Give me a grade

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by TarJak

Speaking purely for myself here, if we are the smartest people you know then you really do have a problem.

Y'know, for an alligator-hunting Aussie with a large knife between your teeth, you sure talk alot.

edit-oops, I meant croc-hunting

[August]

Yeah the attitude comment should raise some flags here. You should definitely get to the bottom of that.

Y'see if I have a student that does not understand an assigned task then I attempt to make them understand. His attitude doesn't become an issue unless I feel he is creating obstacles to understanding.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by August

Yeah the attitude comment should raise some flags here. You should definitely get to the bottom of that.

How? It's a state university and the professor has tenure. Armies of lawyers fall before such obstacles. What could I even do?

Originally Posted by August

Y'see if I have a student that does not understand an assigned task then I attempt to make them understand. His attitude doesn't become an issue unless I feel he is creating obstacles to understanding.

Would you say that I have created an obstacle to understanding? That was not my intent at all. I only wished to get down to the basics of ethics philosophy. That's it. In retrospect, it would have been better to have sought consultation, rather than simply presenting a contrarian view, but isn't higher education supposed to be about broadening horizons? Why would a person decide that another is a failure simply because of an attitude?

The more I learn, the less I understand. If understanding the key concepts behind something is wrong, then I do not know what is right. I feel like the world made a quantum leap at some point and I missed it somehow. My prof has a master's degree, and he apparently thinks I'm an idiot......

Ah, well. I wrote to him during my brief hiatus from subsim this evening, so I'll wait to see what he says.

[Skybird]

As Takeda already hinted, it is in parts something like a "Themaverfehlung" (=an essay missing the subject). You start to lay out a line of thought that is not too directly related to the questions, and this sideline of thinking you then embark on - in strength. That is a bit like this old joke about a schoolboy who for the exams has learned everything about worms, but then get asked about elephants, and so he starts answering: "The elephant is a big animal with a trunk. This trunk is formed loike a big,m giant worm. There are flatworms, roundworms...etc"

You did not care enough for the question, because you had something on your mind you wanted to focus on - which unfortunately had not too much to do with the question.

This can happen for two cases: first, like in your case, the student has something on his mind he is too fixiated on so that he misses the question, or ignores it to a too wide degree. This is what has happened to you. Second, he does not stick to the original subject because he lets himself carried away in arguments and side-arguments and additions to sidearguments, and he gets lost in a growing flood of details and loses the central thread. This is my special hobby. Sometimes I must struggle hard not to excel in it.

School or university papers likes this are no ideological battleground. If you are not able to separate your "agenda" from the real subject of an academical excercise, then you will run into trouble.

Stick to the thread, don't turn it into an opportunity to run a "crusade" - that you can do on GT forum. I really think that your personal challenge is to think beyond your established personal schemes.

It's not about me agreeing with your answer or not, in principle you make your stand and then defend it - I see that for sure. But that stand of yours happens to be only loosely related to the subject. Too loosely, for my taste. I would expect the prof not to be too happy.

From your economic disucssions in GT I see you are a stubborn defender of your ideas, and it is very difficult to reach you with details or ideas that first need to break through this armour of established answers you surround yourself with. My subjective perception, but that's the way I see you. I think your challenge really is to become able to establish a greater mental openess for different concepts as well, in order to really compare your own answers to these and check the validity of the one - or the other. Like in this essay you quote above, you often seem to somewhat fall back by reflex to that fortress of ideas about how things are, and I cannot help but sometimes have the impression that the defence of this fortress is quite unflexible, static and depending on always falling back onto the same reaction schemes, like a spring. I think that somehow this pattern is what got you trapped again in that essay of yours.

This answer goes a bit beyond a fact-oriented reply, and is even a bit personal. I only do so because of our long PM disucssions some months back, since that gave me a bit more of a personal impression of you. This, and the several very long essays you have produced in GT when it was a topic about economic theory.

