Classroom Etiquette

During class last Tuesday night the professor concluded the lecture with five minutes to go.  She asked if anyone had any questions, and if not, said that we would be adjourned. From next to me my friend asked Dr. Y a question, which she began to answer when one of our classmates got up, put on his backpack and started for the door.  The prof had to instruct him that class was not yet over, which stopped him in his tracks, but rather than taking his seat, he just stood there and looked annoyed. While my friend and Dr. Y discussed her question, another of our classmates began stuffing her notebook and pens into her backpack, making quite a bit of racket, which we all ignored.

Now I realize it was nearly 9:00 p.m. and everyone was probably tired, but where is the respect for the class and the professor?  When I was an undergraduate, a professor once gave one of my classes a lecture about putting their things up before class was out.  He said that it’s disruptive and disrespectful, that we had plenty of time to put our things away after the lecture.  He was right and since then it’s something that has always stuck with me because it happens too often and is too difficult to ignore.  When five minutes to the end of class comes everyone starts getting restless, fidgeting, and packing up when the class is still in session.  Okay, undergrads shouldn’t do it (even though they always do), but grad students should absolutely never do this!  By the time you’re a graduate student you’re supposed to know that it’s disrespectful.  Apparently, my classmates haven’t been informed that graduate students should be held to a higher standard.

The thing is, they’re both very non-traditional students.  I like being a graduate student more than I did an undergrad because now, unlike then, I’m surrounded with people more my age.  Yes, there are students in the program who’re early twenties, but most of my cohorts are my age or older.  It’s encouraging to be engaged in academic discourse with people who’re not 10+ years my junior.  That said, the man who got up and tried to leave class is well beyond me in years.  He’s at least mid-50′s and is so incredibly rude, something I could overlook if he weren’t so, well, aggravating.  I like to think that I’m someone who takes the thoughts and opinions of others into account, that I think about what they’re saying and give them a reasonable amount of due.  Where this guy is concerned, it’s impossible to do the same because he’s so far off topic all the time.  Every time he opens his mouth, I die a little inside. I hate to admit it, but it’s true.  The other person, the one who was packing up and making a lot of noise, she’s more my age but isn’t very friendly either.  Rather, she does things to try to manipulate her way though the system. It’s bad enough they’re disruptive and unproductive during class time, why do they need to be rude and petty, too?  It boggles the mind.

I think, perhaps, I’m noticing it more now than ever before because of my job.  Working with undergraduate writers, particularly those in the remedial writing system, is eye-opening.  Most of them are either fresh out of high school, where they slipped through the system thanks to ‘No Child Left Behind,’ or they’re non-trads with a chip on their shoulder because they think they’re too good to be in remedial writing.  In these mindsets, where they’re babied or too-grown-up, they completely lack an understanding of decorum.  They don’t seem to understand that in the classroom, there are expectations and boundaries.  That some behaviors are appropriate, while others are certainly not.  They sit and look at Facebook or text their friends during class.  They talk when the instructor’s are talking, they try to skip labs because they’ve got it in their heads that they don’t need it, that it’s pointless hoop-jumping meant to make their lives difficult.  Rather, this is college and in college we exercise a modicum of professional etiquette.

Yet, I wonder, how can we expect undergrads to behave themselves when grad students wont?  Graduate students are held to a higher standard, but when they don’t adhere to those standards, expecting better from 18 year old’s seems unfair.  Ultimately, I feel like those who cannot behave shouldn’t be welcomed in the classroom, at any level, but especially at the graduate level.  If they don’t want to be there, they should stay home.  It takes less than two minutes to put your things in your bag and fish out your keys, so why not wait until class is over.  Why does it matter if you get out at 9:00 or 9:02?  It doesn’t, that’s clearly the answer.  It’s just so sad when those at the graduate level can’t show a drop of respect for their classmates and the Ph.D teaching the course.  We owe them (one another and ourselves) respect, I just wish that those around me could see that, too.

Easier Said Than Done

When I began this blog, not at all long ago, I imagined it being a place to discuss the day to day life of a graduate student working as a graduate assistant.  In the intervening weeks, since school began at the end of August, I have been so remarkably busy that I’ve hardly had time for sleep, let alone blogging.  My imagination may have run away with me in envisioning what I would do with this blog, I exercised more optimism than I’ve ever been able to muster in considering what I might write.  The truth is, I’m exhausted.  Going to graduate school full time, and working what amounts to a full-time job, though it’s only supposed to be 20 hours a week, is exhausting.

I wanted to talk about work, about the students and the situations I’m experiencing, but I’m afraid.  There’s this ethical gap I’m trying to see my way across.  It’s a mine field of allowed and disallowed, which I’m trying to quietly navigate.  If I discuss the students, their work, or the way they write and behave, I could lose my job.  I could omit their names, which is a no-brainer, but should it ever be discovered, well, it could cause me quite the ordeal.  To discuss something like students, which is confidential, is unethical.  It’s true that this blog is anon, the students would be anon, the professors, likewise anon, but we all know that what goes online isn’t completely anonymous.  Nothing we put out there is truly a secret.  It all comes down to the likelihood that my identity would be discovered.  I just don’t know.

What I do know is, for now, I’m exhausted.  I’ve been working since 7:30am.  It’s now 10:30pm and I’m just finishing up my homework.  Tomorrow, it’s back to work at 9:00 a.m., back to the drawing board.  Thankfully, I only work from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Wednesdays.  I get an afternoon off, but need to spend it doing my homework or cleaning my house.  It would seem, in addition to working and going to school, the fact that I’m not a traditional student, and that I have a husband, means I have to keep my house clean, too.  I’m hardly ever here to make the messes, but they’re made nonetheless.  Right now, my house looks like a tornado blew through here.

