I can’t find my camera. This really really bums me out.
Oh, and it’s snowing like crazy here. Bee-tee-dubs. Living in VA during snow is hilarious/terrifying because no one knows how to react to it. Everyone forgets how to drive and the day before people go to the grocery store IN DROVES to get bread and milk so as not to starve. And they better because it takes ages to clear the roads. Ah, good ol’ VA.
Have you ever been having a conversation with someone and realized you’re coming from two completely different ways of thinking and sets of assumptions? Where do you go from there? How do you reconcile the differences? Is it possible? More to come later. Possibly.
My friends and I are doing Secret Santas and I’m terrible at keeping secrets. Especially secrets I’m excited about. Especially when it’s Theory who’s name I drew. I think she knows. Sigh.
Dear Korean Professor,
I am writing this here because I fear that if I don’t let it all out here, I’ll end up saying something I regret on my end-of-year course evaluations.
I hate the way you run our class. There is a distinct difference between teaching and reading the book to the class. You do not teach. In now way could anyone call what you do “teaching.” Flashing a powerpoint on the screen and then flipping through them at lightning speed doesn’t help. Have you noticed how we all basically quit taking notes? There’s no point. And if we can’t read the slides fast enough, do you think we’re actually learning anything?
Here’s my problem. I feel like you don’t give a shit. That’s the general impression I get. You don’t really give a shit if we’re actually learning anything. You do your part, “teaching,” and that’s all you have to do. It’s completely up to us to do the learning, and it doesn’t matter if your teaching style is not conducive to any sort of understanding. If we don’t understand, oh well, come to office hours or ask a friend. The office hours thing might be a good idea if the thought of having to talk to you one on one and explain why I don’t understand didn’t make me want to scream my head off at you. I cannot stand the thought of talking to you; if I were, I might lose my patience and say something I regret.
So you think your only responsibility is to do your “job” – hand out quizzes, give out exercises (that you don’t give nearly enough time to complete), and make powerpoints. And you feel like you’re doing a good job, I mean, a lot of the kids seems to understand it pretty well, right? So why change anything.
But you see, those students getting A’s ALREADY FUCKING SPEAK KOREAN. Their A’s aren’t a testament to your marvelous teaching skills, but rather to their PARENTS who already taught them Korean. They come to the class with a whole repertoire of vocabulary and grammar knowledge. They may not be perfect, but there is still a general understanding of the language. I would say that over half of the class came to school already speaking Korean. That leaves the rest of us not knowing what the shit is going on.
But you’re already a great teacher! See all the A’s! See how well they write? Speak? If other students don’t understand, they need to work harder, come to more office hours, get a friend to study with. That’s your fucking solution – partner up with a student who already knows Korean. And on the surface it’s a wonderful, logical idea. But here’s the thing – students aren’t teachers. Their job is not to teach me. They have no responsibility to teach me. They are not in the class to teach me. And more than than, they don’t WANT to teach me, so when you try to partner us up, they just want to do all the work themselves so we can be done quicker. They don’t want to take the time to slowly go through, word by word, explaining everything. And I can understand that because they didn’t take the class to help the other students (although their unwillingness to help me really does NOTHING to help me feel welcomed and included in the class). When you just pass me along to a Korean speaking student it sends the message to me that you don’t care enough to make sure I understand the grammar. You’d rather someone else explain it to me.
It’s really fucking humiliating and unprofessional on your part to say, “You, be partners with so-and-so. Everyone else, pick your partners.” Really?! I don’t appreciate being called out every class period like that. It’s bullshit.
I really dislike the way you organize your tests. It pretty much copies the text book – you take an entire exercise and retype it on the quiz. I guess your logic is that it’ll make it easier to study, but it doesn’t help me understand anything. Memorization doesn’t mean comprehension. Plus, I don’t have time or energy to memorize all the passages in the textbook on the chance that it’ll show up. If it were based on comprehension and how well we understood the grammar patterns, not if we can remember this random vocabulary word, I might do better. Again, I can see your logic, but it’s bad logic and isn’t helpful. At all. It also makes you seem lazy, like you don’t want to write your own test.
I do understand the difficulty in teaching a class with mixed levels of understanding. You want to challenge the upper level students without leaving the lower level ones behind. Here’s the thing, you ARE leaving the lower levels behind. You would rather push and help the upper level students, but to me there is so much racial undertones in that decision.
