Now, I'm a Humanities guy. I love it. It fits me. But I honestly believe that my path here helped me figure out who I really was.
Q: What was the path to your discipline? Did you taste the arts AND the sciences? Was that something that worked for you? In the modern gen ed world, are we doing enough to help students see enough of the academic world before we block them into neat boxes where they focus on their major?
A: Comments below...and a bonus if you tell us your undergrad mascot...(I was a Sun Devil!)
I'm a science guy. But one of my proudest moments happened when hanging out with some humanities-type friends. My professor of ancient Philosophy stopped on the way by and told me, 'You know, you could DO philosophy'.
ReplyDeleteIf my school had a mascot, I'm not sure what it was. And I'm happier that way.
I was a Chemistry major for 2 full years, mostly as a result of strong parental influence.
ReplyDeleteBut I found myself loving my literature and arts classes, so when an especially bad transcript showed me an unlikely Chemistry graduate, I took a chance and made the move into the humanities.
I'm thankful I saw "both" sides of campus though...oh, and I was and am a Rocket!
Fine art, ***, and economics. I didn't choose anything. I just kept floating around and taking classes until it became apparent to me that I had to choose to a major and graduate or else I wouldn't get any more student loans. I have minors in math and American studies because I had enough credits in those. I loved undergrad, a bit too much.
ReplyDelete*** because am I afraid that if I list them all, I'll out myself completely.
Hawkeye here.
I've never been near the Sciences, unless you count the intro courses I had to take as an undergrad. I think I would benefit, however, from knowing more of my colleagues from the "other" parts of campus.
ReplyDeleteI tend to hang out with people just like me, English dept. wonks.
Oh, my undergrad mascot was an animal...a big one...
After graduating high school, I thought I'd be an engineer until they wanted to place me in remedial math. I would have none of that so I shopped around until I found the chemistry department. They said I seemed qualified to start in calc 1 so I became a chem major.
ReplyDeleteI failed calc 1 and retook it over the summer. Stupid engineers and their accurate placement tests.
Nobody knows exactly what my mascot is.
I'm sure my chosen moniker gives me away as a scientist. But I dated a beautiful Philosophy major all 4 years of college and that did as much for me as any arts or humanities classes I took.
ReplyDeleteBoyfriend Barney wrote poetry, studied literature, painted, and so on. And when he got to be a junior and senior, he really became a deep thinker along those lines.
He never respected the sciences, though, a sort of block on his part that I just could never resolve. (Although we split for a much more mundane reason.)
But I always thought Barney helped me understand some of the more humanistic parts of me.
And my undergrad mascot was an eagle.
I went to college as a music major. I was technically good at it, although uninspired as a composer or performer. Realizing that there was no career for me in music other than middle school band director (bless those that teach middle school band, but that sounded like hell on Earth), I switched to the only other thing I was good at and really enjoyed doing -- math. I still didn't see a career path in mathematics, so I added a second major in computer science, figuring that it was at least employable.
ReplyDeleteThree years in a cubicle programming computers sent me off to graduate school in mathematics, and now it seems that I do nothing else. I don't even do anything remotely musical anymore beyond belting out American Pie in the shower.
I went to a small enough undergrad school that if I listed the mascot, I'd immediately out myself to the two other people who went there, neither of which are likely to read this blog.
I drifted through undergrad, too. Started out as journalism/French, then gave music a go. That took more time and discipline than I was willing to give at the ripe old age of 19, so I took whatever the hell I wanted to take for a few years until the uni forced me to commit to a major.
ReplyDeleteThey looked at what I had taken during the wild days of just learning for the sake of learning (how I miss those days...) and chose philosophy as a major for me.
So I went to law school. (What else was I going to do as a woman in the '80's? There were very few female role models in philosophy at the time?)
Hated law school. Dropped out. Did odd jobs (janitor in an Army Surplus store anyone? fast food? Yep. I did both.) Finally got an office job, which led me back to legal. After 10 years of misery (you think THIS sucks? Try working for the lawyers!*) as a paralegal, long story short-ish, off I went to grad school to try and get a bit of fun back into my life. (And after lots of therapy.)
