This semester, which began on January 21, my classes are Economics 2 (Microeconomics) and the Writing Lab. Since my studies of Whitman, Poe, and Emerson are closely related to my college experience, I'll include them as well.
January 26, 1998
I just finished a visit with the teacher from whom I took American Lit 1 last semester. She enjoyed the compare/contrast and Emerson drawings (the conclusion of fall '97 explains them). I don't think she'd understand my complete reasons for not auditing American Lit 2 as I had said I would, so I just told her I'd got too busy. I also asked if she'd mind my dropping in on the class once in a while when they're discussing something I've already read. She said she'd love to have me there on the condition that I take part in the discussions as if I were a member of the class. I've no problem with that: I don't know if I could stand not to take part!
So far, Economics 2 is just as interesting as Economics 1. Today's lecture was about demand curves. "Demand curves" may not sound interesting, but that's only because you haven't heard the lecture explaining all about how they work and what they mean in real life.
February 11, 1998
I haven't been here in a while, so here's a general update.
Economics 2 is fascinating, especially since I have all the time I need to appreciate it. I spend as much time studying it as I want to. That's not as much time as I could spend: I could do more with what I'm learning, could spend more time applying it to things and getting completely familiar with it. But I don't care about it enough to do more than I'm doing. I care about it, but I don't love it the way I love some subjects. I won't devote myself to economics to the extent I devote myself to literature.
That said, I'll add that I am pursuing--and, this semester, achieving--a very thorough understanding of the concepts taught in my Econ classes. I'm having such a wonderful time! It's great to be rid of the pressure I was under last semester. Now I can take as long as I want to experiment with the things I learn, figure out why they work the way they do, look at them from various angles--in other words, "stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs." (If you haven't read my concluding thoughts on fall '97, at least go back and read Whitman's "Beginning My Studies" at the top of the page, for I'll probably go on referring to it.)
I realized I was really absorbing my lessons when, a week and a half ago, I found myself thinking my own thoughts in the terms Econ had taught me. It was a day or two after the teacher had explained elasticity of demands and supplies. I was reading a part in the textbook about the effects of minimum wage laws, and I said to myself, "What they're talking about would only be a problem if the demand for minimum-wage labor is elastic, and I'll bet that demand is inelastic because . . . " The thought came into my head in that form, perfectly naturally.
I haven't started any real studying at the Writing Lab yet. I've just gone in for an orientation one day and to do some diagnostic writing another day.
The college had to close unexpectedly last Friday (flooded roads). I was disappointed not to be able to go to class.
I got a copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass during vacation and have been reading it straight through. At first, I skipped around it it a bit, read this poem here and that one there. But I soon noticed that they were all in such perfect order that I would be missing something by not reading them as they were presented. Whitman must have taken great care in arranging them. So I began at the beginning, and now I'm about a quarter of the way through.
One evening a while back, I read from it a while and got as far as "Whoever You Are Holding Me Now In Hand." I was so moved by it (it "awed and pleased me so much") that I read it a second time. Then I read the four poems that came next. Then I went back and read "Whoever" two more times. Then I read two others. Then I read "Whoever" again and showed it to my mother. She liked it too, and we talked about it for a while. Then I read it again and sat thinking about it for a few minutes before putting the book away and doing the dishes. Before I went to bed, I read "Whoever" for a seventh time. Now, this is the sort of thing one can't do if one has another 75 pages left to read before the next day!
February 18, 1998. Wednesday.
My first Econ midterm will be on Friday, and today's class was devoted to review and to discussing the sample question that was passed out at the end of last class. I prepared for today's class by doing all the reading that I needed to do before the exam and going over all my notes. I wanted all of that done by today so I could ask any questions that the reading and notes would raise (there turned out to be only one, about the calculation of average fixed costs). I didn't write an outline for an answer to the sample question as the teacher had suggested. I didn't want to bother. It didn't seem very important since we'd be going over it all in class anyhow; I thought the question over enough to be able to contribute to the discussion.
