There are certain phrases in the English language that frustrate me. I am sure there are many examples of these kinds of phrases in other languages, but alas, I am only fluent in English, so I will examine some English phrases in order to show their futility.
1. "It is what it is."
What an utterly meaningless statement. Yes, I know the message it conveys, but the actual words that comprise this commonly uttered sentence are truly pointless when composed in this combination. "it is what it is" ... No, really? It would take a serious sophist many moons to convince me that there is at least one thing that is not what it is. Everything that is, is what it is. So please, everyone, stop saying this. Here are some alternatives:
- "that's just the way it is"
- "that is indeed what it is" (notice how the simple addition of "indeed" makes the sentence meaningful by adding emphasis, rather than the utterly blank statement that I have been talking about)
- ""don't worry, here is the bright side of the current situation" (wow! Positive language! Oh, how I long for thee)
Perhaps the best way to illustrate how useless this sentence is by translating it.
Spanish: "Es que es." or "Que es lo que es."
Italian: "è ciò che è."
and my favorite, German: "Es ist was es ist."
Monday, October 27, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
University Fails
One of the great failings of the university system is the placement of graduate students into teaching positions. Simply put, these graduate students are underqualified to be entrusted with the responsibility of running a college-level class. For someone with only a four-year degree teaching grade school is appropriate. But if you wouldn't entrust an undergraduate to teach high school, why would you trust a graduate student to teach undergraduate students? There is only one degree of separation between the two. And yet one is acceptable and the other is not. Why?
Money. Schools will not pay professor money when they can get the same service for graduate student money. But it is not the same service; it is a disservice to the students and parents who shell out thousands of dollars every semester, only to receive subpar instruction. In no way can it be expected that graduate students will perform comparably to a full-time professor. Not only have they most often received absolutely no instruction or certification in pedagogy, but their knowledge of the material is subsatisfactory. The years spent studying the material are important, and even disregarding their pedagogical deficiencies, graduate students do not have a sufficiently greater grasp of the material in order to effectively help undergraduate students in the position of the main instructor in the classroom.
It might be thought that there would be positive empathy in the relationship of a student teaching a student. Personal experience tells me that it is often the sympathy of the more experienced professor that is more desirable than the empathy of a fellow student, if there is any to be found. (And on the topic of fellow students, I have recently discovered the complete inability (or unwillingness) of fellow students to provide constructive criticism for my work. I suspect it is the latter.)
A professor is more often able to keep to the stated goals of the class, although many a poor teacher is marked by the failure to do this; a graduate student will almost never help achieve the daily goals of the class. Motivated students may still learn much through personal study, but then the purpose of the class is truly defeated; is better to have large numbers of students do personal research rather than show up week after week to a class run by an ineffective instructor.
Part of their ineffectiveness stems from the fact that they have their own studies that demand their attention. Often these graduate students are charges with completing a normal courseload on top of being responsible for an undergraduate class. This is often too much for a professor, who on the college level should be doing supplementary studying on top of knowing the core materials in a class in order to properly understand their context and answer any relevant peripheral questions that students may have. Instead, these graduate students often only look at the same materials the undergraduate students have, and therefore don't really know that much more than the students. For example, the class might be assigned to read selections from a piece of literature. Very often questions arise from reading a selection that can only be sufficiently understood after reading the entire text or related texts. And very often these graduate students haven't read the entire text, opening the shocking possibility that the student might actually be better equipped to talk about the literature than the instructor. This shouldn't happen, but it does.
So universities, stop being cheap. Hire more professors, give more classes to the professors who can handle it, and give the students what they deserve.
Money. Schools will not pay professor money when they can get the same service for graduate student money. But it is not the same service; it is a disservice to the students and parents who shell out thousands of dollars every semester, only to receive subpar instruction. In no way can it be expected that graduate students will perform comparably to a full-time professor. Not only have they most often received absolutely no instruction or certification in pedagogy, but their knowledge of the material is subsatisfactory. The years spent studying the material are important, and even disregarding their pedagogical deficiencies, graduate students do not have a sufficiently greater grasp of the material in order to effectively help undergraduate students in the position of the main instructor in the classroom.
It might be thought that there would be positive empathy in the relationship of a student teaching a student. Personal experience tells me that it is often the sympathy of the more experienced professor that is more desirable than the empathy of a fellow student, if there is any to be found. (And on the topic of fellow students, I have recently discovered the complete inability (or unwillingness) of fellow students to provide constructive criticism for my work. I suspect it is the latter.)
A professor is more often able to keep to the stated goals of the class, although many a poor teacher is marked by the failure to do this; a graduate student will almost never help achieve the daily goals of the class. Motivated students may still learn much through personal study, but then the purpose of the class is truly defeated; is better to have large numbers of students do personal research rather than show up week after week to a class run by an ineffective instructor.
Part of their ineffectiveness stems from the fact that they have their own studies that demand their attention. Often these graduate students are charges with completing a normal courseload on top of being responsible for an undergraduate class. This is often too much for a professor, who on the college level should be doing supplementary studying on top of knowing the core materials in a class in order to properly understand their context and answer any relevant peripheral questions that students may have. Instead, these graduate students often only look at the same materials the undergraduate students have, and therefore don't really know that much more than the students. For example, the class might be assigned to read selections from a piece of literature. Very often questions arise from reading a selection that can only be sufficiently understood after reading the entire text or related texts. And very often these graduate students haven't read the entire text, opening the shocking possibility that the student might actually be better equipped to talk about the literature than the instructor. This shouldn't happen, but it does.