So I teach in the humanities where my path naturally led me. But then I went and married a scientist. So I live in both worlds now. I have friends in the sciences at all levels of academe and industry (hubby went to a top school and most of his friends are in the big show, though he himself opted out in the post-doc stage).
I can carry on intelligent conversations about many topics that are not directly related to the "humanities." What I love about my science friends, though, is that they are all well versed in art and culture.
One thing I have done to help students is to focus a little bit of attention on the philosophy of science. I have spoken about philosophy to the science club, and I'm developing a philosophy of science course to add to the very limited (sadly) number of philosophy classes at our CC. I'm trying to help bridge the gap for some of the science students and help them see that the sciences they love were once "natural philosophy" -- to see that progression and hopefully open up a bit more of the humanities side of life for some of them.
And I work hard to keep my comp students on the reason and rationality track. I don't assign feelings papers in comp, and I demand evidence, evidence, evidence in my response papers. (Way too many of my humanities colleagues teach the touchy-feely stuff only. It drives me bonkers, but that's a different post.)
*In the defense of the few excellent lawyers I did work for, they do, indeed, exist.
Bonus: Pistol Pete
I did a chemistry & vocal performance double major. My literature proffies, my German language proffies, and my music proffies all loved me. My chemistry proffies, sort of.
ReplyDeleteSo, of course, I'm a chemist.
Oh, and I've taught a seminar built around Snow's complaint about The Two Cultures. In general I find just as many humanities types who are proud of knowing no science, as science types who make only a bare tip of the hat to the humanities.
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ReplyDeleteI was what we called a "pre-Liberal Arts" major, aka Business.
ReplyDeleteI currently work with someone who was a "pre-Business" major, aka Engineering.
My degree is in a social science. My university offered the option of a BA (foreign language requirement) or a BS (lotsa science.) Being the Renaissance being that I am, I got the BS.
And I do mean BS. My science coursework ranged from astronomy to genetics to gastronomy (nutrition) to geology to geography to trigonometry.
The truth of it is I have a better GPA in my science and math courses than I do in my social "sciences." Heh.
But I couldn't pass accounting. For some reason accountants think an acceptable answer to the question, "Why?" is, "Because that's the way we've always done it." Stupid straight-laced accountants and their arbitrary rules.
Our mascot is a dog. Our nickname is something else. That narrows it down to a handful of schools- at least four come to mind.
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ReplyDeleteI originally went to college intending to me an English major, then go into teaching. I had three of the most amazing English teachers in high school, two of which went to the school where I got my undergrad, so they inspired me to go that route. My freshman year, to avoid taking Public Speaking (yeah, English majors could pull that off then) I took Introduction to Interpersonal Communications to fulfill my Communication Gen Ed. Then, I FELL IN LOVE with Communications. I was just enchanted with what I learned in that 100 level class, and knew that was what I wanted to study (I loved every class I took, and love teaching it). I guess it was just fate that I chickened out of Public Speaking and got an awesome prof for Interpersonal comm. It is ironic, though, that I was so terrified of taking Public Speaking that I refused to take it, and now I teach it. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteOh, and my mascot was a lion.
ReplyDeleteI started off as a chemistry major and spent a few years there but realized that it wasn't for me.
ReplyDeleteThen I switched over to French and Spanish.
I've even changed careers a few times.
I had the opposite path from Calico. I picked my field of study very early in my undergraduate years--in fact, I was even heading in that direction toward the end of high school. When I got to university, it was the only thing I was interested in, and I dodged "general education" requirements as often as I could, trying to get things as close as possible to my narrow field. Now, years later (and as someone who's finally reached adulthood), I realize that I'm actually interested in so many things. In fact, I can think of at least two fields I could have gotten a Ph.D. in that would have interested me as much as or more than the one I ended up in. I wish I'd taken advantage of those "general education" courses when I had the chance, and had decided to actually learn something entirely different from them than what I was studying overall.
ReplyDeleteAnd just as an aside to Jim: Unless you're limiting your generalization to the United States (and even then specifically to state universities), the comment about the liveable salary is totally inaccurate. My humanities colleagues at my Canadian university make exactly the same as my science and engineering colleagues at the same career stage, at least in terms of salary. It's university policy.