In that essay of yours you maybe failed because you lack the flexibility to step away from yourself and your own convictions, by that you drew the answer you gave to that preset position of yours, ignoring that that maybe had little to do with the question being asked. If that would be true, the challenge set up to you is not so much about intellect, knowledge and mind, but maybe a personality feature of yours. And in that case it would be a mistake to change courses or even schools. Start exploring yourself instead.

If there are any docents/profs whom you trust, ask them about their impression about you personally, how they perceive you.

My old - and much liked - prof who had a major share in leading me through university, used to say something like this: "most problems students have with learning, come from just two issues in most cases: they either have never learned how to efficiently learn, or they are so fixiated on what they already have on mind that this hinders them to think beyond their own brainworld, may it be for understanding a different argument than theirs, may it be focus on something they were not focussed on before". And when I look back to my time at university and the guys I knew there, I must say that he was right.

Don't change school so easily. Don't give up that course and prof too early. Consider to ask him for a personal conversation about yourself, and the problems you feel confronted with. If he is fair in his business, he will allow that. Don't tell him about yourself, but ask him about yourself, his perception. And consider for some moments that maybe he sees you right even if he violates your self-definitions.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

Would you say that I have created an obstacle to understanding?

the quote by august to which you answered here seems to point at the same direction like what I try to say. It is very possible that yoiu indeed create obstacles to understanding - by yourself standing in your own way in the way I tried to explain above.

consider our recent 5 moves chess match. that terrible 2nd move of yours, and you said something like that you wanted to try something different from the standard openings. As if you really have a valid, terrain-covering impression of the wide range of chess openings! By denying to use the established knowledge about openings, you denied yourself the opportunity to use their good to your advantage. In a way here you stood in your own way indeed, because you favoured your own idea about how openings could be played over the needs of the situation (position on the board) and the long-known, experience-soaking, well verified basics and principles of elemental theory. And this, becasue you wanted to try soemthing. See my reply back there, about how to learn juggling: many balls only later, few balls first.

The more i think about you and this thread, the more I am convinced that you are not dealing with a challenge to your intellect, but your personality. No, not in the meaning of a disorder, but a feature of being a stubborn man who finds it hard to change his attitude and long held convictions. Long-held convictions - this I say from a psychologist's perspective - are not so much a question of intellect or arguments and discussing them and convincing somebody, but they are more often an issue of attitudes and habits.

If not listening to me, listen at least to August and Takeda. I think both have a valid points.

[NeonSamurai]

I pretty much agree with what has been said by Sky, August, Hap, etc.

You are going to have to learn how to work from within the system and stop trying to break out into directions that you want to go or hold personal interest to you. I know it's hard, I often face the same problems of staying on the topic. University (especially undergrad university) is all about rote learning and regurgitation of that learning, and you have to learn how to supply what the profs want if you want to do well.

I know you have a rebellious streak, probably because you know you are smarter than most other people you encounter or deal with. I think you like playing with, toying, and testing others to see how they measure up (and to stave off boredom). But that sort of behavior only harms you in the end. You gotta play the game if you are going to get anywhere. No matter how much you dislike it, and no matter how stupid the system is.

I also have to agree with Sky's assessment of you being locked in your own world view. But then again who isn't. Almost everyone is locked in their own world view which from their perspective seems right, but if taken from a broader scope is deeply flawed. It is very hard to be truly open minded, to really consider the arguments of others and honestly weigh them against your own. You need to break free of that, and stop trying to direct every paper deep into the realms of your own knowledge and beliefs.

If you want to crusade, do it here, or join a debate club or something where you are more free to express yourself (though a good debater can hold any position, even those they fundamentally disagree with). Class assignments and papers are not the place.

[August]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

How? It's a state university and the professor has tenure. Armies of lawyers fall before such obstacles. What could I even do?

I didn't mean try to get the guy fired or disciplined UL. I meant go to him and ask what he meant by it, and what he thinks you should do to fix it.

