by hilzoy
Sorry to have vanished for a few days; my students’ papers are due tomorrow, so in addition to the usual job, meetings, etc., I have been counseling people on how to improve their rough drafts. And then, on the one evening I had free, I decided to install Tiger on my computer. The installation itself was unbelievably easy and quick (they have the most wonderful Migration Assistant, which actually does what an assistant ought to do), but the cloning of my hard drive, and then the subsequent playing with the new OS, took lots of time.
But I am now in a position to say, authoritatively, that if any of you Windows people are feeling miffed at Microsoft for that dreadful OS all those viruses and all that spyware paying Ralph Reed $20,000 a month, now would be an excellent time to get a Mac. Tiger is really, really good. Blazingly fast, full of fun and interesting features that I have not begun to explore — all this and support for arbitrarily extensible file system metadata too. Plus, it’s very, very pretty. And we have no viruses, no spyware, and I can’t remember the last time my computer crashed.
I’m going off to see my new nephew tomorrow, and I don’t know what my web access situation will be. When I come back, I’ll be guest-blogging on Majikthise (crossposting here). But I hope to write something before I leave.
For now, though, consider this an open thread.
Hilzoy…I just wanted to say that I share your pain…my students’ papers are due in just over an hour and I’ve been helping with rough drafts as well. Joyous times, really. Good luck with those.
Pah. Macs.
Linux. Know thine operating system; own the source code.
Welcome back, hilzoy. I downloaded your book today; have to use %$@$ Microsoft Reader, though, and…well, I can’t read it just now due to technical difficulties. Damn.
Hilzoy,
Does the ethical aspects of paper grading and such get to you? I have to get Japanese students to write papers for kaigai kenshu, and I’m always baffled by the whole aspect of grading papers. They have levels of ability and motivation all over the map, some resort to methods of writing that are guaranteed to produce bad results, but don’t know any other way, even when it is laid out in front of them. Some could write a decent paper if they were guided, but to do that means being unfair to other students (this is because the idea of rewarding those students who actually come and seek me out is impossible to carry out because Japanese students have a difficult time understanding that they can come and ask questions). This, coupled with the fact that grades don’t seem to have the same import here always leaves me completely befuddled. I realize that you don’t have the same strictures, but how do you cope?
lj: first, I should say that lucky me has TAs now, so I don’t actually have to grade this semester, which is great since grading is the only part of teaching that I really hate. That said: part of the reason I hate grading is because I hate giving bad grades, and don’t particularly like the whole idea of judging other people’s work, when those other people are not published writers (who should know better than to say stupid things), but befuddled undergrads. (The non-befuddled ones, of course, being fun to comment on.) On the other hand, I hate grade inflation, and I think it’s unfair both to the students, who deserve honest feedback, and also to whoever uses grades to decide whether to admit them to grad school, give them a job, etc. So:
My way of dealing with this is just to spend as much time as I have to doing whatever I can to make it possible for them to do well if they want to. I read rough drafts, I meet with students to talk things through; if it would help, I would dress up in a clown suit and try turning handsprings. (Luckily, this has never seemed necessary.) This both helps them and lets me grade them down with a reasonably clear conscience if they deserve it.
This is predicated on the assumption that I’m operating in a system in which I can grade fairly, however, and in which I think that the grades do in fact reflect my students’ work. It sounds as though this is less clear in your situation. If they don’t understand that they can ask questions, I recommend two things.
First, make it sound as though they’d be doing you a favor. I routinely explain that this is something I do to salve my conscience, but also go on about the boredom of sitting in office hours, playing freecell (more accurately: blogging), thinking about how much more fun it would be if someone actually showed up. I tell them I will not be thinking deep thoughts at this time, and ask them to think about how many deep thoughts they’d be thinking if they knew that at any moment someone might stop by. Etc. This has (for me) the advantage of being true.
Second, if you have the time, schedule appointments with all of them after each paper (or whatever exercise you use), or at least after the first one, and have the first one early. If you force them to come in the first time, then not only will they get something out of it (feedback), but they may find it easier later, if you have a good talk with them.