I started in sciences; graduated with 3 maths and 3 sciences in the last year of high school, and three languages and music on the side. This was the sexist seventies and the only way anyone would show you any respect was if they thought you were as 'smart as the boys' - for some reason they were the gold standard - and you could only prove that by doing 'boy subjects', i.e. sciences. So I did, and took a lot of pleasure in outscoring them, I have to say. That success made me think I wanted to be a physicist, as the hardest-core of the sciences.
ReplyDeleteThose were the days, when a public school education could offer you three languages ... anyway.
So first year undergrad I took 4 sciences, and 1 language as recreation. Passed everything, did best in biology IIRC, but the language class was the only thing I enjoyed. Second year, 3 sciences, 2 languages; realised at Christmas that the only thing I was enjoying was still humanities, and I no longer knew any of the high school boys I was trying to impress, and that maybe that wasn't the best motive anyway, so I switched.
The odd thing is that what I really liked was languages, but nobody ever told me about linguistics, so I stuck with languages and wound up teaching languages and literature. But I teach the languages too, and those are my favourite classes. I've been very slow to learn how to teach or publish about literature, because I never learned it in undergrad and stopped studying English in high school as soon as I could. Though I tutored the upper classes in grammar. (Another advantage of studying languages.)
The second year statistics class, from my sciences career, is the one thing that still comes in handy from time to time in my work. I think everyone should probably take basic stats at some point.
Oh, and I don't think we had a mascot.
ReplyDeleteIt's rather interesting. Most US universities require general education, to simulate the old liberal arts degrees. The science and mathematics that the typical humanities major takes are extremely watered down.
ReplyDeleteThe peculiar thing is that the 'liberal arts' degrees of the 18th-century gentleman contained all of the known science and mathematics of the time, or at least a thorough grounding of Euclid and some discussion of Calculus.
I was a physics major and I wanted to take P-chem but the lady who signs every Tom, Dick, Harry, snowflake, porcupine and sometimes lichen into classes without pre-reqs didn't work at my college, so they made me take orgo first. I still don't know wtf makes orgo a pre-req for p-chem. If anything, it should be the other way around, but I'm getting off topic. So once I got to take P-chem, I had almost 30 chemistry credits already and figured I'd just go ahead and double major. Then I applied to grad schools in both, and when I got my responses, I called the people whose research interested me and asked them "How many grad students do you have?... How many and what types of lasers do you have?" and I went to the one with the highest YAG to Grad Student ratio, which happened to be in a chemistry group.
ReplyDeleteI had an odd student path: sort of up and down as an undergrad (but got out in 4 years), tried grad school but dropped out, worked/changed job careers, went to school part-time/stopped, but then... for some reason the light bulb came on (perhaps a kryptonite meteor had finally passed the near-Earth orbit) and I got into a academic frenzy (good student, obsessed, etc.).
ReplyDeleteMy Math -> IT -> Social Sciences background (academic and job) all help, though (statistics, analytical relationships, and, ummmm, doing stuff on computers).
I'm not a useful data point, since I'm an admin (financial aid) rather than an instructor. But I guess I'm a good answer to the question "What do you do with a music major?"--you become an administrator in a performing arts college.
ReplyDeleteI became a music major (theater arts production minor) because I'd decided when I was about fourteen that I intended to be a music teacher. Sadly, I didn't want to be a choral director, band director, or private voice teacher. I wanted to teach the old-fashioned thing called "Music Appreciation", which had been slashed from the budget in most districts by the time I started school, but was still taught in my school system because it was populated by families who believed their kids would need to know how to intelligently discuss opera and the symphony in order to be successful adults. Of course, by the time I graduated from college, such a thing no longer existed, and six months of student teaching in a second-grade classroom persuaded me that I'd prefer to work with adult students anyways. :)
(College mascot was a gavel. Yes, a judge's gavel. For real.)
