video clip about -- you guessed it -- racism in children's books and impressionable little kids or something; a backdrop to some mother talking about that with the whole "sob story" kind of voice and intonation. I don't see a sob story here, sorry.
There was a little bit of talk about corporate sponsorship and product placement in schools (esp. in the US -- anyone who's read No Logo should be familiar with this kind of stuff -- our reading was from it). Watched the beginning bit of some documentary on the same.
On Thursday, me and the teacher met at the crosswalk...so of course she asks me what I thought of the class. I'm not allowed to say too much because instructors don't see their evaluation comments until after exams are written and submitted. I said that my exams are kind of weird, I have the hardest ones first and the easiest last...and that her exam is right in the middle, so I hope it'll be kinda of medium difficulty.
The truth is that, in my opinion, I have five exams alternating between really hard and maybe a little easier. But this one really is in the middle.
So the exam will be a mix of definition, short-, and long-answer questions. This is what you get when you ask everybody what they want, because everybody has different preferences. To be honest I can't really make a case here for any one type of question over another.
She hands out a one-page summary (a "final-term review"[sic]) of the important questions and terminology from the second half of the term. "Proletarianization" is, sadly, not on this paper. She says that all we need to know is the stuff on this page and the (much more expansive) "middle-term"[sic] review handout from October. She realizes that we never finished going through the "middle-term" handout, and asks if we want to discuss that one or this one.
Of course we do this newer one. Out comes the chart paper and the pens, and breaking into small groups. She stops our presentations at one point to read us some quotations from the reading we had about critical discourse analysis. By having them highlighted on the PDF and putting that on the projector. She does this because she says that the student presenter didn't pick up on the points that she wanted us to pick up. I'm too busy fidgeting to really note down what the quotations were.
Anyway, she hadn't finished grading the papers still, because she needs to take a second look-through to make sure they're all marked fairly relative to each other in terms of "depth of analysis." There's that phrase again. I don't know about you, but I'm just kind of worried that it doesn't really apply well to my essay. She asks if we'd prefer to pick up the papers outside her office or to have the comments and grades emailed to us. People prefer email, though I think regulations don't allow grades to be sent out through email, and I like having that kind of stuff on paper. Why do I have to be so old-fashioned? I let her know my preference and supposedly she'll notify me when I can go get my paper from her. (Edit: Just got an email from her to the class -- sounds like she's going to email my grade to me just like everybody else. Oh well.)
I've got a lot of catch-up reading to do, especially with the articles in electronic format -- I don't want to print them off because they're really long, and it's hard to read every word when it's on a screen.
<sarcasm> Well aren't you looking forward to my wrap-up installment after Thursday's exam? </sarcasm>
I'm starting to find that "Finnish bully" is less irritating, more-or-less equally entertaining, but no less offending to my morality when he's sober (though I suppose that condition doesn't happen often in my vicinity). (If I had to use only one word to describe him, it'd still have to be irresponsible.) That said, I think I'm going certifiably insane because for some inexplicable reason I still want to totally kick his a$$ (or stab him?) even though it'd be totally stupid and suicidal (given his size and other unrelated factors, not to mention the thought of the recklessness of running around outside in -25°C weather in a sweater).
