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Right: it's my fault for not learning Mandarin to take calculus. And by the same logic, it's my fault for not figuring out how to cheat on all my exams. Schoo

Right: it's my fault for not learning Mandarin to take calculus. And by the same logic, it's my fault for not figuring out how to cheat on all my exams. Schools are for learning, not hazing. This kind of neglect can't be excused as some kafka-esque "character building" exercise.

HarryHirsch 13y ago
The point of a university is to master the subject by any means necessary, which includes building up your professional and social network. This point was impressed upon us in our first week at uni. We were encouraged by profs and TAs to set up informal learning groups, if we didn't we weren't going to cope with the pressure. I keep telling my students the same. I hate to say this, but it must be said: anyone who calls dealing with an incompetent TA "hazing" when he is at a genuine university like Berkeley has missed something. Didn't you have fellow students to talk to to be able to pass Calculus? I know there are not-universities, and anyone who passes through these is cheated, but Berkeley isn't among the not-universities.
- WalterSear 13y ago
  If you don't want to get it, I can't explain it to you.
dredmorbius 13y ago
I sympathize very strongly with your viewpoint (and had my own horror stories with both domestic and foreign instructors, some tenured, some TAs, as well as some very good ones). That said: among the most powerful and valuable lessons I learned in college, and ones I really wasn't prepared to even understand were part of the "curriculum" involved dealing with combative instructors (getting screamed at, in the locker room showers, while both of you are nude, by your professor is ... an interesting experience), or complete foulups in financial aid disbursement (calmly telling the woman who told me I'd have to call another department, which had just closed for the day, after I'd realized where the check I should have received a month before had ended up, what my demands were, and picking up their distribution the next afternoon, felt pretty good). Relationship ups and downs. Deaths in the family, of family of other students, of other students and friends. It's not like college was a war zone (though it had elements of that), but there were definitely some learning experiences. And a few skills I picked up, many of them outside my core coursework, or even any coursework, which I still practice daily now to great profit.

HarryHirsch 13y ago

The point of a university is to master the subject by any means necessary, which includes building up your professional and social network. This point was impressed upon us in our first week at uni. We were encouraged by profs and TAs to set up informal learning groups, if we didn't we weren't going to cope with the pressure. I keep telling my students the same. I hate to say this, but it must be said: anyone who calls dealing with an incompetent TA "hazing" when he is at a genuine university like Berkeley has missed something. Didn't you have fellow students to talk to to be able to pass Calculus? I know there are not-universities, and anyone who passes through these is cheated, but Berkeley isn't among the not-universities.

WalterSear 13y ago
If you don't want to get it, I can't explain it to you.

dredmorbius 13y ago

I sympathize very strongly with your viewpoint (and had my own horror stories with both domestic and foreign instructors, some tenured, some TAs, as well as some very good ones). That said: among the most powerful and valuable lessons I learned in college, and ones I really wasn't prepared to even understand were part of the "curriculum" involved dealing with combative instructors (getting screamed at, in the locker room showers, while both of you are nude, by your professor is ... an interesting experience), or complete foulups in financial aid disbursement (calmly telling the woman who told me I'd have to call another department, which had just closed for the day, after I'd realized where the check I should have received a month before had ended up, what my demands were, and picking up their distribution the next afternoon, felt pretty good). Relationship ups and downs. Deaths in the family, of family of other students, of other students and friends. It's not like college was a war zone (though it had elements of that), but there were definitely some learning experiences. And a few skills I picked up, many of them outside my core coursework, or even any coursework, which I still practice daily now to great profit.