Math, History of Science double major, minor in Classics as an undergrad. I come from a family of engineers. When it came time to choose for grad school I had a sit down with my mentors in both departments, and came out of those meetings thinking that to be successful in Math I'd have to switch to an area of study I was less interested in, whereas in History of Science I'd get to do whatever the hell I wanted. So that was that: Alea iacta fuit.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes think about where I might be if I'd gone the other route. Would I be teaching differential equations to engineers like my undergrad advisor? Would I have wound up doing modeling for a hedge fund (one of my math friends from undergrad days who did stick with numbers for grad school does that now) and making a mint? Or would I have dropped out and become a film critic? Who can say? But basically I'm pretty happy with how my choice worked out, although I sometimes think I'd rather be in a history of science department than in a regular history department (for reasons that are too parochial and boring to get into here). But because of the way things broke for me post-doc and job market-wise I've never gotten the chance to try that out, and maybe I never will. Still, I wouldn't go back.
p.s. I don't know from mascots, but my power animal is definitely a hawk.
ReplyDeleteI started out at a cc with a General Business major. That lasted one day. I met with my advisor, mentioned that I liked art, and wound up with a Computer Aided Design major. After that debacle, I switched to General Studies, where I remained until I discovered psychology. After that, I transferred to a SLAC where I majored in Psych and minored in Soc. I then went on to a PhD. My undergrad mascot was the yellowjacket (which was rather disturbing to me, given that I am phobic about bees and other stinging creatures).
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, I forgot my most important credential: My associate's degree in math. CC grads in the house throw your hands up!
ReplyDeleteMy CC's mascot was the Olympians.
I entered college with the intent of doing exactly what I do now except that I thought I would be at a SLAC instead of CC Universe. I wasn't allowed to declare my major until I'd been in school one semester, but it didn't matter much as all my major field courses had Composition I and II as prerequisites anyway. I took two science courses and two math courses, one of which was an elective on the math side. The professors encouraged us to branch out beyond our chosen majors and minors in our learning experience. I was very fortunate to attend a college where the professors and administration took the phrase "liberal arts" seriously.
ReplyDeleteArchie, one year of my course credits come from CCs. I went every summer to save my parents money since Somewhat Expensive SLAC was a bit beyond their means and they borrowed to pay for what my scholarships did not.
My undergrad mascot was an animal most scientists regard as fake though there is a real animal which resembles it.
Not a proffie, just a grad student and university staff member, so perhaps no one cares, but I started as an English major, got the MA in English from a well-regarded university, then struggled to get by as a business writer, which was even more boring than it sounds. Faced with the prospect of taking out a huge loan to pay for a PhD, after which, no job, or at best, a very low-paying job in some other part of the country, I gave up on English Lit as a viable livelihood. I took some courses, practiced a bunch, and now I work in IT and am getting a second masters in computer science. I never would have pegged this as a career for myself because when I was applying for college, computers weren't that interesting to me. I thought they were just big clunky electronic typewriters that printed on green-and-white paper with a lot of holes. Using Windows, a mouse, and seeing the Internet in color (thank you, Netscape) changed my mind about computers. Learning abstract algebra and first-order logic changed my mind about math. I don't regret my English BA and MA, because I became a much better writer for it. But if I had to do it all over again, I'd have majored in computer science from the get-go. Better late than never.
ReplyDelete(Undergraduate mascot is an Irish setter)
Applied Mathematics, from the beginning, then into both Mathematics and Statistics at the graduate level.
ReplyDeleteMascots include Strigiformes, Vespulae and Caprinae.
I started out in physics and picked up math as second major since it was natural (that's fairly common for physics types). Turned out I liked math more. So that's the direction I want in grad school. My favorite class was a non-fiction writing class I took my last semester. If I'd had that class earlier maybe I'd have had a creative writing minor (but probably not).
ReplyDeleteNo comment on the mascot, as it might out me (or at least give out more info than I'd like). Fortunately that is true of a lot of schools so I'm still not outed.
WotC,
ReplyDeleteWe can't teach pchem before organic because too many students would bail out their sophomore year. We have to get them in so deep that by the time they get hit with pchem during their junior year, they've committed too much time to quit.
Wow, a lot of physics types here. Everyone seems to have been 'touched' by physics at some point.
ReplyDeleteExplains the crazy.