The upper level students are full Korean, speak Korean at home, grew up with both Korean parents. Some even grew up in Korea for a duration. They are Korean-Americans. I, on the other hand, am not. I don’t know what the fuck I am. Ask the Asians, especially the older ones – there’s no way in hell I’m Asian, not a real on anyway. I don’t speak the language, eat the food, hang out with Koreans. But ask the White kids what I am, they’d adamantly say “Asian, of course.” I’m habitually asked, “What ethnicity are you?” (Side note to blog: It’s a HUGE turnoff when you ask me within an hour of knowing me about my ethnicity. Why does it matter? Why the hell does my ethnicity have to be a interesting topic of conversation?) So you see, I don’t really fit in either group. One group is emphatically telling be, “But you’re that, you’re that.” They don’t let me forget. But the group I’m supposed to be a part of doesn’t want me. Often times ignores me. Tell me “You’re not that.”
You exasperate this problem. You’d rather help the upper levels, the “real” Koreans or Asians, than the rest of us. Maybe this is not your intentional message, but it’s the one I get everyday. By deciding that the upper level Korean students should be focused on, it means that they are more deserving. I’m not a real Korean, so why bother, right?
This probably isn’t your intention. And maybe I’m totally off base on all of this. Maybe you LOVE teaching us, and you work your ass off to make those powerpoints and you’re really concerned for us noobs in Korean. Maybe you see all your students as the same and don’t make the racial distinction. But that’s not what it looks like from my side of the table.
Too often I dismiss how I feel because I tell myself that I’m overreacting or I should just get over it. Why am I being so emotional, I ask myself. But every single day I have walked into Korean class for the past three semesters I have felt unwelcome and an outsider. No one gives a damn and they treat me like I’m a burden. And it’s gotten to the point where, no, you know what, it’s not just a “bad attitude” problem on my part. Maybe, just maybe, for once, it’s a little bit of an everyone else problem too.
This is my long list of complaints with your class, some things about you personally, others with the culture of the class, which you probably can’t control. Some things are issues I need to work out on my own, issues I wasn’t even aware I had to work through until I took Korean. But honestly, taking Korean is the decision I regret the most since I’ve come to UVA and it’s gotten to the point where I just don’t give a damn anymore. So long as I get that C in the class, enough for it to count towards my foreign language requirement, I don’t give a shit.
Here is my letter of resignation.
Signed,
This Girl
WP is snowing!!!!
I was going to start this entry bitching and moaning, but the homepage cheered me up. But the reason I opened my browser is that I have less than a week left of schools and ZERO motivation to do any of these piddly assignments I keep getting assigned. I have a review quiz in Korean tomorrow, book discussion on Friday, and a presentation on Monday. I DON’T CARE. Like…at all. I’ve pretty much given up in Korean.
I have three finals and two final papers coming up. I really should have been more proactive this week in starting to study and researching/outlining my papers. I have a busy weekend, full of project preparation and Secret Santa shopping that I won’t have much time for other things….like finals. Those silly things.
I honestly intend to get work done. The night before I make a list, make a schedule, all sorts of things to outline what needs to be done, what would be nice to get done, what should get done. I end up napping, YouTubeing, and eating. Oh the eating. Anything with carbs or refined sugar. Yesssss. Maybe it’s all hormonal?
How do I get my motivation back?
EDIT:
ZOMG the snowflakes fall where your cursor goes!!!! Okay, now I have no reason to bitch. Done.
I had a dream that I was on the swimming team at my school and that Sue Sylvester (from Glee) was my coach. Weird…
I am frequently shocked when I find out that people I knew in high school are now married. MARRIED at TWENTY?!? Wow. I wish them the best of luck though!
Sometimes I mull over issues for so long that they grow and grow in my mind. When I finally get around to articulating those thoughts, I inevitably leave something out.
Despite all my grumblings about class and college and such I know I am so incredibly luck for the opportunities I have. I am lucky enough to have a mother who pays for my college education so I can focus on my studies and not worry about a job. I am lucky for the friends I have made here at school. I am grateful to be in college and learning when I could be elsewhere. I am so thankful for the chance to be here. And from now on I plan on cherishing what I have and not squander it away.
I am a third-year sociology major at a highly ranked public university. I am one student out of thousands and dozens of times a day I feel inadequate and unimportant. I love the field of sociology, but sometimes it can suck the joy out of things. A large chunk of soc work is studying inequality and one thing I’ve learned is that people like me don’t really get Ph.Ds.
When I first entered college, I had no idea what I wanted to study. I wasn’t too worried though, I knew I’d find something; at the very least I could fall back on English. So long as it wasn’t Physics, I figured I’d be okay. Then I found sociology and loved it. Still do. I then realized that a Bachelor’s in sociology really doesn’t mean much of anything. I loved the research of sociology, the theory, the completely new way of looking at the world. I didn’t want to leave that to use my degree as an administrative assistant or some other office job. I wanted to study society and I learned the only way to do that was through grad school.
