![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Sep. 3rd, 2004 12:20 pmSo much for being useful this morning. Oh well. At least I got the dishes done.
I'm in an odd mood today. It's leaning toward the bad end of odd, and I'm not sure what to do about it. Half of me wants to go tire myself out doing something physical, and the other half wants to wait it out and see if it goes away by itself.
Advanced French Composition is another mixed undergrad and graduate class. It's interesting how that changes the dynamics. For instance, grad students take it for granted that you go to class, and if you're deathly ill or have some sort of emergency, you leave a message for the professor and it's all copacetic. In mixed classes, there's a lot more explanation of excused absences and unexcused absences and how many of which you're allowed.
I was thinking last night about language classes in general. In high school it didn't matter; people took languages because they had to, and blew off as much of the class as possible. (I blew them off because they were easy for me. I could seem to be doing something entirely else and still come up with a right answer when the teacher tried to nail me for not paying attention. I was the exception, though.) I wouldn't teach high school language classes unless I was desperate, because getting past the massive indifference would wear me out in a hurry. In college, it's different. I did have language classes with people who were only taking the class because they had to, but after a certain level, people take language classes because they want to. Even if you're taking a language class because it's a requirement for the major, that's different than taking it because the curriculum says you must have X hours of foreign languages in four years. Once you've decided to major in it, you've committed yourself to a certain level of interest.
So what does that all mean? Not a whole lot, other than the fact that I enjoy classes a lot more when the other people taking the class are as interested in the subject matter as I am. That doesn't mean we don't complain, but complaining is a lot different than just filling a seat because somebody said we have to.
I'm in an odd mood today. It's leaning toward the bad end of odd, and I'm not sure what to do about it. Half of me wants to go tire myself out doing something physical, and the other half wants to wait it out and see if it goes away by itself.
Advanced French Composition is another mixed undergrad and graduate class. It's interesting how that changes the dynamics. For instance, grad students take it for granted that you go to class, and if you're deathly ill or have some sort of emergency, you leave a message for the professor and it's all copacetic. In mixed classes, there's a lot more explanation of excused absences and unexcused absences and how many of which you're allowed.
I was thinking last night about language classes in general. In high school it didn't matter; people took languages because they had to, and blew off as much of the class as possible. (I blew them off because they were easy for me. I could seem to be doing something entirely else and still come up with a right answer when the teacher tried to nail me for not paying attention. I was the exception, though.) I wouldn't teach high school language classes unless I was desperate, because getting past the massive indifference would wear me out in a hurry. In college, it's different. I did have language classes with people who were only taking the class because they had to, but after a certain level, people take language classes because they want to. Even if you're taking a language class because it's a requirement for the major, that's different than taking it because the curriculum says you must have X hours of foreign languages in four years. Once you've decided to major in it, you've committed yourself to a certain level of interest.
So what does that all mean? Not a whole lot, other than the fact that I enjoy classes a lot more when the other people taking the class are as interested in the subject matter as I am. That doesn't mean we don't complain, but complaining is a lot different than just filling a seat because somebody said we have to.
