Our students (?)
One of the "great" things about being a Woodruff Library Fellow is that I get to be on an additional listserv that people use for questionable purposes. Someone sent this collaborative video project produced by a cultural anthropology class at Kansas State. It's not particularly new, but it summarizes the perspective of students who are coming into our universities and, thus, classrooms.
Undoubtedly, there are parallels between the students at Emory and KSU and between those in English classrooms and cultural anthropology ones. But there are some differences as well. One in particular is the class size in English (indeed, all the humanities) will tend to be smaller than those in the hard or social sciences. I'm also surprised that students in English classrooms tend to use their laptops less frequently than in other classrooms (this is anecdotal at best). There are other differences, to be sure. But as I'm on the job market this year, this serves as a nice way to start thinking about questions I can answer and ask at interviews and as I (hopefully) have the chance to meet with students on campus visits.
Undoubtedly, there are parallels between the students at Emory and KSU and between those in English classrooms and cultural anthropology ones. But there are some differences as well. One in particular is the class size in English (indeed, all the humanities) will tend to be smaller than those in the hard or social sciences. I'm also surprised that students in English classrooms tend to use their laptops less frequently than in other classrooms (this is anecdotal at best). There are other differences, to be sure. But as I'm on the job market this year, this serves as a nice way to start thinking about questions I can answer and ask at interviews and as I (hopefully) have the chance to meet with students on campus visits.
posted by Brian at 10:09 AM
2 Comments:
Everything takes on chilling significance when presented by stony-faced teenagers via sentence fragments with an ambient electronic soundtrack. Perhaps an even more important lesson for the job market and one's self-presentation.
I do think one of the job market lessons here is to try to learn about the students while you are interviewing. Asking questions about the student populations, and then responding with intelligent commentary -- thinking about the populations but not presuming too much -- these all can really help show that a candidate is invested.
Michael Wesch sure is an interesting guy.
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