In How Children Fail, John Holt described students' use of the "mumble" strategy: if they didn't know an answer, they'd mumble and hope he'd hear what he wanted. I've seen that at work in my classes. A perfect example was in Econ a couple weeks ago. The teacher asked a question, and a girl sitting behind me gave a very quiet answer that resembled, "nzzztzzz." Sitting 2 feet away, I was pretty sure she was saying, "necessity," but I can't be certain. The teacher, 8 feet away, managed to hear the answer answer he wanted and said it at an audible level: "no substitutes."
More frequently, I've seen a more subtle variation of the same strategy: a student will say three or four words that, though audible, are very vague in meaning. With luck, the teacher will interpret them as the right answer and will give the complete right answer in the belief that he/she is only clarifying what the student was trying to express.
February 23, 1998. Monday.
The Econ teacher always gives midterms that take 2 classes. The latest began on Friday and ended today. On Friday, the question I chose was a list of 20 terms to "define or identify." I knew every single one of them. I don't just mean I could give the right answers; I knew what they meant. I thoroughly understood what demand and supply curves, Giffen Goods, and income elasticity were. Writing them all down in time was tough, though. I was a little too thorough with the first ones, so I almost ran out of time for the last few. The class officially lasts till 10:50, but the teacher won't make folks stop writing until it's time for the next class to start at 11. I just barely managed to get everything scribbled down in time (and, as usual, everyone else was done ahead of me). I went dashing up to the teacher with my answers a minute before 11 and said, "I knew every one of those terms, and I'll be darned if I was gonna leave before writing them all down." He laughed and said, "That's the spirit!"
Today, I chose "Define the 'Family of Costs' and the relationship between them in both words and graphically for the individual firm. Explain why the curves have the shape they do." I believe I did a good job with it. Again, I truly understood what I was writing and drawing. The teacher has emphasized the importance of being able to understand and draw the graphs, and that's something I've had an easy time with. Today I actually wasn't the last one to finish writing; someone else was a few seconds behind me.
February 27, 1998. Friday.
OK, you'll want the test results: 95%--50/50 for the terms, and 45/50 for the Family of costs. I do wish the prof would make margin notes. I would like to know what was wrong or omitted on that second question. If I'd gotten a bad grade, that would be an excuse to go back and talk the teacher into going over it with me, but I don't think he'd be nuts about my pestering him over 5 points that I don't need. So I'll let it go by; I can't have done much wrong. Probably I just failed to mention something that I could have included.
I stayed up late last night--not doing schoolwork, but writing about it. I was finishing an essay and was so caught up in it that I didn't want to put it aside. The subject? Last semester and the ways in which unschooling "prepared" me for college. I'm going to submit it to Growing Without Schooling.
On Wednesday, I took the rough draft over to the Writing Lab and went over it with an "instructional assistant" (for some reason, they aren't called teachers. Maybe that's because they're grad students, and students can't be teachers. Maybe it's because "teacher" is defined as someone who stands in front of a classroom and lectures). She gave me some very helpful advice about word choice, arrangement of sentences, etc. It was great to be able to sit down with someone so skilled and hash out all the details--should I say "futile" here, or not? Is this paragraph monotonous? She didn't just dictate to me, but discussed the pros and cons of various options and tried to understand what I was trying to accomplish with each sentence.
Yesterday, I spent several hours refining it even further. I love to write! I love the precision, the fine nuances, that I can achieve if I just put enough time and thought into my choice and arrangement of words.
March 5, 1998. Wednesday.
I believe I've finally given a satisfactory explanation of why I'm in college to the composition teacher from whom I took "Preparatory College Writing" (Fall '96, for high school credit). I guess I haven't said much about him here, and it's about time I did since he's my favorite teacher. I find him fascinating, amusing, and sometimes utterly incomprehensible, and he has my deepest respect. He seems to regard me in pretty much the same way. Every now and then I'll run into him on campus or stop at his office (unfortunately, though, he's here on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I've been on a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule this semester and last), and we'll usually end up talking for half an hour or more.