I guess I’d also say: explain very clearly what you expect of them: how to write a paper, etc. In intro classes, I usually devote an entire class to the fascinating question “what is a philosophy paper, and how do you write one?” In the course of this, I mention various paper-writing techniques many of them have been taught in high school, and why most of them are bad. It also helps if you have several examples of what you’re looking for (several so that they don’t get fixated on the wrong details of one), and of course it’s good to go over the mistakes that students in previous iterations of the class tend to make.
Slarti: as I said earlier, you are a brave guy. Feel free to email if any of it doesn’t make sense. Sorry about the technical difficulties; you do realize why it’s funny to read that in the same comment as: “Linux. Know thine operating system; own the source code”, right? 😉
In case anyone is lurking here. I believe I’ve solved the mystery concerning where Cheney got the phrase that Edward posted about below. I think it puts it into quite another perspective, IMNHO. Please excuse my comment ho-ing.
Oh man, hilzoy, I’m a writing instructor at this point of my grad student subservience; I do all of those things (except the literal clown suit), I teach nothing but writing tricks and techniques, and they still turn in well-meaning, diligently produced dreck. It is taking me forever to turn around their big essay assignment. I’ve promised them for tomorrow afternoon, though, and I think I’ll make it.
hilzoy, you do know about the religious connotation of this post’s title?
rilkefan: yikes! What’s odd is that not only did I unwittingly invoke that religion, it also seems to be one long pun on my last name. Very odd.
Jackmormon: yeah, I know. I recommend two things, which you probably already do some version of (not that anything really works): (a) read them the passage from Orwell’s Politics and the English Language
Tell them that pretentious writing is a form of cowardice, aimed at disguising their thoughts so that they (thoughts) don’t have to appear all naked and puny; but that you are trained to see through this and will not be fooled. Add that the one person who might be fooled is the person who writes pretentiously, i.e. them; note how obvious what needs to be argued for is in Orwell’s translation of his passage, and how un-obvious it is in the ‘While freely conceding…’ version, which sounds as though it had settled the matter until you think about it. If they write like that, they might mislead themselves. Bad.
Second thing: I find that a lot of them have the idea that there is something called “writing a philosophy paper” (or whatever your discipline is), and they don’t know what it is, so they try to do something that might either be this strange thing, or sound impressive enough that I won’t notice. So I tell them that there is no such thing, and (since that would never work if I just said it) compare it to junior high, when I spent ages thinking that there was a special “way of talking to guys” that everyone knew about but me, and trying to figure out what it was. People would say “they’re just people, talk to them normally”, and I would think: well, that must be in the secret code that everyone else knows, too. And only years later did I have the revelation: oh, they’re people; I should talk to them normally!
— Where of course the relevant point of similarity is: the hard part is figuring out that there is no code book, and it is all simple. This is the best metaphor for this that I’ve been able to come up with. Plus, it’s fresh in their memories, and lends itself to humor. It’s especially good for philosophy, since the hard part really is getting them to see that ALL you have to do to write a good philosophy paper is make a good, sound argument; there is really nothing else, and in particular no annoying “way of writing a philosophy paper”.
By the way, Cat’s Cradle is one of the funniest, angriest, and shortest novels I’ve ever read.
By the way, Cat’s Cradle is one of the funniest, angriest, and shortest novels I’ve ever read.
I’ve always been fond of Breakfast of Champions. And so on.
A few days ago I was looking up an article by Mark Danner (a gem of a journalist btw) and poking around his website I saw that he was recently on a panel discussion with John Yoo, and Tom Farer, an professor of international human rights law (I hadn’t heard of him before).
There is a real player video of the discussion and it’s really worth your while.
Some highlights (all of these are in the Q&A part towards the end):
The audience laughed at John Yoo when he said something about how the administrations torture policies (I forgot his euphemistic circumlocution) where formulated in light of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, well before there was any thought of there being a war in Iraq. (I guess he doesn’t read the papers so he didn’t notice that inconvenient memo–oops, my bad, it’s not in our papers either).
Then two things from Tom Farer, who I found very impressive.
1. This was news to me.
When the administration first put forth rules on military tribunals he was immediately struck by one thing in particular. He had served with some international HR org investigating the crimes of the Argentine junta’ and he said it was the only other time he’d ever seen the same thing. Before the junta just decided to outright kill its victims (very many by drugging them then throwing them into the South Atlantic from military aircraft) they set up a system of military tribunals. Detainees were only permitted to be represented by active-duty military defense attorneys. Even if the detainees defense attorney was a retired three star general it would not be permitted. And this is what the Bush administration first tried to get away with.
