i seem to expect that all university classes should be amazingly well taught and should totally change your life.

i must have gotten this from tv, but in real life, classes are taught by people and real people tend to be pretty messy.

but in my earlier post, i said, in not so many words, that i would rather suck goat balls than waste $2000 per class on an absolute moron, whose incompetence will surely cause me to despise the subject about which I’m supposed to be learning.

but there may be another solution.

(justin peers into his other personality)

is it possible that i could be nice?

maybe if i stopped expecting to be handed my education on a silver platter, i might find that I’d learn something *beyond* the scope of the class.

maybe if i approached my education as an active rather than passive thing and got involved creatively, i could remedy a sour situation.

meta analysis

hmmm. there is something unsettling about exposing my own self-criticism to the world. i intended it only to show how i was actively contemplating what in an earlier post came across as unabashed dogma. but now that it’s all hanging out there in the open, it makes me sounds false and weak. but maybe i think i seem false and weak because i identify with the male heterosexual gender, and all my life i’ve been conditioned by society to be strong and unwaveringly confident…

meta analysis mockery

…when all i want is to be able to cry!

i went to talk to my advisor about independent studies because there aren’t a terrible number of classes i’m interested in taking. one class i would like to take, web databases, is being taught by a particularly heinous instructor (and i don’t mean good heinous) who i suffered under last semester. in not so many words, i tried to clearly explain my aversion to taking web databases for that reason. it seems, though, this chunk of information fused in my advisor’s head with one of several things i had mentioned earlier in explaining why i have a class shortage in the first place: namely that i skipped some of the introductory graduate courses because they were too basic. this snippet of a remark must have hit a particularly exposed nerve, because it even overwhelmed my comment that i took all these post-introductory graduate classes to fulfill my undergraduate minor in information systems.

so those two pieces of information fuse and mix with what seems to be a prevailing attitude at sils*—basically the assumption that an individual who’s credentials appear technically advanced, diverse, and competent cannot at the same time have one iota of intellectual capacity or aptitude.

so what was the comment that sparked this diatribe?

“I’m just a little worried that by skipping these introductory courses, you missed out on some of the fundamental concepts that would have made database systems II more meaningful.”

bite the tongue, bite it, bite it!

my mother would be proud to hear, that in polite conversation, I blatheringly tried to emphasize that, no, the instructor really is bad, and that i had read the introductory tome front to back … and eventually the topic of conversation dissolves with the comment:

“so maybe you’ll just have to suck it up and take the class.”

(ha ha, laugh laugh)

truth be told, this advisor seems like a wonderful person, and I’m certain meant the comments above intending no offense whatsoever. regardless of intending no offense, this professor/advisor hit a large red hot button of mine: that you don’t know anything about me, that i come somewhat humbly to you seeking counsel, and you question whether i know anything at all, in such a way that implies I know nothing about a field I know more about than anything else. i would hate to be you reading this.

low brow bile

as this post is not presently polite conversation, i must admit i’m pretty pissed off. on one hand, every class costs me, out of my own pocket, over $2000. it seems that when my parents were footing the bill, a bum class or a bum teacher could be endured. but now you’re telling me i have to pay two grand to sit in a class and watch a bumbling fool manage to not teach a meaningful thing about a subject in which i have advanced technical experience, for an hour and fifteen minutes twice a week for sixteen weeks? did i also mention the obligatory sils torture of poorly structured group projects that this instructor will use to inevitably force us to do something majorly painful and useless with oracle? tell me again to “suck it up.”

if only you were so tragically misunderstood

on the other hand this advisor set a trap classic in those rarified academic circles. no one can genuinely refute that they don’t possess some basic fundamental knowledge about a field, certainly not on the spot. how am I supposed to excel in this environment? why do i have to waste my time explaining to other people (who get off thinking they’re better than me) that I know what I know—and that I don’t need you telling me what I don’t know, because I already know what I don’t know.

*the school of information and library science

“You will become more passionate and determined about your convictions.” — fortune cookie

so i’ve recently become fluent in the visual basic that underlies microsoft access, which means that my database applications are no longer limited by my technical knowledge–only by my creativity.

that’s a great and frightening thing. now i can do things using access that the people who designed it may never have conjured–but at the same time, any weaknesses in the programming will stem directly from lapses in my creativity and inspiration.

which led me to think about the cross-pollination (or contamination) that technical aptitude in any subject must have on the purity of creativity. that thought arose because i am quite conscious of the fact that visual basic for applications is not very well-admired. which begs the question, if i become competent in something ill-conceived, what will the lingering effects be on my creative abilities and mental foresight?

this led me to think about the core pedagogy of the school of information and library science (where i will formally begin my masters program this fall). sils, imho, does not much value technical prowess, due in part to the concern i posed above. instead, the classes try to convey “concepts”–which i would define as abstractions of pragmatism’s commingling with creativity.

the teaching of concepts avoids the problem of biasing a student towards one vendor or implementation of any technology (who’s time will undoubtedly pass), but yet acute technical knowledge, no matter how bastardized, can be like the legs on which creativity runs. no legs, no running. only thinking about running.

and there is a big difference between thinking about being creative, thinking about solving problems, and actually being creative. sure you can do it, building an elaborate house of cards in your mind, but what fun is that? it isn’t much because feedback is missing. when we get bad feedback, we investigate, we try to repair. when we get good feedback, we make things bigger, simpler, more elegant, more general.

and we don’t get much feedback from concepts. and you know what else? you don’t usually get concepts straight outta the ether. rather you extract and generalize concepts from the sum total of your current active experience.

i would say then, that sils’s pedagogy is totally backwards. education should be deeply rooted in the pragmatic–geared first towards building experiences and practicing creativity and then subtly towards garnering the abstract concepts which should underlie and strengthen (NOT overlie and suffocate) one’s learning.

i would also say then, to answer my original question, that my fluency in a disorganized creole is better than no fluency at all–on one condition: that i never entertain the impression that “the way i am doing things now” is the only way one would/should/could ever do such things. with that admission, my creativity ought to be quite safe enough.