Early last fall, I told him I wasn't after a degree. He asked me why, since I was capable of learning on my own, I wanted to go to college. I gave the highly eloquent reply that it was "something interesting to do," at which he looked a bit stonkered and made some comments about the nature of college. Late last semester, I found a poem tacked to another prof's bulletin board that perfectly summed up my approach to college. I liked it so much that I asked him to let me make a copy of it, and then I made an extra copy and left it on the composition teacher's desk with a note saying that here was a better explanation than "it's something interesting to do."
After doing so, I didn't see him until the beginning of this semester, but he'd remembered it for all that time and said he wanted to respond. And his response? That I could do everything the poem described without going to college and that I'd be better off if I did so! Now, the first part is absolutely true. As for being better off without college, though... He made a pretty good case for it, and I agreed with much of what he said, but I still felt that I'd benefit from a bit of college. I didn't have a ready explanation of why, though, and anyhow once he gets started on a thing like that it's hard to get a word in edgewise. So I kept on mulling over everything he'd said (whenever I talk to him, he always manages to say something I ponder for at least a week) and came up with an explanation of precisely why I want to go to college despite its many disadvantages. I put the whole thing in writing and left it on his desk; it went as follows (copied from my rough draft; I had to rewrite it to make it legible and not full of cross-outs). Names of people and places have been omitted to protect the web site author, who has heard altogether too many stories about Internet lunatics.
"'...and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.'
---Walt Whitman
"I cannot pursue all of my studies solitary in a wide flat space either. My main reason for going to college is to find inspiration and companionship in my studying.
"This was never an issue when I was younger, for my parents shared everything I learned. They didn't control my studies, but they took part in them; either I followed my parents, or they followed me. In the last few years, though, I have spent more and more time on advanced studies of things that don't interest them. So I've had to find company elsewhere.
"I know college isn't the only 'elsewhere' in the world, but other chances for shared studying are hard to find. There is the friend with whom I read all that Faulkner last summer. She's wonderful. But I'm lucky if I can see her once a month now that [the business at which she and my mom both worked part-time until last October] is closed. Her home is an hour's drive from mine, and I can't get there without someone giving me a ride, and she's a grown woman with a household to look after and not a whole lot of time to go driving all over the county... We do write letters, and one of my penpals (a fellow homeschooler) loves to discuss literature in depth too. But letters, much though I enjoy them, aren't a substitute for being in the same room with someone. Also, literature isn't all I study. Try finding someone who wants to discuss beginning-college-level economics just for love of it!
"People often distinguish between those who go to college 'to study' and those who go 'to socialize.' I can't separate the two: I'm in college so I can study without being alone.
"Sincerely,
"[R.A.]
"P.S. The above is my most important reason, but a couple of others may be worth mentioning too.
"1. Sometimes it's great to have some plain old help. In college, I can say, 'Did this paragraph come out OK?' or, 'Do inelastic supply curves always intersect the quantity axis?' I can't ask a book questions.
"2. One thing I'm studying is education. It's fascinating to observe and experience so many approaches to learning and teaching. The 'experience' part hasn't always been fun, but it has been valuable. For example, I understand my classmates, myself, and the nature of learning better now that I've gone through a typical semester and felt the effects of having 500 things to read and write by Monday, week after week after week.
"By the way, here's an irrelevant thought about that Whitman quote I started with. Emerson would probably say that he could and that everyone should be able to--an easy claim to make when one is as well-known and well-liked as he is!"
The next time I saw him, he thanked me for the letter and seemed to finally be convinced that I knew what I was doing. I appreciate his having questioned whether I belong in college. Very few people (not to mention teachers!) ever acknowledge that there are other ways to learn and that sometimes one can learn best without classes.
Speaking of learning without classes...