-Nathaniel (a physicist)
During my undergrad years, I attended a SLAC and majored in psychology, but according to one prof, I had a "kinda skimpy major" 'cuz I took so many classes in other disciplines. Coupla studio art classes. Handful of philosophy courses. Plenty of phys ed credits, too. Was briefly a double-major in English, but I realized that I hated literature as a discipline. If the department offered composition studies, I'd likely have stuck with it. Perhaps my proudest moment at aforementioned SLAC came in a physics-for-dummies class that I took just for the sake of checking off a box; the prof was lecturing about I-forget-what, and I asked a technical question. He paused, looked dumbfounded, and asked, "What are you doing in this class?" In retrospect, I should've taken a real science course or two, but at the time, I wasn't much interested, and the SLAC wasn't much of a science school, anyway.
ReplyDeleteAfter graduating, I bummed around the aquatics industry for a few years, from operations to management to sales. Didn't wanna manage a retail store, so I thought about grad school. Architecture, maybe? Took a few CC courses on the side, and finished Calculus II and III. Decided I didn't want to spend eternity hunched over a drawing board. Took an aptitude test that said I'd be good at a particular field that includes writing; got my MA in the discipline and remembered that I just kinda groove on school, so I stuck around for the PhD.
I'd identify my undergrad mascot, but I'd totally out myself. I will say, though, that it perennially hits everyone's list of top 10 worst/least threatening mascots.
I have an undergraduate degree in a hard science with lab reports and a sexy reputation. Please forgive me if I don't identify it because in combination with what i'm about to say I would be pretty easy to identify.
ReplyDeleteI have a graduate degree in history--one of those nifty relatively new subfields that are impressed by my undergraduate degree in the hard sciences--and I love the fact that I have a foot in both camps. Being able to make heads or tales of a professional journal in the earth sciences is incredibly useful for my job as a historian. I am the living embodyment of a well rounded scholar and whenever I run into a student who says something bad either about the humanities or the sciences I'll school them equally.
That said, I think humanities/social science people are often intimidated by scientists and in cross disciplinary discussions this can result in science proffies not being called on bullsh#% when they shuld be. This seems to be particularly bad when it comes to discussions of grade inflation. It was the dearest goal of my undergraduate adviser to convince the R1 I went to to get the administration to give extra weight to science courses in GPAs.
No amount of pointing out that grade inflation's routes go back at least to Vietnam, or that if you lay a curve of the percent of female students at that school on top of the grade inflation curve they were essentially the same would change his mind.
But this was the same man who didn't think the fact that you could avoid going to Vietnam by working for the NIH or CDC had any effect on women's ability to get positions at those institutions. We're still dealing with the ramifications of that one today.
Oh, and my mascot was well known but something no one could ever describe.
I like to joke that when I started out in the sciences, I was in a different field: vertebrate paleontology. I switched fields, into astronomy, when I turned five years old. I'm glad I did: the field work in paleontology is digging in dirt, whereas the field work in astronomy is staying up all night, which I discovered I was very good at when I was a teenager.
ReplyDeleteMy story isn't unusual for astronomers. Many of them get interested in astronomy at a very young age. Carl Sagan also did so when he was five. His parents were concerned whether it was possible to make a living doing that. I had no such trouble: my father was a teacher and my mom was a birdwatcher and nature enthusiast. My older brother didn't like school, so when I showed an interest, my parents would have supported me in any scholarly pursuit. I learned constellations at age 8 through the trees of my parents’ front lawn: I wish my students today could show that kind of interest, in anything, ever.
I pursued astronomy with such dogged determination, I even resented being required to take physics when I was a freshman. Talk about narrow minded! I got better, with time, as I encountered more and more situations where I had to use physics. By my sophomore year, I became interested in physics for its own sake. I may take it up full time as I get older, since staying up all night gets older, as I get older. I find I increasingly want to leave something beneficial for the world, like perhaps the key to clean energy, or to practical spaceflight.
I got interested in math as a thing of beauty, really more like an art form than a tool, during my freshman year, when I took the calculus section for math majors. This was quite by accident: the only reason I signed up for it was that it was labeled, "Honors course." It really wasn't the practical problem solving I needed for physics, but I'm glad I took it, since it gave me plenty of ideas to pursue for the rest of my life.
