The Road Not Taken to Hell is Paved With Pretensions

[matt_rah]

There have been three main threads I've pursued in my academic career: math, music, and (French) literature. Of these, the third is the one where I met with the greatest success-highest GPA, best relationships with professors, honors thesis, etc. However, I never had any interest in pursuing a graduate degree in French literature (or comparative

Comments

[funwithrage]

Interesting

[matt_rah]

>>Also, I'm of the somewhat-against-the-grain opinion that there should be fewer opportunities for undergrads to talk. <<

Maybe in English classes... not in math or science classes though, which IME would generally benefit from more interactivity.

Matt

[instigator_ash]

Seconded. In computer science, the naturally-thinking-like-a-computer students and TAs were generally MUCH better at verbalizing the concepts than about half the faculty. Also the top 10% of the class tended to be wrong less than some of my professors. *has happy memories of scoring 150% on a test because it had so many defective questions*

[funwithrage]

Hm.

I wonder--given that I have, admittedly, only ever taken one college-level math or science course--if part of that could be because of their greater objectivity? People discussing things in a math and science course seem more likely to have to base their questions/theories on *something*, whereas an English class discussion tends to be very much opinion-based.

This could also be a matter of Izzy's Staggering Contempt for Humanity. I want to know what my professor thinks, because he has credentials and stuff; I care what my friends think, because they're my friends for reasons, one of which is intelligence; my random-English-class peers are nineteen, and probably dumb, and the time when they're talking is a great time to write game notes.

[basseykay]

I do remember it, vaguely :-)

[xse99]

Based on info given in the article, this must have been written in 1998. As we've discussed, the tide in English depts has turned in a major way toward Rhetoric/Composition and against Lit since then. Based on what I've seen, the writing critics express themselves no more clearly than the lit critics. (The various quoted sentences are pretty amusing and typical.) Academese is a pretty pervasive feature of the humanities disciplines, at least.

I did find it hard to take seriously the tone of shock at PhD students aiming to become successful academics instead of just studying for the joy of it. I mean, come on. We're not talking masters, we're talking PhD. Don't 99% of the people who go for PhDs aim to be academics?

I won't say more than that b/c your post isn't f-locked.

[instigator_ash]

Whew. Lotta churn. I never took a college English class. In middle school, my Arthurian Literature class ended with composing a chapter in the style of one of the books we've read (I used the Sword in the Stone for my style). It was a great synthesis of creative and critical writing, because we had to justify our choices. That said, not everyone can do that sort of thing on command and I don't know if all the students enjoyed it, as it was a pretty challenging exercise for 6th graders.