2. This was chilling.
He said that one of the generals in the junta expressed this sentiment: “First, we’ll kill all the subversives. Then, we’ll kill all those who supported the subversives. Then, we’ll kill everyone who didn’t support us.”
Description and link to real player vid here:
May 2,2005
International Law, Human Rights,
and the War on Terrorism
(scroll down to May 2 to find link)
VIDEO
Mark Danner debates John C. Yoo
And Tom Farer, UC-Berkeley
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/911/courses/nuts&bolts.html
rilkefan–
“one of the funniest, angriest, and shortest novels I’ve ever read”
I’m delighted that in your vocabulary, high praise is conferred by calling something “funny, angry, and short”. Some of my best friends, too….
hilzoy–
“And only years later did I have the revelation: oh, they’re people; I should talk to them normally!”
you should also consider the possibility that it was only years after junior high that the boys were people. At least in my case, there were quite a few years there when normal talk would have been wasted on me.
Thanks for all of the paper-writing advice, though–I agree with all of it, and should try some of it.
Thanks much for your thoughts. Obviously, the situation here doesn’t permit some of your suggestions, but a number of points could be reasonably adapted. I often go for a vibe of ‘Don’t do this because you feel like you owe me, do it because you’ve decided it will help you’. Unfortunately, this often can come off as (and shade into) ‘I really don’t care what you do, I’m only going to help the people who want to improve’.
Pretention is not a problem here, the bigger problem is that my students don’t understand that they are writing to someone and they are supposed to have something to say to them. Thus, they will repeat themselves and then make huge leaps.
Grade inflation is a huge problem (though I am fortunate that I am at a university that lets me fail students, at some universities, you are not permitted to fail students, and have to provide them with multiple chances to retake exams or to make up missed work)
Plagiarism is also very big, as is plugging Japanese into a translation web page and getting some comprehensible English, but completely unreflective of the student’s ability.
To share what I’ve been doing, I force early choices of paper topics (a common ploy among weaker students is to not do any work, then ask for a change of topic, with the assumption being that a new topic will have words flowing from the pen) I also ask the students to present a timeline of when they plan to finish various aspects of the paper.
Bizarrely enough, there seems to be a special way of presenting arguments for foreigners, and this is the source of great problems. The Japanese essay format is something called ki-sho-ten-ketsu, which is rather at odds with the standard western form of argumentation, so rather than claiming that there is not a separate way of writing an English research paper, I have to tell them that in fact, there is a special way.
A second thing that I do, in my writing classes, is that I ask them to write movie reviews that first summarize what happened in the movie and then elaborate their feelings about the movie. This is sort of a boot camp for meaning, because if they screw up, it is very easy to point out why, if this essay had truely represented the movie, it would have stopped dead in its tracks.
Anyway, thanks again, I certainly envy your students.
Don’t be a fool! Close this page at once! It is nothing but foma!
Yeah, I do. I can harbor two linearly independent sets of distaste, can I not?
Hilzoy, you’ll enjoy what I found here. Not only is Tiger’s support of metadata amazing, it takes a stance in the Kantian-Cartesian “existence cannot be predicated” debate! Now *that’s* what I want from an operating system.
Seriously, Tiger rocks. Playing with it cost me a whole day at work.
LJ, a fellow writing teacher gave me a phrase that I’ll found particularly helpful for my Asian international students not familiar with Western argumentation: “Why are you telling me this?” It can seem somewhat aggressive if not presented tactfully, but it can help them clarify the relevance of their major claims and the logic of their transitions…
Hilzoy, I do use the Orwell, but there again, I worry: Orwell demands such hyper-self-consciousness that stressing the “cowardliness of pretention” can freeze students up entirely. Your line about talking normally to boys is great.
It’s funny to see that your pieces of advice involve one weighty injunction of moral seriousness and one reassurance that this writing stuff isn’t so hard. I find more and more that half of my teaching duties involve managing (provoking, calming, redirecting) my students’ anxieties…
lj, my first year in college, some instructors would ask for step by step milestones. Submit your topic. Submit your outline. Submit your sources. Submit your first draft.