By second year I had decided to definitely go, but I knew nothing about grad school. I didn’t even know of its existence before college. But I figured I’d somehow wind up in grad school, eventually. But by the end of my second year, beginning of third, doubt started to creep in. I started becoming more aware of why I disliked and didn’t fit in at my college. My university enjoys touting its diversity, but frankly I don’t see it. I don’t see much racial or socioeconomic diversity and I’m starting to learn just how much of my identity and perspective has been shaped by these factors. I am a half-Asian, lower-middle class person and it’s difficult for me to relate to a predominantly white and upper-middle/upper class student body. It feels like we’re speaking two different languages.
In sociology I learned about this term, cultural capital. I’m not sure if I’m using it in exactly the right way, but here at college I lack a lot of cultural capital that many of my peers received as they were growing up. I grew up in a town where the majority of students either go to community college or no college at all. Wal-Mart and the Tractor Supply Co. are places to socialize. Getting a Target was good news because it was nicer than Wal-Mart and people could get away from the blacks from the city who had “infiltrated” the shopping center (not an attitude I share, but it was prevalent where I lived nonetheless. Yeah, to call my town racist is probably an understatement). My town thought it was the shit because it was expanding, getting a new Target and Best Buy and everything.
But it’s not the shit. It’s not a bad town though; it’s clean, safe, good schools, etc. I was lucky to have lived in a place that was as decent as that. But when you live in a town where people regularly wear their sweats around town, where buying from Abercrombie & Fitch is a true sign of status, it’s like a whole other world when you’re sent to a school where people regularly wear A&F, along with their Burberry coats, Whole Foods grocery stores, and effing North Face windbreakers and backpacks.
Over the past two and a half years I’ve become more aware of the culture I’m living in at college and aware of what I’m lacking. Cultural capital. I’ve realized, along with what I’ve learned in my sociology classes, but people like me generally don’t get Ph.Ds.
People like me who come from a lower middle-class family with divorced parents, one an immigrant and neither with college educations. Every single one of those qualities is a mark against me, statistically speaking.
And this got me down for most of my semester. It got to the point where I had already assumed I would never succeed in grad school, if (ha!) I actually made it in! I would never be able to get a Doctorate, silly silly me.
I came to a realization a few days ago. I sure as HELL am getting that damn Ph.D. I’m going to do it, regardless of what obstacles stand in my way because I feel it in my bones that research and teaching will make me happy and fulfilled. I may not be the best writer, but I’ll learn. I’ll learned to think in theories and analyze the shit out of people. I can’t go back to that town. Not because I think I’m better than them, but because I will never fit in or be happy there. I will never be happy in some office job either. But the only way I’ll make it where I want to be is if I start believing I am capable and worthwhile.
If I’m unhappy about something the worst thing you can say to me is, “Well, try to look on the bright side of things. Nothing ever gets done focusing on the bad,” or something to that effect. It infuriates me because you’re 1) telling me I should feel, when really, I’m well aware of how I should feel and 2) it shows me that you aren’t really listening to me and my issues. It’s so easy to say, “Buck up Chuck! The sun’ll come out tomorrow!” rather than listen to what’s really upsetting me and, hey, maybe even helping me come up with actual solutions!
Maybe some people do need to be reminded to be positive, and yes, I probably could stand to be more positive myself. But I’m aware of my negativity and for me to be at the point where I’m expressing it so means that it’s gone past the point where I can smile my way through it. By this point I’ve already tried to be cheerful and something is still lacking. By telling me to stop feeling how I am feeling and instead feel another way completely delegitimizes my problems. I’m not dealing with actual problems with my family or loneliness at college or crap teachers, it’s all my attitude.
NO! I’ve spent the longest time believing it really was all my fault and that if only I was a good enough person or if only I tried hard enough or if only I was more positive then it would be okay. Yes, my attitude is part of the solution, but FUCK sometimes there are problems outside of my body and my attitude. Sometimes I have trouble finding my place here at school and sometimes I have to deal with crappy teachers and sometimes I hate my body and sometimes I’m stressed and overwhelmed.
So maybe, listen? it’s hard as all hell, I get it, but maybe? Try to listen and understand that when I say, “God, I hate college,” I’m really saying, “God I hate how I feel so alone here and still haven’t found my niche and fear I never will. God I hate how inadequate I feel on a daily basis because I’m surrounded by all these over achievers and that my feelings of inadequacy stem from low self-worth or a self-worth based on things like grades and not based in the belief that what I am is worthy, not what I do or produce.” I’m dying to share all of this with you and hear you, but I get cut short when you say, “College isn’t that bad. You just gotta keep trying, because what do you get when you don’t try, right?”
