(no subject)
Oct. 1st, 2012 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI have half an hour left to go before I can go home. I ought to write more of my anthropology paper, but I seem to be a little stuck, so I thought I'd write some here.
I talked to my adviser today about problems I'm having in my sociology research methods oriented classes. The professor is a non-native English speaker and has a thick accent. That part's fine; after a couple of class sessions I was pretty well used to that, and it's something I'll be encountering a great deal of in my ideal line of work.
But more than that, her expectations were very unclear to me. And, it turns out, to the rest of the class as well. I've had conversations with several members of the classes, and they've all been as confused as I was. Today, I talked to a person I know from the anthropology department who's taking her class for the second time. He said that it's much like it was the last time he was in it; you ask six different people what homework is due and you get six different answers, none of them correct. Enough people had said something to her that, in the first class of the day, she spent about half the hour asking the students for suggestions on how she can communicate better with them. I find that I'm kind of translating for the people sitting near me, even though I don't usually have a good sense of what's being asked for either.
So I brought all that up with my adviser. I was terribly nervous about it. I worried that it would sound like I was being unduly negative about the professor. I worried that I will look inadequate to the task of taking the classes I need to for my major. I worried that a dropped class might look bad when I apply to grad school. I worried that I will be a disappointment, both to my adviser, my partners and family, and myself. I suppose I worry too much.
But the conversation was good, and many of these were issues with which my adviser was already familiar. Additional complication comes from the fact that we have a combined sociology/anthropology program here, and sociology does not overlap with anthropology nearly as much as many sociologists think that it does, and this professor is actually grounded more in education than in sociology anyway.
So I'm going to stay in one of her classes, 295. I'm going to drop the other class, 300, and take it with someone else another time. I feel really bad to let the guy I'm working on a project in 300 with down: the class was split into three groups of four people, five people, and two (he and I) to work on putting together a research project, and without me, my partner will be on his own. Hopefully she'll be able to do something to ameliorate the bind that will put him in (though given the other issues, I fear that she won't). But on top of the increased work load of this semester in general, having two classes where I don't really understand what's expected of me but, especially with 300, I know it's a lot, is making me stressy to a ridiculous extent. When I made the decision to drop the class, it was a huge relief.
Now I just need to focus on the small paper for my anthro class, the big paper for my history class, and the stats test I have tomorrow morning. After I get home at eleven, I'm probably going to spend an hour or so making sure I have formulas for percentages, rations, proportions, change over time, and other things in my head. Because, apparently, real statisticians are not allowed to use reference material while working?
I have another long rant about my stats class for this space, but since it's fifteen to quitting time, I'm going to start doing close-up tasks so I can get out of here on time.
---
I can't really write much about this on Facebook because I don't want to write about things under my real name that can easily be associated with the people being written about. It's one of the nice things about having anonymity on the internet; something that I will argue the necessity of 'till my dying day.
I talked to my adviser today about problems I'm having in my sociology research methods oriented classes. The professor is a non-native English speaker and has a thick accent. That part's fine; after a couple of class sessions I was pretty well used to that, and it's something I'll be encountering a great deal of in my ideal line of work.
But more than that, her expectations were very unclear to me. And, it turns out, to the rest of the class as well. I've had conversations with several members of the classes, and they've all been as confused as I was. Today, I talked to a person I know from the anthropology department who's taking her class for the second time. He said that it's much like it was the last time he was in it; you ask six different people what homework is due and you get six different answers, none of them correct. Enough people had said something to her that, in the first class of the day, she spent about half the hour asking the students for suggestions on how she can communicate better with them. I find that I'm kind of translating for the people sitting near me, even though I don't usually have a good sense of what's being asked for either.
So I brought all that up with my adviser. I was terribly nervous about it. I worried that it would sound like I was being unduly negative about the professor. I worried that I will look inadequate to the task of taking the classes I need to for my major. I worried that a dropped class might look bad when I apply to grad school. I worried that I will be a disappointment, both to my adviser, my partners and family, and myself. I suppose I worry too much.
But the conversation was good, and many of these were issues with which my adviser was already familiar. Additional complication comes from the fact that we have a combined sociology/anthropology program here, and sociology does not overlap with anthropology nearly as much as many sociologists think that it does, and this professor is actually grounded more in education than in sociology anyway.
So I'm going to stay in one of her classes, 295. I'm going to drop the other class, 300, and take it with someone else another time. I feel really bad to let the guy I'm working on a project in 300 with down: the class was split into three groups of four people, five people, and two (he and I) to work on putting together a research project, and without me, my partner will be on his own. Hopefully she'll be able to do something to ameliorate the bind that will put him in (though given the other issues, I fear that she won't). But on top of the increased work load of this semester in general, having two classes where I don't really understand what's expected of me but, especially with 300, I know it's a lot, is making me stressy to a ridiculous extent. When I made the decision to drop the class, it was a huge relief.
Now I just need to focus on the small paper for my anthro class, the big paper for my history class, and the stats test I have tomorrow morning. After I get home at eleven, I'm probably going to spend an hour or so making sure I have formulas for percentages, rations, proportions, change over time, and other things in my head. Because, apparently, real statisticians are not allowed to use reference material while working?
I have another long rant about my stats class for this space, but since it's fifteen to quitting time, I'm going to start doing close-up tasks so I can get out of here on time.
---
I can't really write much about this on Facebook because I don't want to write about things under my real name that can easily be associated with the people being written about. It's one of the nice things about having anonymity on the internet; something that I will argue the necessity of 'till my dying day.
