131–140 of 148 posts
I am always astonished by the range of people who claim their college degree was useless, citing rote memorization and bad classes. I had an entirely different experience and so did most people I know. University gave me the opportunity to talk to world-class researchers during office hours, to discuss ideas with my peers and have them either validated or critiqued by experts. Sure, all the information is available o…
I am always astonished by the range of people who claim their college degree was useless, citing rote memorization and bad classes. I had an entirely different experience and so did most people I know. University gave me the opportunity to talk to world-class researchers during office hours, to discuss ideas with my peers and have them either validated or critiqued by experts. Sure, all the information is available o…
In some cases, an excellent researcher even has cogent papers but is absolutely abysmal at lecturing and in person teaching skills.
Peers are very important, but from talking to others, it's harder to know where you will get good peers than you would think. Even 1st tier universities will have majors dominated by students whose primary interest is in maximum grades with minimum work and where cheating is rampant. You've got to either get lucky (I did) or put in some leg work to find smart students who are actually interested in learning and doing things right.
I think how much rote memorization is encouraged or required is strongly dependent on the field. Pre-med students will sometimes memorize their way through calculus; a professor I knew once described it as "grimly impressive".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They got good grades by panic cramming the night before exams. I've had lots of students like that (I've even been a student like that) and in every case one thing is true: they would have accomplished more with less effort if they'd focused on learning to understand rather than trying to treat everything as a memorisation task.
I think there's a misunderstanding on your behalf. My chief complaint was about the poor educational quality of universities in my country (Jordan). Forcing students to study 5 years instead of the standard 4, or teaching you mandatory subjects irrelevant to your major are not things where I could have accomplished more with less. Not going to university was not an option. It would have been the only way to guarantee…
I don't think I'm misunderstanding anything; you've been very clear. This is not a description of someone who was let down, but of someone who never had any interest in learning.
I am always astonished by the range of people who claim their college degree was useless, citing rote memorization and bad classes. I had an entirely different experience and so did most people I know. University gave me the opportunity to talk to world-class researchers during office hours, to discuss ideas with my peers and have them either validated or critiqued by experts. Sure, all the information is available o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you read the article? The author laments that he did not learn anything relevant to him during his degree.
He graduated with "some of the highest grades" in his class.
I am always astonished by the range of people who claim their college degree was useless, citing rote memorization and bad classes. I had an entirely different experience and so did most people I know. University gave me the opportunity to talk to world-class researchers during office hours, to discuss ideas with my peers and have them either validated or critiqued by experts. Sure, all the information is available o…
My experience has been there is no correlation between skill at teaching and skill at research; maybe the two are even anti-correlated. To some extent, this is an artifact of the selection process for professors, but I think it's partly because there's a real tradeoff between spending effort on research vs teaching. In some cases, an excellent researcher even has cogent papers but is absolutely abysmal at lecturing a…
And I would gather you find more bad teachers than good, but that's true of many spaces from IT to sports.
Lectures were all over the place for me - some useful, some awful. Professors really vary a lot in skill here. Same with tests - some helped me learn, some were rote memorization.
Labs were incredibly, incredibly useful. 4 years of practice doing coding problems made me a way better programmer.
I feel I got value out of the degree, even if there were some silly games to play.
"The Controversial Exam Carl Sagan Gave His Students" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pc3IuVNuO0 Today, most students would fail this class. Note, the reading list is still relevant decades later. =3
That's what we get when we pay video producers per minute.
"The Controversial Exam Carl Sagan Gave His Students" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pc3IuVNuO0 Today, most students would fail this class. Note, the reading list is still relevant decades later. =3
Oh, youtube videos. Five minutes into the video, still just a looooooooooooooooong introduction, no example from the exam yet. That's what we get when we pay video producers per minute.
Could always increase the playback speed to 1.25X for slow-talkers. lol =3
I get my blood pressure to dangerous levels each time I stumble upon some high quality video lectures on youtube that explain some topics that were totally fucked in university, like PID control. 30 Minute video made by some amateur with cool animations explains basically 95% of everything you need to know vs old lifeless dork professor at "elite" university mumbling some nonsense and throwing walls of formulas with…
"Oh, you have a PhD in Chemistry? I hated orgo in college..." I heard it often enough to suspect some kind of a collusion. But no, there is no collusion, just old crummy dudes gatekeeping knowledge to preserve their status, and the departments allowing them to do so.