Aargh. I’ve been putting off buying Tiger, since Panther never ceased to be outstanding, and I’m generally loath to part with money, but everybody still keeps giving it such glowing reviews, I might have to go ahead and order it. Of course, the part that really broke my will was when I found out it has a built-in dictionary. I can finally break my dependancy on dictionary.com.
By the way, Quicktime 7.0 is truly phenomenal. If you have the bandwidth and the screen space, download the HD movie trailers Apple has posted on their website which were encoded with the new H.264 codec. The files are large, but the quality is superb. Feel free to skip the “Fantastic Four” trailer, of course. No codec could that make look good.
Gromit: Spotlight is everything they say and more. When I first upgraded, I was playing with all the fun new features, and didn’t notice that it was indexing my entire hard drive. Then I decided to try it, and did a search for ‘Kant’, which as you might imagine I have a lot of, and before I hit ‘return’ it had come up with all 739 relevant files, including every Kant class entered in my calendar, for instance. Dazzling. And I have not begun to take advantage of the smart folders, which I can see will completely change the way I think about files. And the dictionary thing is great.
Gromit:
I saw those trailers. You say they were large files, but what blew me away was that they look great full-screen AND YET they practically streamed into my computer (after a very short buffer time.) Now I have a cable connection, but certainly not anything that special. I have a feeling the much ballyhooed TV/Computer convergence might be closer at hand than is commonly assumed.
wagster: I’ve actually played around with the H.264 codec a bit since installing QT7, and at 100% quality, the compression artifacts are invisible, yet file sizes are a tiny fraction of the uncompressed file size (an old bit of animation I had on my hard drive went from 2.8 GB to 83 MB, about 1/26 the original size and was still, IMO, broadcast quality). You can see a little bit of color simplification around sharp borders, but I had to lay one movie over the other and toggle back and forth to actually notice the difference.
hilzoy: I’m pretty much sold at this point. Amazon has a $50 rebate on the family pack, which is a pretty good deal.
Yeah, I do. I can harbor two linearly independent sets of distaste, can I not?
Slarti contains multitudes.
Link to that Amazon offer if anyone wants it. Just be sure to buy from Amazon, not from a third-party partner, if you want the rebate.
“Linux. Know thine operating system; own the source code.”
You know, both FreeBSD version OSX is built on and Darwin are open source. Doing a kernel upgrade on a Mac is probably non-trivial, but isn’t it always? Just sayin’.
Since the thread is open, anyone else notice that the Real ID act passed the House yesterday? You know, the one that creates an electronically readable national ID card? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot happened to all the conservatives? Are we truly so pants-peed with fear of terrorists that we will sacrifice any piece of America to escape it? The world is dangerous. Get used to it. National ID cards are horrible.
And more open threaddishness. I realized this morning that I have an Idahoan pronunciation of ‘during’. I pronounce it ‘dearing’ and never really noticed before. I add this to ‘crick’ for ‘creek’. And I still append redundant prepositions. . like ‘where are the keys at’? I mercifully avoided ‘warsh’, which identifies you as a 12th level hick in ‘Warshington’. Now I’m going to keep a list.
sidereal,
I’ve noticed more of my local pronunciation flaws, as I hear them back from my 2 year old. I have the stereotypical Philly ones, such as “warter” instead of water and “down the shore” when going to the beach. At least I don’t say ateetude instead of attitude.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the home of “the shorter you-name-it.”
I pronounce it ‘dearing’ and…
my wife is merciless about the way i pronounce “frog”, “jog” and “fog”. for some reason, i pronounce the “o” and “ah”; so for just those three words i sound like i’m from Bahston or Rahchester (NY). everytime i say one of them she mocks or corrects me.
You want embarassing accents? I was raised in California. My father still has a yokel Canadian accent. I’ve been living in New York for a while now, but always with a very very English roommate.
“Dude, aboot that cawfee? It’s a’right then, eh? Cheers!”
Not all at once like that, usually. But over the course of a class period? Always. I’ve gotten some just outraged student responses to my accent.
anyone else notice that the Real ID act passed the House yesterday?
Yeah, I did. Unhappy ain’t the word. But, it’s doubtful this’ll affect Congressperson Pelosi’s re-election next year. I couldn’t find anything about her thoughts on the matter. I’d guess she supports it, given that her base here probably would support holding up the funding in question. Ugh.