Why take it if you hate doing it?

[LingualMonkey]

Apologies if this belongs more in Sightings or Brain Burps--mods, please relocate as necessary.

We did mid-quarter evaluations last week. Every quarter we do these at midterm and at the end as a kind of running check on our instructors. I generally dread these despite the fact that I generally also do really well on them (last quarter end-of-term evals I averaged better than 4.6 on a 5-point scale from those students who actually attended and did the evals). The truth is that often times there's that one student who can really screw you up and bring the whole thing down. Administration understands (they're all former teachers), but regardless, it's nerve wracking.

Biggest complaint from the students of my literature class this quarter? Too much reading.

Bluh? It's a friggin' LIT class. We read and discuss literature. Every class period. The reading assignments are shorter than 20 pages/class. And it's a freaking literature class, and more than that, it's an elective. You don't have to take it--you can take other stuff instead to meet your elective requirement.

Seriously, if you don't like to read, why would you take literature?

[Darkwish]

Seriously, if you don't like to read, why would you take literature?

I totally agree with your complaint - it's a lit class, you'd EXPECT there to be a lot of reading invovled!

On a side note, I'd probably never take a class like that. I like to read, but I HATE analyzing/discussing books. It takes the enjoyment out of it and as far as I'm concerned, if it needs to be analyzed or discussed to understand or "enjoy" it, it was poorly written.

[HorrorFrogPrincess]

I totally agree with your complaint - it's a lit class, you'd EXPECT there to be a lot of reading invovled!

On a side note, I'd probably never take a class like that. I like to read, but I HATE analyzing/discussing books. It takes the enjoyment out of it and as far as I'm concerned, if it needs to be analyzed or discussed to understand or "enjoy" it, it was poorly written.

English class ruined poetry for me.

Still, yipes. That's pretty stupid. I wonder if folks in the Creative Writing class are annoyed because of all the papers they have to turn in.

[bunnyboy]

Eh, it's because those of us who got/get/will at some point get English degrees have to have some reason to have them...oh and didn't you know, the author's meaning is null and void anyways, therefor in Moby Dick, everyone is Jesus in Purgatory (look it up on TV Tropes.)

[poofy_puff]

It reminds me of the students who take science courses with a lab component and then don't want to wear safety glasses and proper attire. It's 3 or 5 or 8 hours a week, and unlike your class, these are usually required for a degree program, which means these folks are planning to WORK in this kind of environment, where they will have to wear these items for sometimes 40+ hours per week, etc. etc.

(I work at HU.)

[mharbourgirl]

Yeah, I remember a number of complainers in my Canadian Lit class at uni. Too much reading, too much writing, all the reading is boring (well, on THAT score they were quite correct), waaahh waaahh.

The youngest person in my program was ME, age 24. The rest were all late 20's up to 50's.

The program? Library & Information Technology. Yeah. We all wanted to be Librarians. But half the class hated to read anything longer than a magazine article, if that.

[Bramblerose]

My mother's Shakespheare class read every available word by teh bard. I guess this would make your tender younglings wither and die.

THe family joke is my dad signed up for a Henry James course because the reading list was short.

[Apathy]

English class ruined poetry for me.

Poetry ruined poetry for me.

College kids are morons. Pretty much all of them. You'd think they were smart because they got into college, but you'd be wrong. Incredibly wrong. Some of the stupidest people I've ever met I met in college.

I just hope I wasn't that stupid when I was that young. But I probably was.

[protege]

Seriously, if you don't like to read, why would you take literature?

Because...some schools have a lit class as a requirement. Mine did. However, at least we could pick which one we wanted. Best one? Definitely the sci-fi class--Douglas Adams, anyone?

[auntiem]

Because...some schools have a lit class as a requirement. Mine did. However, at least we could pick which one we wanted. Best one? Definitely the sci-fi class--Douglas Adams, anyone?

You got Douglas Adams - I'm jealous. The best we got was Philip K Dick (who I happen to appreciate, just not the book chosen for the class).
I'm an English major - who had one quarter with 5 lit classes. That meant reading a novel (or play or s-ton of poetry) a day and 5 10pg papers at mid-term 5 20pg papers for finals - it came down to the choice to sleep, eat or read by the end.
The only book I will never ever read again is Frankenstien - by the end of my college career I had read it so many times I could quote entire paragraphs in my in class essays.

[ArcticChicken]

I'm going to go cry now.

[LingualMonkey]

Because...some schools have a lit class as a requirement. Mine did. However, at least we could pick which one we wanted. Best one? Definitely the sci-fi class--Douglas Adams, anyone?

That's just it--it's not a requirement at my school. It's an elective for every field of study. Students are required to take two humanities electives, and they have several to select from, and Intro to Lit is the only one that is specifically reading intensive.

Go figure.

[Gurndigarn]

On a side note, I'd probably never take a class like that. I like to read, but I HATE analyzing/discussing books. It takes the enjoyment out of it and as far as I'm concerned, if it needs to be analyzed or discussed to understand or "enjoy" it, it was poorly written.

Thoretically, it's to help people write better. At least, that's why it started. Sadly, that's not how it continued.

Eh, it's because those of us who got/get/will at some point get English degrees have to have some reason to have them...

I got mine to become a teacher. Until I took the first class in the certification track, and realized that it would be the biggest mistake of my life. Then I figured I'ld just better graduate rather than spend an extra couple years working on a different major.

My mother's Shakespheare class read every available word by teh bard. I guess this would make your tender younglings wither and die.

Yeah. Shakespeare was meant to be watched. And not the BBC versions (usually), and definitely not the PBS versions. And mix a couple comedies (and possibly one of the histories) in with the tragedies, too, please.

[Fro]

I'm jealous! My college decided to replace first year English with a "not and English class but really is" that's supposed to teach us how to write and form arguments. More like learn how to pass a class without doing any work.... We've read ONE book and it was bad.

It's not in my major requirements, but I am so going to take a Lit class. I don't knwo if we have a Shakespeare class here, *crosses fingers*

[Buglady]

College kids are morons. Pretty much all of them. You'd think they were smart because they got into college, but you'd be wrong. Incredibly wrong. Some of the stupidest people I've ever met I met in college.

I just hope I wasn't that stupid when I was that young. But I probably was.

Oh hell yeah. I'm working on a second Bachelor's degree and I'm about ready to bite some of the idiots in my classes. Case in point: Cognitive Psych class yesterday, we're getting into the part of the course that introduces psycholinguistics and what language can tell us about the way we think/our brains are structured. It's really interesting - mind you, I took Classics before, so LOTS of languages and linguistics stuff, and I read Steven Pinker for fun, so yeah. I'm a geek. The Psych instructor goes over some basic linguistics stuff and gets us to diagram a couple of sentences so that his next point about the brain's information-processing capability will make more sense. A voice pipes up, "will this be on the test?". *facepalm* (I did say something about if you think diagramming these is hard, try it in Greek....)

I think my first degree was easier because I WAS younger and I still knew everything.