Would you say that I have created an obstacle to understanding? That was not my intent at all. I only wished to get down to the basics of ethics philosophy. That's it. In retrospect, it would have been better to have sought consultation, rather than simply presenting a contrarian view, but isn't higher education supposed to be about broadening horizons? Why would a person decide that another is a failure simply because of an attitude?

I don't know. Based on his comment I'd say you might have. That's why I suggest that you talk to him and try to understand what he's looking for out of you.

The more I learn, the less I understand. If understanding the key concepts behind something is wrong, then I do not know what is right. I feel like the world made a quantum leap at some point and I missed it somehow. My prof has a master's degree, and he apparently thinks I'm an idiot......

This all comes down to the assignment you were given. You weren't asked to critique key concepts, you were asked to apply them to a particular scenario so that, and only that, is what you should have done.

As for your professor thinking you're an idiot, nothing you've said he told you implies that. It sounds to me like he was trying to motivate you.

Ah, well. I wrote to him during my brief hiatus from subsim this evening, so I'll wait to see what he says.

Keep us posted as to what he says if you would.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Ouch. Seems like the opinion is pretty unanimous except for OTH's, which is a cat. Still, I appreciate the honesty and thoughtfulness that was put into the replies. Thank you.

The good news is that I have been given another chance to do this essay, though this time I've been assigned Kant's theory of ethics as a position. I was also given the helpful advice of not bothering to try to prove how a person following Kant's theory could do something immoral, lest my maximum possible grade become a "C". The good professor also explained that he has an academic duty to fail me if I do not satisfactorily complete every step of the learning process, or as he put it, "You have to take the stairs like everyone else. I won't give you credit for trying to ride the elevator." Damn.

I was going to thank everyone individually with a multi-quote, but there is just too much to respond to. I hope it will suffice that the message has been received and that I am grateful to everyone who took the time to help. That said, I believe I will take the repeatedly proffered advice to use this forum as a place to crusade. To use the context of Sky's analogy; The guns are loaded, the walls are sound, and the broad stripes and bright stars will be visible at dawn's early light

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by Skybird

As Takeda already hinted, it is in parts something like a "Themaverfehlung" (=an essay missing the subject). You start to lay out a line of thought that is not too directly related to the questions, and this sideline of thinking you then embark on - in strength. That is a bit like this old joke about a schoolboy who for the exams has learned everything about worms, but then get asked about elephants, and so he starts answering: "The elephant is a big animal with a trunk. This trunk is formed loike a big,m giant worm. There are flatworms, roundworms...etc"

It took me most of my first year of uni to get rid of that habit, it's a tough one to break.

Good luck with the repeat, Lance

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

To use the context of Sky's analogy; The guns are loaded, the walls are sound, and the broad stripes and bright stars will be visible at dawn's early light

My analogy...?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

It took me most of my first year of uni to get rid of that habit, it's a tough one to break.

Whom you tell!

I wrote very good free essays at high school both in German and English, usually only A and B grades - the only "themaverfehlung" (missed subject) I have ever produced in my school life at school was during the final Abitur-paper (=final exams) in English, the very last paper I ever wrote for school. - "E".

And at university, the final written diploma report I wrote together with a girlfriend, we had to restart again from scratch and with a new topic - after having spend 5 months on the old one, because I managed to bring us into a plethoray of distracting details until we did not had any clear understanding anymore what our project originally had been about and the supervising prof threatened to give us a "fail". Learning that frustrating lesson inside out, the new work became much better, "A".

If there is one golden rule for written works at university, then this: stay on topic, and keep the line of argument simple.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Skybird

My analogy...?

Yes....

Originally Posted by Skybird

I cannot help but sometimes have the impression that the defence of this fortress is quite unflexible, static and depending on always falling back onto the same reaction schemes, like a spring

Originally Posted by Tchocky

Good luck with the repeat, Lance

Thanks! As you can see, I'm off to a great start - posting on subsim

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

Yes....

Ah! Hard to believe what nonsense I am sometimes writing...

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

Yes....




Thanks! As you can see, I'm off to a great start - posting on subsim

Tell me about it! Exam in the morning, ach