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In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

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Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#151

Post by peoplefromibiza »

smcl wrote: post #145
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #139

> On exam day you are just emotionally devastated looking at the problem not knowing where to start I honestly understand the frustration,but not the "emotionally devasted" part. Emotionally devasted to me means losing someone. When I studied CS I went to the exams knowing very well if I had studied or not and how much, and did not expect anything. The exam was the easiest part, you either know how to solve the probl…

Where are you reading "emotionally devastated" - both the Tweet and the title say they were described as "emotionally trying". That said, I can easily see someone going through the stress of the exam period, maybe juggling that with part-time work to pay for bills, studying extensively to the brink of burnout and describing feeling "devastated" when they can't crack a few questions in an important exam they thought t…

> Where are you reading "emotionally devastated"

here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34421487

On exam day you are just emotionally devastated

> describing feeling "devastated" when they can't crack a few questions in an important exam they thought they'd studied appropriately

maybe the expectations are too high?

You are a student, it's in the name, you don't know stuff because you are learning.

Maybe I can't understand what you're talking about because I am not American.

School is called school for a reason.

Once you finish school you realize how easy school was compared to real life problems, that sometimes have no easy solution or no solution at all, no matter how hard you try.

If an exam makes you feel emotionally devasted, what will happen when life throws life/death problems at you?

Maybe it's a matter of re-balancing priorities and not putting so much pressure on yourself, life doesn't end for a failed exam.

Maybe it's not exams that are too hard, it's the system that is pressuring students to finish as soon as possible, because it costs them so much, that the risk of going bankrupt it's too high, some form of sunk cost fallacy at play.

OTOH, in that system, who would pay premium rates for a lesser education where exams are so easy that anybody can pass them?

I started working at the age of 19, full time (6 hours a day/ 5days a week), while also studying at university and paying for my bills.

I still believe exams where the easiest part of the process, the bureaucracy it's what was killing me.

And I feel I have to specify that I am in no way a genius, I was just an average student with a soft spot for CS problems, meaning I liked solving them, not that I had it particularly easy.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#152

Post by krageon »

deskamess wrote: post #42

Pretty much most senior level/grad algorithm classes are like this. They introduce a framework for solution and then give you about 2-3 example lecture problems that they walk you through. 2-3 weeks after being introduced to 5/6 frameworks its Exam day. You are given unique word problems that, in the eyes of someone experienced like a prof or PhD student, is trivial. But you are struggling with 1 week of homework exp…

This matches my experience of an IT education in university perfectly. 90% of my class just didn't get it at all and the remaining 10% had a lot of experience in the field already (there were a small amount of extremely smart folks as well of course - they needed no background). Kind of defeats the purpose of teaching, but it does serve to weed out the folks that can't pick things up very fast. I think that is one of the goals of high-level schooling.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#153

Post by xupybd »

smcl wrote: post #143
solarmist wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's another big difference with the US. Honors are about GPA here, nothing else. The whole A-level system was confusing for a long time because of this kind of conflation of terms between the systems.

Honours are grading-related (in Scotland at least) as well. After three years study if you pass but not very well you'll be able to graduate with, say, a "BSc". If you have good enough grades you can do a fourth year and shoot for a "BSc (Hons)". The qualification you get after the fourth year depends on your average grades, either: - honours of the first class (aka a "first") - honours of the second class (two level…

Yes exactly that. I managed first class honours and the only benefit is that I'd be able to start a PHD without finishing a masters.

We had a fourth year as our engineering degree was part of an internal agreement such that it would be globally recognized. The states requires four years so we had to match that. However, if I'd studied in the USA I think I'd have had more than two elective papers over the four years.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#154

Post by krageon »

jauco wrote: post #135
WalterBright wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My career advice is usually: 1. draw a circle around the things you enjoy doing 2. draw a circle around the things that pay well 3. draw a circle around the things you're good at The intersection is your best career path. I tried to be a musician. Epic failure. I tried sports. Catastrophic failure. I tried sales. Monumental failure. Persisting in those endeavors as a career is akin to beating my head on a rock. Peopl…

Hah! When I took the first steps on my career path I wasn’t good at anything , had no idea what I really liked because I hadn’t had the opportunity to try most stuff and the top paying jobs of today didn’t even exist. I know you are a smart person, but this advice will hold young people back. Try stuff. Don’t sweat it. You’ll fail and you’ll succeed and you won’t know which is which until years later when you tell a…

Every child knows what things they like and are good at. It might not map exactly to a career path but it's not like career skills live in some sort of magical vacuum that you can never see until you try them.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#155

Post by xupybd »

progman32 wrote: post #102
xupybd wrote: post #21

I remember a lecturer responding to similar feedback from one of my class mates. I'll never forget his reply. "Life is hard. Then you die"

Sometimes, of course, things are artificially hard for reasons that don't stand up to scrutiny. These should not be accepted as inevitable.

You're right but his response at the time was hilarious.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#156

Post by watwut »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #148
watwut wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jolting people with assessments where old techniques don't work is fine as long as you don't do it first time on exam. But also, students here just want to know whether they are expected to give detailed reasoning or less detailed one. How many questions they need to answer to get A. Basic stuff about rules.

