Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate • Hacker News Board

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#111

Post by lumost » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

nvarsj wrote: post #45

lumost wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After just starting a grad program after 12 years in industry. I'd have to disagree. While a large fraction of homework is busy work designed to give the illusion of challenge and rigor - tests simply estimate whether someone has memorized the material sufficiently for a short 1 hour exam. In CS, a ~4-20 hour project is vastly more representative of how well someone understands the material and could apply it in a re…

I get what you're saying but I also disagree with it as a generalization, and say it would depend on the subject. For theoretical subjects, an exam is about the only way to test your understanding. Memorization is not going to help you solve math problems.

I was a physics undergrad who hopped into a few grad classes, and to be honest I was terrible at homework and great at exams (mostly due to some youthful obstinance on putting the time in on homework). At the time I believed that the exams showed who really knew the material and who applied time to solve the problem. With some time past I see that the larger/tougher problem sets were where the real challenge was.

I recall a few unique problem sets from Graduate QM such as

- Derive from first principles the color of the sky.

- Prove that charge must be Quantized if there is one magnetic mono-pole in the universe.

The exam questions were far simpler than the theory questions asked in the problem sets. The work for the first question easily totals > 20 hours of pen and paper time.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#112

Post by Vaslo » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 4:44 PM UTC

Easy solution to the regrade. Never do one off regrades. Always say that a regrade of one question will require the entire exam be regraded. This will be done by someone else or the prof who may grade it worse than a rushing grad student who is just saying “yeah, yeah, fine, ok”. Most students fear this, especially when it’s the professor doing it. Almost never had to do regrades with this policy.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#113

Post by leetrout » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 4:45 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #15

leetrout wrote: post #2

This is TERRIFYINGLY accurate. """ Here’s what will happen: Like most other humans, your students will be lazy and fallible. So many of them will procrastinate and not do the homework. So they won’t learn anything. So they will get a terrible grade on the final. And then they will blame you for not forcing them to do the homework """ This is almost exactly how adjunct teaching went for me. It was not the experience I…

I really liked homework suggestions that (critically) included the answer key and walkthrough of solution! Doing problem sets in university without this made it way less valuable because you need the immediate feedback loop to learn and waiting until office hours or recitation takes too long and you forget. Good classes (from grade clarity perspective) were ones where it was clear what would be tested and how to prep…

I personally recorded hours of walkthroughs for my students (very basic react, svg drawing, etc).

It is such an immense amount of labor. Now i know why people regurgitate the same content everywhere or dont bother

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#114

Post by nicolas_t » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

busyant wrote: post #70

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with doing the things that your more mature, logical self actually wants instead of what your younger, uninformed self thought you’d want? There’s nothing stopping you from eating ice cream for breakfast, spending all of your money on Lamborghinis, and playing video games all day. As an adult you realize that those things won’t actually bring you true happiness and those decisions will cause significant…

> I don’t see what’s sad about that, other than maybe the disappointment of losing naiveté. From my own experience, some sadness is due to treating a few people with disdain in my youth. At times, I was an arrogant, pissy teen. I wish I could make amends, but some of those people are gone.

Luckily some of those people might have recognized themselves doing the same thing when they were younger and accepted your behaviour for nothing more than youth.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#115

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 4:48 PM UTC

finexplained wrote: post #6

This perfectly describes my experience as a TA in graduate school. At first I didn't understand why my advisor insisted on being so precise in assignment instructions. Then when TAing with him I saw how students could creatively misinterpret instructions, even when I could not imagine how to make them more precise. An exception for the new case would be added to the next iteration of the assignments. I only understoo…

So, I don't know where I read this (might have been here on HN) something like:

If you create the rules for the pathological cases, then you're "optimizing" for those. Not for the majority.

Whereas the pathological cases should be dealt exactly like those.

