I have a newfound appreciation for good classes and engaging professors. I'm sitting in class right now, blogging, so this is a pretty good indication of how much I dislike this class. I am taking 3 classes this quarter: Comparative Legal Institutions, Social Movements, and Immigrant America. I'm pretty happy with the first class, really happy with the second, and so incredibly disappointed with the third. Guess which class I'm sitting in right now?
Graduate seminars are generally a time to discuss/analyze the assigned readings, think about the course material, and toss around ideas. My favorite seminars are the ones where the students dominate the conversation and guide the discussion. It's just a great way to learn. As a third year, I feel ready and eager to engage with the material and talk about it. This just doesn't happen in my Immigration class, and to me, this is a disservice to the students. Instead, the professor tells us lots of random immigration stories and basically talks for nearly 3 hours straight. I never thought that I would say this, but this class is probably worse than the required Foundations of Political Science class we had to take our first quarter in grad school. And I really, really disliked that class.
Grrrr, ten more minutes and counting down...
Graduate seminars are generally a time to discuss/analyze the assigned readings, think about the course material, and toss around ideas. My favorite seminars are the ones where the students dominate the conversation and guide the discussion. It's just a great way to learn. As a third year, I feel ready and eager to engage with the material and talk about it. This just doesn't happen in my Immigration class, and to me, this is a disservice to the students. Instead, the professor tells us lots of random immigration stories and basically talks for nearly 3 hours straight. I never thought that I would say this, but this class is probably worse than the required Foundations of Political Science class we had to take our first quarter in grad school. And I really, really disliked that class.
Grrrr, ten more minutes and counting down...
2 comments:
I am surprised to hear that you like Social Movements so much given that I think the profs (much as I love 'em) dominate it way more than they should...
Ditto on Immigrant America, though. Everyone I know in that class says BOO!
When I grow up, I'm going to teach a seminar in which the required reading consists entirely of books and articles I've written or co-written, and name it after one of my books. It's going to be awesome. I'm going to be awesome.
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