A lot of courses can indeed be improved by being more legible in expectations. But there is actually a counterpoint. As you make your course more legible past a certain point, there arise the "lawyer" students. They will use the rules laid out to weasel out of work, to to get a grade bump - long and tedious bad faith argumentation. Its actually the kind of thing you don't see till you actually become a teacher and tr…

I was also at the teachers side. Unclear rules and situations harm especially students that don't tend to complain and argue.

But back to student time, I had class where we were expected to write super detailed explanation on every homework. If you skipped a tiny step, you got marked down. And then came test. I could answer every single question and did not even stopped to think. When time run out, I was still writing. People complained and the response was that we should not be that detailed on test - but that is exactly what they trained us to do.

The op complained about this: "from classes where I walked into tests expecting that I should be able to answer every question perfectly, to classes where my 70% score on the midterm (of a handful of questions) was considered an excellent result, with no explicit indication beforehand that this would be the case. "

This is sort of guesswork about what you are even supposed to do sux.

> I would have all my exams be take home, open book (but solo work). But what do I do about the 20% of the students who have zero respect for any sort of honor code and even less fear of any consequences?

Don't do home exams, imo. Cheaters always, literally always exists. In some cultures they are effectively normalized and more frequent, in some less. Consequences for cheating in American colleges are quite high actually, they can kick you out. They do not want to be kicked out, but there is no way to catch cheater in their home.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#157

Post by winReInstall »

krageon wrote: post #152
deskamess wrote: post #42

Pretty much most senior level/grad algorithm classes are like this. They introduce a framework for solution and then give you about 2-3 example lecture problems that they walk you through. 2-3 weeks after being introduced to 5/6 frameworks its Exam day. You are given unique word problems that, in the eyes of someone experienced like a prof or PhD student, is trivial. But you are struggling with 1 week of homework exp…

This matches my experience of an IT education in university perfectly. 90% of my class just didn't get it at all and the remaining 10% had a lot of experience in the field already (there were a small amount of extremely smart folks as well of course - they needed no background). Kind of defeats the purpose of teaching, but it does serve to weed out the folks that can't pick things up very fast. I think that is one of…

But we have machines for that? Data access and repetition in itself is worthless. Refinement, and gaining new data from old recipes is the actual value. Why construct a machine, that basically selects for the wrong value, creating a reproduction academia, instead of a innovation academia. Why weed out what was your original value proposition? It seems very strange.

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#158

Post by smcl »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #151
smcl wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you reading "emotionally devastated" - both the Tweet and the title say they were described as "emotionally trying". That said, I can easily see someone going through the stress of the exam period, maybe juggling that with part-time work to pay for bills, studying extensively to the brink of burnout and describing feeling "devastated" when they can't crack a few questions in an important exam they thought t…

> Where are you reading "emotionally devastated" here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34421487 On exam day you are just emotionally devastated > describing feeling "devastated" when they can't crack a few questions in an important exam they thought they'd studied appropriately maybe the expectations are too high? You are a student, it's in the name, you don't know stuff because you are learning. Maybe I can't u…

Ah why didn't you reply to that comment? This just looks like you're misquoting the tweet thread.

> Maybe I can't understand what you're talking about because I am not American.

Why are you assuming I'm American?

As for the rest, I wouldn't bring this up otherwise but since you went there - I started university at seventeen, worked full time in a pub from when I turned 18 and then had to work two jobs in my final year, I've also suffered close relatives dying and a best friend committing suicide. And yet I can still understand that other people could be in circumstances that really push them to describe being "emotionally devastated" without going through all or even some of that. You're showing a (performative?) lack of empathy here.

> the bureaucracy it's what was killing me

"If a university bureacracy was killing you then what will happen life throws life/death problems at you?" - see how silly that sounds?

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#159

Post by dtech »

SilasX wrote: post #103
WalterBright wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My career advice is usually: 1. draw a circle around the things you enjoy doing 2. draw a circle around the things that pay well 3. draw a circle around the things you're good at The intersection is your best career path. I tried to be a musician. Epic failure. I tried sports. Catastrophic failure. I tried sales. Monumental failure. Persisting in those endeavors as a career is akin to beating my head on a rock. Peopl…

You might add a fourth circle for “what the world needs” (or, a more relaxed standard, “what is not actively harmful/promoting negative sum games”): https://themindfool.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Ikigai_do...

I was very confused by the "Vacation" overlap, but it turns out that's a typo and should be "Vocation".

Re: In the past, I've had students call my problem sets “emotionally trying”

#160

Post by tpoacher »

I can't quite put my finger on it at a glance, but my immediate instinct is that this sounds nice at a very superficial / philosophical level, but actually flies in the face of actual pedagogical literature over the last few decades.

For one, you're describing research, not education. The fact that it "can" be done (sub-optimally) in this manner, and the "this is how we've always done it" impetus behind it, doesn't necessarily make it a good idea educationally.

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