Though sure, sometimes explanations can be better, but you can only play the game up to a point

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#116

Post by Forgeties79 » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

temp8964 wrote: post #79

warner25 wrote: post #10

I've often thought the same thing about becoming an adult, especially a parent, in general. There are so many choices that I harshly judged older people for making (how to allocate their time and money, where to live, what to allow or not allow the kids to do, how to behave at work, etc.) that I now find myself making as a married guy in my mid-30s with four kids. It makes me sad, but on each point I'm like, "Oh, now…

There's an author I read a lot who repeatedly makes a point in this writing: there are things in my writing you won't be able to understand before you get older, there is just no way. I have to say, it is so true. There are layers of layers I can only see when I get older. Remember when you are a teenage in high school and teachers explain subtle messages in the reading? You and all your classmates are like: this is…

I don’t know even in hindsight there were plenty of “sometimes a door is just a door” moments with my teachers haha.

Jokes aside, totally agree with you. Definitely something you learn with age

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#117

Post by zafka » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

temp8964 wrote: post #79

warner25 wrote: post #10

I've often thought the same thing about becoming an adult, especially a parent, in general. There are so many choices that I harshly judged older people for making (how to allocate their time and money, where to live, what to allow or not allow the kids to do, how to behave at work, etc.) that I now find myself making as a married guy in my mid-30s with four kids. It makes me sad, but on each point I'm like, "Oh, now…

There's an author I read a lot who repeatedly makes a point in this writing: there are things in my writing you won't be able to understand before you get older, there is just no way. I have to say, it is so true. There are layers of layers I can only see when I get older. Remember when you are a teenage in high school and teachers explain subtle messages in the reading? You and all your classmates are like: this is…

Indeed- Which author?

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#118

Post by nradov » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #94

dionidium wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had my first child at age 40 and of course my experience is similar to yours. I can't help but wonder if delaying (or eschewing) having children is contributing to what seems to be a broadening generational gap. I'm learning lessons in early middle-age that previous generations learned in their early twenties. I could have used some of this new empathy I'm feeling for my parents and their generation 15-20 year…

Same boat, same feeling. But I also think there are mistakes we aren’t making, a maturity that will lead to perhaps enhanced outcomes for our kids even if not for us.

Which mistakes?

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#119

Post by lumost » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

whatever1 wrote: post #66

lumost wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After just starting a grad program after 12 years in industry. I'd have to disagree. While a large fraction of homework is busy work designed to give the illusion of challenge and rigor - tests simply estimate whether someone has memorized the material sufficiently for a short 1 hour exam. In CS, a ~4-20 hour project is vastly more representative of how well someone understands the material and could apply it in a re…

Many engineering programs have their most challenging courses set up as semester long projects. In chemical engineering the final boss is the process design class, a project where you are asked to produce a chemical substance with desired properties at scale without losing money. Almost everything you learned during the program has to be used to pull it off. Programming, numerical methods, CAD, Transport phenomena, k…

Calculus 1 is an interesting subject as there certainly is a degree of memorization required (you can't re-derive the derivative of x^n every time it comes up in your career). There is a similar to intro to Organic Chemistry, Algorithms and DataStructures, intro to programming etc. But the goal is to build detailed understanding of these methods more so than memorization.

On the other hand we live in a world where access to derivative rules is trivial. I'd imagine in 1800 mathematicians would assume that you would need to have multiplication tables to be productive and not reduced to pen and paper their entire career.

I wonder if there is an opportunity to push more challenging material into the earlier classes and make them more project like.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#120

Post by andi999 » Sat, Mar 12, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #59

sturgill wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I frequently say that 16 y/o Chris would be very disappointed in 40 y/o Chris. But 16 y/o Chris was an idiot. As you touched on, the fun twist is when you abstract the learning so it’s not just “I was wrong about X” but “I should be much more accepting of contrarian views.”

Don’t judge your former self too harshly either. It’s easy to forget why you were an idiot at 16.

Make that 25.