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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”

#211

Post by FredPret »

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…

That's true - to draw a circle around what you enjoy, what you're good at, and what you get paid for, you have to actually try it for a while first

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

#212

Post by martopix »

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"

This is a very frustrating answer. It basically sounds like "suck it up, mate", which is not what education should be about.

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

#213

Post by FredPret »

krageon wrote: post #154
jauco wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I grew up loving engineering-related activities without knowing that "engineering" was a word, or even a profession

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

#214

Post by eli_gottlieb »

LarryMullins wrote: post #59
marmetio wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that. If the materials are limited, then by definition there's less to study. You can choose other things to study, but it's a gamble whether it will be useful.

There are different sorts of studying. To some people, studying means downloading the lecture notes, reviewing their own class notes, getting the slide deck from the professor.. To other people, studing means they actually crack open the assigned texts (which many students didn't bother buying in the first place.)

You're in grad-level classes where there are assigned textbooks? Bless!

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

#215

Post by gregors »

Maybe I'm misinterpreting the quote, but it sounds like dunking on 2nd year Phd students?

1. As a professor, you don't get to dictate how something emotionally impacts another human. A frustrating problem set....should in fact be frustrating. no?

2. The students' performance directly reflects the professor's performance

I do like that they are stating their expectations. Seems like the professor is growing as well. Live and learn.

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

#216

Post by bradlys »

WalterBright wrote: post #91
haswell wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things more quickly and getting better ideas, you should probably just drop out I'm sorry, but even if this is true under some circumstances, this seems like terrible general advice, and only matters if your only goal is to reach the top echelons of your field. That doesn't mean there is no room for "a…

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…

I don’t really enjoy coding, software engineering, or the bullshit work dynamics around it.

But they keep paying me hundreds of thousands of dollars (sometimes more) every year - so I do it anyway.

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

#217

Post by gadders »

loudmax wrote: post #206
blackbear_ wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that a lot of this cynicism comes after years of teaching and seeing that most students do not really care about the topic and do not want to put in more than the minimum effort required to pass. You don't realize how easy it is to tell apart those who are interested from those who are not until are on the other side.

Agreed, but part of the teachers' job is to impart that curiosity and interest onto their students. That is hard to do, and only the very best teachers actually manage to do this.

Yeah, maybe when your younger than 16 or 18. If you're at Uni you're an adult and it's on you to study.

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

#218

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #169
marmetio wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem all across engineering. Professors and textbook authors are so concerned about reserving problems to grade you on that they forget to teach the material in the first place. Imagine trying to learn a spoken language with very little input or speaking practice.

Many professors don't care about teaching. I've had conversations with physics/math/engineering academics which go "Those who are smart and motivated will get it, and I don't care about the rest."

[deleted]

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

#219

Post by causi »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #169
marmetio wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem all across engineering. Professors and textbook authors are so concerned about reserving problems to grade you on that they forget to teach the material in the first place. Imagine trying to learn a spoken language with very little input or speaking practice.

Many professors don't care about teaching. I've had conversations with physics/math/engineering academics which go "Those who are smart and motivated will get it, and I don't care about the rest."

Yep. My introductory physics course in college started with 29 students and ended with 4.

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

#220

Post by Mixtape »

marmetio wrote: post #46
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 is a problem all across engineering. Professors and textbook authors are so concerned about reserving problems to grade you on that they forget to teach the material in the first place. Imagine trying to learn a spoken language with very little input or speaking practice.

Something like this happened to me this past Fall. I took an undergrad fundamentals of networking course that was honestly fairly surface-level and simple, but the professor put a significant focus on developing the proofs for the course concepts through homework rather than in-class lectures. In theory that's fine, but the issue was that in a time-sensitive setting (i.e. assignments or exams) it became extremely stressful to just not understand where to begin with certain problems. Combine that with the fact that, in my experience, proofs often lead to understanding of a concept rather than the other way around and you had a lot of people going into office hours basically asking for a solution.

I would be very interested to see a study on the relationship between time costs sunk into learning a concept through proofs and students' understanding of the concept as compared to when a proof is simply provided. I'd hypothesize that letting students discover the reasoning behind things on their own would be more likely to develop a deeper understanding, but I question whether there's enough time in a single semester to drive a curriculum that way.

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