I took time off school to make money by risking my life on a daily basis, in the U. S. Navy. I also drove taxis in Chicago: that was much more dangerous, I don’t recommend it. By the time I finished my B.A., I was still an astronomy and physics double major, as I’d always been.
I got interested in painting when I was an undergraduate, when I painted the ceiling of my dorm room with the stars. Everybody loved it: a cynic might have called it amateurish, but no one ever did because of the sheer audacity of the thing. Shortly thereafter I taught myself how to draw, from "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain," by Betty Edwards. I never managed to take a course in art, because the classes always seemed to be full before I could register. This was also the case when I tried it recently, as faculty. I have since revived my interest in art, by doing most of the photography and illustrations for the intro astronomy textbook I'm writing. Photoshop is great: it has unlimited capacity to erase, and there’s no more charcoal or paint on the carpet. Like all self-taught artists, I live in dread of the day a knowledgeable art critic says, "It's obvious he's self-taught, because his work is dreadful!" ;-)
I wish I could say my mascot was something unusual, such as the Banana Slugs, or the Wonderboys, or the Flying Pizzas, but it was a boring kind of cat, so we need consider it no further.
I've walked a pretty strange path to get where I am, and anyone who knows me well will likely guess my identity from this comment... or, at least, that's what I thought until I read some of the other posts! More people than I'd realized traveled a circuitous route to the teacher's lectern.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I loved my subjects in high school - humanities and science alike - but I grew up in a house full of computer types (and this was not recently, so we're talking some people who started out programming in the 60s), so I assumed I'd go into math and/or computer science. I placed well in math once I got to university, and I spent my whole first year studying it as my major. The class I really LIKED, however, was my history class.
Math told me why numbers behaved the way they did, but history - or so I thought at the time - told me why the world was the way it was, and, at that point in my life, I was much more interested in the latter question.
So, I jumped ship and studied history for a while, taking a hefty dose of lit classes as well, but life got in the way and I wound up changing schools a few times, often changing majors along the way. My problem was that I was interested in EVERYTHING, and making ANY choice seemed like cutting myself off from something else.
After math and history, I majored (in order) in computer science, criminal justice, anthropology, sociology, political science, religion, english, and philosophy.
Landing in philosophy was sort of a revelation, because I realized that I could talk about stuff in all the other disciplines from a sort of "meta" level, while still having somewhere to call home. It also didn't hurt that a very wise advisor told me, "Go to grad school. Get your PhD. Then write about whatever the hell you want. Just find a way to publish it, and you'll be fine."
I enjoyed each and every discipline I studied, and wished I could have taken a dozen more. I've been a bison, a buccaneer, a raider, and a tiger. It's been fun. I sometimes regret the time spent "dicking around," but, honestly, I wouldn't trade it for anything.
I've known since I was 5 that I wanted to do X in the military. My backup plan was to be an engineer. I chose a small engineering school, did ROTC, went to the military, spent my years there, decided that was boring, and came back to engineering, but in a very different field.
ReplyDeleteOther than the fact that where I am now has very little to do with any place I ever thought I'd be, it's not that wandering of a path.
I'd tell you my school's mascot, but I couldn't find a description that didn't turn the school up in the first page of google hits (damn, google's good). Sorry folks, no bonus points for me.
Yeah, our mascot would give me away too. It's also a weird indescribable thingie.
ReplyDeleteBut I had a savage math teacher in high school who told me I was stupid on a daily basis (this despite my scoring in the 99th percentile on national standardized tests for junior high schoolers). It worked. I can add, substract, multiply, and divide, but that's all, despite having mastered beginning trigonometry, algebra, and geometry by the end of 8th grade. After two years with said math teacher, I was dumbed out of college-prep math and science, and couldn't place into any but the remedial and non-major classes in college. I really loved the courses I took (AIDS biology, computer science, and oceanography), but they didn't add up to a science curriculum. I am STILL pissed at that teacher and am trying to find my kid an elementary school with a strong science curriculum.
From the day I figured out that there was a job called "English Professor" and approximately what that job entailed (very approximately), I've wanted to be that with every fiber of my being (dramatic, I know, and hence the draw). I didn't really think I'd ever get here, but here I am, perpetually astonished. Everyone else I know is sort of astonished, too, making me think I might be like that dumb guy AA knew in grad school who managed to pull a career out of his ass.