Off to bed before my eyes close right here.  Good night.

Fall 2010 Book List

The book lists for my courses have become available and let me tell you, I feel like calling myself a “graceless grad student” is an understatement right now.  I am going to be reading, and writing, a heck of a lot in the coming four months as I stumble through my first real semester of graduate school.  I call it the first “real” semester because though I’ve taken nine hours (three courses) in all, it hasn’t been in one semester.  I took one class in Fall 2009, when I was still an undergraduate, and two classes during the Spring 2010 semester, but this will be the first semester when I attempt nine hours all at once.  Its also the first semester of my four semester graduate cycle.

I thought I’d share what’s to come, so you have a taste of what I have in store for me.

Course: Early Modern & Restoration Drama (Dr. Y)

• The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd)
• Dr. Faustus: With the English Faust Book (Christopher Marlowe)
• Twelfth Night: Texts and Contexts (William Shakespeare)
• Antony and Cleopatra (William Shakespeare)
• The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster)
• Bartholomew Fair (Ben Jonson)
• ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore (John Ford)
• The Country Wife (William Wycherly)
• All for Love (John Dryden)
• The Rover (Aphra Behn)
• The Way of the World (William Congreve)

Course: Studies in Rhetoric (Dr. M)

• The Rhetorical Tradition, 2nd ed. (Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg)
• The Responsibilities of Rhetoric (Eds. Michelle Smith and Barbara Warnick)

Course: Problems Course: British History to 1603 (Dr. S)

• The Story of Britain (Norton)
• New Worlds, Lost Worlds: the Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603 (Susan Brigden)
• The English Renaissance: Identity and Representation in Elizabethan England (Alistair Fox)
• Intrigue and Treason: The Tudor Court, 1547 – 1558 (D.M. Loades)
• Pleasures & Pastimes in Tudor England (Alison Sim)
• The First Queen of England: the Myth of “Bloody Mary” (Linda Porter)

Let me add that up for you, that’s 19 books!!  In all fairness, I don’t have to read two of them from cover to cover, but the rest I do. Very much looking forward to jumping in and learning about all of these works. I’m absolutely giddy about the Early Modern & Restoration Drama class for several reasons.  First, my favorite professor is teaching the course.  She’s the head of my graduate committee and before that I took her every time I could as an undergrad which means I took her a lot.  Second, this topic applies directly to what I’m doing for my thesis.  As a matter of fact, all of my classes apply to my thesis in some relevant way. The first as a drama class, the second as a rhetoric which will study classical thought and the last for the same reason as the first. I simply cannot wait!  I’ve never been so excited about school starting!!

The books for that last class are subject to change, all except The Story of Britain which is the core book.  I chose the others, but haven’t gotten approval yet, so I’m not 100% certain those will be the ones I’ll be reading.  I’ll update this list if those aren’t the ones… which I suppose means they will be the ones, depending on when I update this.  Okay, that may not have made sense anywhere but in my head.

For now, I’m off to price books.  Good evening.

New Graduate Student Orientation

I got an email invitation to the new graduate student orientation with the English department at my university today.  I’ve been waiting for the email because school starts on the 30th, so finally getting it is a relief, but it’s also provoked a fair amount of fear. This won’t exactly be my first semester as a graduate student, though it will technically be the first semester of my two years of study, and though I shouldn’t be afraid, I am. I just keep telling myself it’s just an orientation, it’s not classes, nor is an opportunity for them to judge me.  Rather, it’s a chance to get to know my fellow graduate students, the graduate faculty, and learn about the program expectations. I’m still afraid.

The problem isn’t the orientation, it’s that the orientation means school’s starting soon. School starting soon means the assistantship is starting soon. The assistantship means ignoring my psychological barriers and pushing forward.  I have a touch of agoraphobia, I’m terrified to speak in front of people, but to be successful at the assistantship, I have to overcome my fears and that’s not something I’m good at. I signed up for it, I’m up for the challenge, but that doesn’t make me anymore less afraid.

I’m still waiting for the email about the graduate assistant orientation, hopefully that will come soon, too. Until then, I have the new graduate student orientation to obsess about. The luncheon and orientation is Thursday, August 26th from noon to three o’clock and I’m filled with questions about how things will go.  My brain does this thing where I imagine things far worse than the truth and then I freak out until the truth presents itself. Add that to my list of minor neuroses. To top it all off, I have absolutely nothing to wear!

Assigning Blame

My best girlfriend has been a graduate assistant for the last year. One day, while talking during lunch, she related to me that one of the professors had been having a problem with a student’s parents coming in to his office to complain about what the class was reading. Apparently, they objected to the reading list and leveled all sorts of threats at him.  When your “kid” is a 20 year old college student is it really necessary to yell at their teachers?  Apparently so, and it got me thinking… is this a regular problem?  One of my professors, who use to be the head of the English department, says so. He use to have all sorts of parents coming into his office to complain about their kid’s grades.

Then today, while stumbling* I came across this and thought I’d share…

While the people in the cartoon are the parents of a child, the point remains the same. The moral of the story is clearly this: When little Johnny (20 years old or not) comes home with a bad grade, assign the blame where it belongs, with little Johnny and not his poor overworked, under paid teachers or professors.

~Kay

*Stumbling: (v.)  the act of using StumbleUpon to browse the web for sites of interest.