I've still not abandoned last semester's authors. My studies of them, though, aren't always the sort I'd be doing for a class. For example, I haven't read any Poe since January, but I haven't forgotten him: he has inspired me to write a short story. It's about him, in a way--not Poe the real person, but the symbolic character from the sketches I did last fall. I've never set out to write a story before (my only relevant experience is the novel I began at age 12 and the time when I rewrote the ending of a book a couple years ago). This one is pretty much an imitation of Poe's work as far as style and effect, but some aspects of it are my own. I'd like to express what reading his stories has meant to me; I believe this will do so better than the drawings could and much better than an academic essay could.
March 6, 1998. Friday.
We did an ungraded exercise in class today: the teacher passed out worksheets that gave certain figures about a company and required one to fill in columns with other figures--the total variable cost, marginal cost, marginal revenue, total profit, etc, at various levels of production. Since I've been understanding and remembering the lectures, I knew how to do all the figuring. But I was not able to finish all those shmillion arithmetic problems before time was up. OK, now I know that I'm slower at arithmetic than I'm expected to be. I should be panicking that I'm "behind," cursing myself for not having done arithmetic drills in my unschooling, and vowing to shape up at once, right? Well, I'm not.
In real life, the speed at which I do arithmetic has never caused me the slightest problem. I often make use of arithmetic, and I don't have any trouble getting the right answers (or asking the right questions, which is just as important). That's all I need. Now that I think about it, I realize I've naturally become faster at it just by using it, but not as fast as if I had practiced it for half an hour every day just to improve my speed. I'm sure I'll continue to get faster as I continue to make use of arithmetic day after day, week after week, year after year. And in the meantime? In the meantime I'm slower than I'm expected to be, and it doesn't cause me the least bit of trouble in my life. If it ever does cause me trouble in real life, or if I ever wish to take a class in which I'll need it, then I'll do the half-hour a day--or, more likely, whole afternoons--until I'm as fast as I need to be.
March 9, 1998. Monday.
When I mentioned the above to my mom, she said, "Yeah, and I could've made you practice it so you'd learn to go fast, but you were learning more important things." And that's what unschooling is all about--giving students a chance to learn what's most important for them!
In class today, I asked a bunch of questions about things I didn't know and things I didn't understand. I often do that. It doesn't bother me to admit I'm ignorant and/or confused, and the teacher doesn't mind the questions or think any the worse of me for asking them. Today it occurred to me that this is a funny contrast with exams. When I'm taking a test, suddenly ignorance and confusion are equated with failure, and I have to try not to get caught at them. I don't like that feeling of being caught at something when I make a mistake on an exam.
I continue musing on "Song of Myself." A while back, I finally came up with a logical explanation of why its various components fit together as a whole. Let's see, it took me three and a half weeks to perceive it as such, and then another month and a half to arrive at an intellectual understanding of it! Here's the explanation I came to. The poem is, after all, "Song of Myself," and what is a self? It is not neatly organized around an easily identifiable theme. It is made up of emotions, opinions, observations, surroundings, intentions, dreams, upbringing, friendships, sexuality, spirituality, national identity, history, birth, death... and all of these are in "Song of Myself"! The poem is a remarkably comprehensive portrayal of what it means to be a person. Or perhaps I should say, what it can mean--what it means to be a person who knows joy and freedom and innocence and love.
Now that I've finally thought of the explanation, it seems so plain that I can't see why I didn't think of it before. I wonder if the Lit teacher has thought of it. It seems as if she must have--but why, in that case, did she say nothing of it in the class? As far as I can recall, she didn't say anything about the poem as a whole, just about this bit here and that bit there, which I find a little odd. But then, she doesn't like Whitman much.
April 1, 1998. Wednesday.
I've been trying to decide what attitude to take towards my exams. How shall I view those hastily scrawled definitions of terms and explanations of economic concepts--as my creations, or as mere formality? If they are my creations, I'll strive to make them as good as I possibly can. If they are a formality, I won't bother about trying to do more than get 88% (that or higher is an "A"). Sometimes I feel one way about them, and sometimes I feel the other. Other things are clearer: last semester's papers on "Ligiea" and Jim Lehrer were creations (the Jim Lehrer one wasn't a very good creation, and I regretted that), but the blurbs and book report for Media were meaningless formalities. But I don't know quite what to make of exams.