ReplyDeleteI haven't the faintest idea what our mascot was - I was too busy wearing black turtlenecks and reading Hardy.
Marcia - that's horrible. We don't believe that still happens these days, but it's still rampant. A long time ago I taught Jr. High math and the day before my first day, I sat in my office (it was an excessively comfortable private school where an uncertified teacher could have a private office) and started to sort out the books. I opened the books for my 8th grade class to make a book sign in register and one of them had "Bill **** Hates Math!" and other (vulgar, violent and depressive) similar statements written all over it in permanent marker. When I was done prepping for the 8th grade class, I took out my 9th grade roster and my heart sunk when I saw "****, William" on the list. But he seemed like a sweet kid and he did well in my class. But when I called on him, he wouldn't answer. He'd just shrug. I knew he knew whatever I was asking because I didn't want to embarrass them excessively, so I'd wander around the room and scan their work before calling on anyone. Finally one day I attempted to force him to answer and he said "I'm not allowed to answer. Mr. Your Predecessor said I'm too dumb to talk." He was the class clown so I thought he was kidding. But he still wouldn't answer. I said "Come on, Bill, be serious. Mr. My Predecessor didn't call you dumb." and the rest of the class said "Yes he did. Every day." wtf? The irony is, I left that job to go to grad school, but I was invited back for graduation by the kids who had been my 9th graders. Bill won the math award. I hope Mr. My Predecessor burns in Hell.
ReplyDeleteThere was also a visiting instructor here teaching some of the labs who was so mean, she could actually make college students cry. Even the men. One woman cried every single week. I used to whistle the Wall whenever that professor came near me. She didn't get it, she thought I just always had that song stuck in my head. It was because she'd scream "Trained monkeys can do this!" and stuff like that when I was in the next lab. One day one student said "Yeah, but you're talking about monkeys trained by humans, we're being trained by you." and she kicked him out. But the department chair wrangled up some $$, and paid the rest of her contract and told her to just leave and they hired someone else to finish the semester. She was THAT bad.
O thanks Wombat, truly. I think when this happens, some part of you always thinks it's really your own fault despite all evidence to the contrary. This women went on to Master Teacher and got awards. She just hated me in particular, for reasons I can't understand -- not that I think I was all that likeable, but I'd never been targeted for random teacherly wrath before, and never have since. It's too bad she made me as stupid as she said I was.
ReplyDeleteI started out college taking a pretty even balance of math/science and humanities classes, after taking a pretty even balance of AP classes in high school (hampered a bit by the fact that my high school didn't offer AP Physics or Chemistry, only AP Biology and AB AP Calculus). I'm still intrigued by science, and enjoy talking to scientists about their work (a lot of my friends are in mixed humanities/science marriages, so I have opportunities). But the grade-grubbing of the pre-meds in the introductory science classes got very old very fast, and I was enjoying my English classes, so that's the route I took, and I haven't regretted it. If I'd realized that social history (as opposed to history focused on how we got into one war, out of it, and on to the next) existed, I might have been a historian (and, as it is, I'm a bit of an area/culture studies type, though my degree is straight literature).
ReplyDeleteMy current job teaching writing gives me a chance to read both student and professional work in a variety of disciplines, which I enjoy, though I wouldn't mind a chance to focus on literature of the particular period and culture in which I did my graduate work now and then.
Undergraduate mascot, to the extent we had one (since I never went to a sporting event, I don't know if there was a representation prancing around), was a Long-Dead White Guy.
I started life out as a Poli Sci major with plans for a minor. I took all my major classes and loved them for the most part.
ReplyDeleteThe foreign language requirement way laid my plans though.
I got an UG degree in a business-oriented discipline and loved every single moment of it because business really is a liberal arts field.
In my marketing classes, I needed my accounting and finance knowledge. In my finance classes, I needed my marketing and management knowledge. Management classes required everything. Knowledge silos in business only exist if the professor lets it.
When I took Poli Sci classes, an occasional stray thought from sociology or psychology would enter the argument. Otherwise, you were good to go. Hooray for knowledge silos.