So universities, stop being cheap. Hire more professors, give more classes to the professors who can handle it, and give the students what they deserve.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
On Headaches
A headache is an interesting things.
What you don't know is that I just decided to write about headaches without having any real thoughts on them. So, I figured I'd start by declaring that they are interesting. This does three things for me.
1. It takes up space.
Anyone familiar with epic poetry, improvisational comedy/singing, and off-the-cuff speaking in general understands the importance of taking up space. There is also a school of thought that thinks that the more frequently you blog, the more dedicated your readers will be. The people who think that way should not be placed in charge of the Olympics, FIFA World Cup, or presidential elections in the United States. They would best be suited to working with news agencies and baseball.
There are also the concepts of positive space and negative space. I am not familiar with them, but I am sure they exist and are in some way relevant. But would my first sentence qualify as positive or negative space?
2. It directs my writing.
Ostensibly, in the absence of other stated postulates, I will be discussing why and how headaches are interesting things. This is a problem found in many pieced of flawed persuasion. There is too often extraneous statements that need their own support but are left out in the cold. These statements only make an overall argument weaker by stirring up needless objections and obscuring the central focus of the argument. Therefore...
3. Nothing.
These sentences are utter trash and should never put down for readers' consumption. To lead off with such a meaningless statement would only condemn every piece of writing that has or will exist as utterly futile.
Perhaps yo are wondering why this piece is titled so. Well, didn't it give you a headache?
What you don't know is that I just decided to write about headaches without having any real thoughts on them. So, I figured I'd start by declaring that they are interesting. This does three things for me.
1. It takes up space.
Anyone familiar with epic poetry, improvisational comedy/singing, and off-the-cuff speaking in general understands the importance of taking up space. There is also a school of thought that thinks that the more frequently you blog, the more dedicated your readers will be. The people who think that way should not be placed in charge of the Olympics, FIFA World Cup, or presidential elections in the United States. They would best be suited to working with news agencies and baseball.
There are also the concepts of positive space and negative space. I am not familiar with them, but I am sure they exist and are in some way relevant. But would my first sentence qualify as positive or negative space?
2. It directs my writing.
Ostensibly, in the absence of other stated postulates, I will be discussing why and how headaches are interesting things. This is a problem found in many pieced of flawed persuasion. There is too often extraneous statements that need their own support but are left out in the cold. These statements only make an overall argument weaker by stirring up needless objections and obscuring the central focus of the argument. Therefore...
3. Nothing.
These sentences are utter trash and should never put down for readers' consumption. To lead off with such a meaningless statement would only condemn every piece of writing that has or will exist as utterly futile.
Perhaps yo are wondering why this piece is titled so. Well, didn't it give you a headache?
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Movie Review: "How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman"
Believe it or not, we watched this piece of junk for class. Here's the imdb entry:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066936/
I can measure the value of a comedy by how long it takes me to realize I'm supposed to be laughing. The longer it takes, the worse it is. This is the only comedy that had me thinking it was supposed to be taken seriously until the credits were rolling and I checked back of the DVD case. Indeed, it was meant to be a "black comedy". I don't know what a black comedy is, but I know that this movie was ridiculously bad. After about 15 minutes, every single character was completely nude. The main character got a horrible haircut. The "Indians" had bright orange body paint. There was the most ridiculous fight and death scene in the history of cinema. The rehearsal for the main character's execution had happy background music. Innumerable inexplicable things happened; ordinarily, I like this in my comedy, but not this time. Not at all. Nobody should ever watch this movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066936/
I can measure the value of a comedy by how long it takes me to realize I'm supposed to be laughing. The longer it takes, the worse it is. This is the only comedy that had me thinking it was supposed to be taken seriously until the credits were rolling and I checked back of the DVD case. Indeed, it was meant to be a "black comedy". I don't know what a black comedy is, but I know that this movie was ridiculously bad. After about 15 minutes, every single character was completely nude. The main character got a horrible haircut. The "Indians" had bright orange body paint. There was the most ridiculous fight and death scene in the history of cinema. The rehearsal for the main character's execution had happy background music. Innumerable inexplicable things happened; ordinarily, I like this in my comedy, but not this time. Not at all. Nobody should ever watch this movie.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Dead End
So today I was furiously researching something, trying to show a connection, to prove an allegory. I looked all around, trying to find the earliest source of a tale that would solidify my case. And then... I found it! There it was. The theme was there. I would show the connection. My paper was going swimmingly.
And then.
I realized that the two tales I was trying to connect were from opposite sides of a continent, in different languages, hundreds of years apart.
My connection was exploded.
But.
My time was not wasted. In fact, I probably learned more in my "dead end" research than I would have in five lectures. My point is, even dead ends have purposes. Just because you run into a wall of bricks doesn't mean you've failed; in fact, you've made great progress, because not only will you not go down into that pointless pit again, but your experience will save others from frustration and regret.
There is no failure in missing the mark, but only in never aiming.
And then.
I realized that the two tales I was trying to connect were from opposite sides of a continent, in different languages, hundreds of years apart.
My connection was exploded.
But.
My time was not wasted. In fact, I probably learned more in my "dead end" research than I would have in five lectures. My point is, even dead ends have purposes. Just because you run into a wall of bricks doesn't mean you've failed; in fact, you've made great progress, because not only will you not go down into that pointless pit again, but your experience will save others from frustration and regret.
There is no failure in missing the mark, but only in never aiming.
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