I had one today, and it was very easy--so much so that I only spent half an hour on it. The question I picked (instead of analyzing an article) was a chart to fill in. It told the prices and total costs for a firm at various levels of production, and all I had to do was calculate the marginal revenue, average cost, profit, etcetera, and say how many units the firm would produce. I knew all the formulas (they're quite simple), and there weren't half a schmillion blanks as there were on that March 6 worksheet, so there was nothing to it.
I intend to transfer to a four-year college as soon as possible. I made up my mind of that last November or December. My reasons are:
April 17, 1998. Friday
I've been long absent from this site, between Spring Break (a week without the computer lab) and using much of my Internet time since then on researching how to apply to a four-year college with my odd educational background. Here's an update on my April activities, starting with that exam I mentioned last time.
Part 2 was on the third, and I chose a set of 5 questions such as, "How does the 'Kinked Demand Curve' theory explain the 'sticky' prices of noncollusive oligopoly models?" I was sure of my answers to all except one: "Provide two examples of pure and impure oligopoly industries and explain conditions that differentiate an oligopoly from a monopolistically competitive firm." I knew the difference between oligopoly and monopolistic competition forwards, backwards, and inside out, but what did he mean by "pure and impure" oligopoly? I sat racking my brains for any time the prof had talked about that, or anything in the book, but I couldn't think of one. So I did what I could to figure it out. An impure oligopoly industry sounded like one that was oligopolistic in some ways and not in others. That reminded me of the lecture on geographic markets, in which the teacher had mentioned that for individuals, the market for banks is local (you want a bank in your hometown), but for huge corporations, it's national or international. I wrote that down as an example of impure oligopoly: the industry is oligopolistic when it comes to individuals (since there are so few banks in a given town), but in terms of huge firms it tends toward monopolistic competition because the competition is worldwide. I wasn't sure there was enough competition in the international banking industry to make it monopolistically competitive, but I said so anyhow. I put down supermarkets for the pure example.
This was my first time writing down something that I was utterly unsure of. Usually, I've either known the answers and been sure of them, or I've been sure I knew something and been wrong, or I've completely not known something and so left it blank. Fudging an answer felt weird and uncomfortable. I'm used to only writing what I feel certain of. When I write for this site or for GWS or in a letter, I don't state a thing as truth unless I believe in it. If it's a maybe, I write it as a maybe.
At least I didn't make a fool out of myself: the answer was right. I got 100% on the entire exam (this set of questions and the worksheet question), which was a first for me. Remember how last semester when I wanted to know what I'd done wrong on a test the teacher unhelpfully handed me someone else's paper to read? Well, this time it was my paper that he wanted to keep to unhelpfully show to other folks.
Funny, I never choose the questions asking me to analyze an article using "concepts learned in class," but I do continually analyze my life using concepts learned in class. For example, I work for a small monopolisitically competitive firm facing a relatively elastic demand curve. One of the two owners must not be earning normal profits, for he's leaving to pursue his next-best alternative. I don't suppose there's much use in knowing that, though! On the other hand, I've found "concepts learned in class" very useful in analyzing current events and forming political opinions.
The teacher often talks about current events in class, which I like. I make a particular effort to keep up on financial happenings now so I'll be able to take part in discussions. NPR's Marketplace is a good source of detailed stories. I think that's where I heard about the Citicorp/Traveller merger announcement. I ended up writing to my senators and congressman about that one--what an outrageous proposal! (In case you haven't heard, the two firms are going ahead with an illegal merger and hope Congress will repeal the law to accomodate them.)
April 27, 1998. Monday.
The other day, it came up in a class discussion that "everyone" in the classroom was there because they hoped it would lead to their making more money someday. After class, I mentioned to the prof that not everyone was there for that reason; I was there because it's interesting. He said, "Well, good for you. If I had to rely on that, the class could meet in a phone booth." He's probably right.
