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Oct. 25th, 2007 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseA bit of a breather; we had final crit for the first project on Tuesday, and while I wasn't anywhere near Final, over the weekend I got far enough that the final concept can be seen from here. So I took Tuesday night and last night totally off, and did not stay at the university or return to it. I watched Heroes and The Sarah Jane Adventures, played video games, and was essentially mindless.
I might have been working on an essay (More of a book report, really, and even the prof admitted it) instead, which would have been a different kind of intellectual actual stimulation, but:
I dropped History of Canada. Not because there was anything inherently wrong with the subject matter; if anything, it promised to be more interesting than you might expect. But the teacher's quirks in teaching method grated on me worse and worse. One example is that she has small group discussions in virtually every class that isn't watching a video, most of which involve nothing more than regurgitating 90% objective facts straight out of the lectures and the textbooks, propping up the people who didn't pay attention or read by the people who did, and things where the discussion only became remotely interesting with the whole class involved. More, however, her lectures were so focused on social history that the facts and retails of what happened were getting buried.
I *like* social history. I like getting the daily lives of ordinary people as well as the battles and major events. I like hearing about minorities and women and working class people. (the book we had to read for the first essay, about slavery in Canada and the Montreal fire of 1734, was definitely social history, and would have been riveting, rather than just damn good, if it were slightly less repetitious.) But not to the exclusion of all other forms of history. Not to the point where I know nothing about the War of 1812 except the name of one general and a few root causes, because we're too busy talking about the ordinary people of the time and their discontents. (The aforementioned book, for instance, was all about black slavery in Canada and the particular event of this fire and the girl hung for it, but also gave a general history of black slavery from its beginnings, details on and merchant class New France, economic history regarding trade ties between Portugal, Flanders, and the Dutch, and their respective colonies, of the fur trade, and a whole whack of other subject that interconnected, to give a 3 dimensional picture not possible without the factual history as well as the personal.
and... I don't need the credit. But the *time* doesn't hurt. It puts me at the university, at a time when it's not really feasible to go to the pottery building, but where it is feasible to get to one of the computer labs. Which, since I haven't been visiting my computer at home nearly so much, is actually needed. (I've been doing dribs and drabs of writing and editing, to feel like I'm keeping my hand in, no more than that, even though the Cultural Anthropology class keeps feeding me tidbits and hooks.)
So now I have two days a week where I'm *obligated* to be at the computer for an hour and a bit. When my prime urge these days seems to be to stay late at the pottery class, or come in on my days off, this is like a good kick in the pants.
I might have been working on an essay (More of a book report, really, and even the prof admitted it) instead, which would have been a different kind of intellectual actual stimulation, but:
I dropped History of Canada. Not because there was anything inherently wrong with the subject matter; if anything, it promised to be more interesting than you might expect. But the teacher's quirks in teaching method grated on me worse and worse. One example is that she has small group discussions in virtually every class that isn't watching a video, most of which involve nothing more than regurgitating 90% objective facts straight out of the lectures and the textbooks, propping up the people who didn't pay attention or read by the people who did, and things where the discussion only became remotely interesting with the whole class involved. More, however, her lectures were so focused on social history that the facts and retails of what happened were getting buried.
I *like* social history. I like getting the daily lives of ordinary people as well as the battles and major events. I like hearing about minorities and women and working class people. (the book we had to read for the first essay, about slavery in Canada and the Montreal fire of 1734, was definitely social history, and would have been riveting, rather than just damn good, if it were slightly less repetitious.) But not to the exclusion of all other forms of history. Not to the point where I know nothing about the War of 1812 except the name of one general and a few root causes, because we're too busy talking about the ordinary people of the time and their discontents. (The aforementioned book, for instance, was all about black slavery in Canada and the particular event of this fire and the girl hung for it, but also gave a general history of black slavery from its beginnings, details on and merchant class New France, economic history regarding trade ties between Portugal, Flanders, and the Dutch, and their respective colonies, of the fur trade, and a whole whack of other subject that interconnected, to give a 3 dimensional picture not possible without the factual history as well as the personal.
and... I don't need the credit. But the *time* doesn't hurt. It puts me at the university, at a time when it's not really feasible to go to the pottery building, but where it is feasible to get to one of the computer labs. Which, since I haven't been visiting my computer at home nearly so much, is actually needed. (I've been doing dribs and drabs of writing and editing, to feel like I'm keeping my hand in, no more than that, even though the Cultural Anthropology class keeps feeding me tidbits and hooks.)
So now I have two days a week where I'm *obligated* to be at the computer for an hour and a bit. When my prime urge these days seems to be to stay late at the pottery class, or come in on my days off, this is like a good kick in the pants.
