Walter Bright wrote:
dsimcha wrote:
== Quote from Walter Bright (newshou...@digitalmars.com)'s article
Nick Sabalausky wrote:
If there's one thing my
school experience taught me, it's that teachers are only interested in
focusing on the low-to-mid-range students.
That wasn't my college experience at all (Caltech). I was a
low-to-mid-range student there
...Which kind of proves the point that the way knowledge/learning in
college is
measured is pretty flawed in that it doesn't predict who will be
successful
afterword. I just finished undergrad a couple years ago and I feel
that the kinds
of multiple choice exams you get in huge lecture-based classes are
good at testing
rote memorization and superficial understanding and the ability to get
inside the
professor's head, where as what's important is the ability to take
your knowledge
and apply it to something useful or use it to create more knowledge.
Multiple choice exams were against the rules at Caltech (even though we
did have a few huge lecture-based classes).
I'll still hold forth, however, that you're going to get out of it what
you are willing to put into it. If you're only going to target getting a
degree, I wouldn't hire you. If you are in college to get the most out
of the experience (and there are huge opportunities for that in
college), your results will be far better.
90% of the classes I took I selected because they interested me and I
thought they were important. I made sure I understood front to back
every single homework problem, and every exam problem I got wrong. I
also paid for most of it out of a part time and summer job, and I'm sure
that paying the tuition bills influenced my attitude as well <g>. I
wanted my money's worth.
Back here universities are free as in Beer. Students get a loan from the
bank, guaranteed by the state. It used to work ok, but now an increasing
number of students work both summer and semester, to finance their
living. Helsinki is one expensive place to live in.
Another factor was the attitude that Caltech had towards its students.
It treated them like adults. I had never experienced that before.
Caltech does not proctor exams, does not have curfews, does not attempt
to control what goes on in the dorms, professors are not allowed to take
attendance, etc. Most of the students quickly responded to that and
behaved like responsible adults.
And then we had great events like Carl Sagan coming to dinner at our
dorm, guest lectures from folks like Richard Feynmann, and the people
running the JPL probes, etc. If all you got out of all that was a
degree, too bad, so sad <g>.
You make me cry. That's exactly the kind of place where I thought at 14
I'd be when in university. And I still wish. :-(
As a child I read SciAm (from 12 on), and read about all this way cool
stuff the folks at MIT and the other places do, and my goal was to go to
America to study. Then some crap happened at home.