For the past month and a half, I've been unusually busy with family matters (see last semester on my family as an economic unit; in such a case, when there's too darn much work to do, everybody has to do too darn much work). My literary studies were largely on hold as a result. I've been resuming them now that things have started to settle down. I've picked up that short story again and reading more Whitman. Yesterday, I picked up a very old, bedraggled book at a rummage sale that includes an essay by Poe: "Philosophy of Furniture." It's on interior decorating! He takes the subject very seriously, and at the same time the essay has a whimsical and quirky tone. It was particularly interesting to read when I've read his stories, for they're always full of details about decor. So is "The Raven" though I haven't run across it in any of his other poems that I can think of. Having read "Philosophy of Furniture" and seen how important it is to him and the philosophical and symbolic way he looks at it, I see those details in a new light.
May 6, 1998. Wednesday.
Well, I thought things were starting to settle down, but it turned out to be merely a temporary respite. Oh well, I'll get some free time eventually. Meanwhile, I've had to be pretty strict about setting priorities, and my Economics reading hasn't often made the cut; I'm 4 chapters behind. I'll probably skip much of it entirely. I wouldn't if the book were good, but it's so dreadful. Much of what's in it is covered by the lectures, so I don't really need to see it badly rephrased. As for what's not in the lectures, I'll look through to find what seems most important, and I'll live without the rest.
Perhaps a few words are in order about what I'm doing instead of reading Byrnes & Stone's awful tome. Most of it is unavoidable work, and I won't bore you with the details. But there are some activities I've chosen when I "should" have been doing homework. I haven't given up following the news, though I've reduced it from what I choose when I have more time. I pay special attention to happenings that relate to my economics studies. I keep writing about education--articles for GWS, a letter to the editor, improvements at this site. I write letters to penpals and relatives and my representatives and (for Amnesty International) foreign governments. And I'm researching colleges, trying to decide where to transfer to and trying to find out whether a state college would take me without high school transcripts. These things are more important to me than keeping up with all my assigned reading.
I've taken up a somewhat obscure political cause: Proposition 223, which is about--what else?--education. It would require that 95% of school-district funds be spent on schools, not on district-wide administration. Today I posted signs about it all around the campus. In fall '96, I tried distributing leaflets in the quad one afternoon for Prop. 208 (campaign finance reform), but there wasn't enough traffic for me to be able to pass out enough that it seemed worth the trouble. So this time I decided to do signs instead, and the campaign headquarters is sending some leaflets that I'll just put in the library for folks to help themselves to. This isn't really the best place for political activism, I must admit. The teachers are all into politics, but most of the students don't seem to give a darn. But this is where I am, so I make the best of it.
I take all my education writing to the Writing Lab and show it to the same IA (short for Instructional Assistant--for some reason, the folks who teach at the Lab aren't called teachers) because she's the most helpful for me. She notices all the fine details and thinks in terms of making a piece of writing as good as possible, not just making it correct. She doesn't rewrite things for me, but she points out all the places where a sentence doesn't seem quite clear or graceful or emphatic enough, or where the organization doesn't seem best, or soemthing seems to be missing. Often, her suggestions lead to my rewriting whole paragraphs or majorly reshuffling an article.
The Writing Lab requires a student enrolled for half a unit (as I am) to spend at least 18 hours there over the course of the semester and to complete at least 4 "assignments." The assignments are workbook things; I haven't been learning much from them, but having to do them is no big deal since they're easy.
I had one little exchange of words that I found a perfect example of the difference between homeschooling and school. I was doing a Writing Lab assignment that was mostly analytical reading. It required that I check with an IA at several points along the way. Well, one part that involved analyzing an essay that contained a lot of colons and dashes, and the assignment used that as an excuse to throw in a bit about the use of colons and dashes. Now, I know colons and dashes inside out, so it seemed like rather a waste of my time. I doubted I could get out of it, but it seemed worth a try, so I said to the nearest IA, "This part's all stuff I already know; can I just skip it?" She said, "Well, we don't know that you already know it!" The classic school attitude! Though I didn't say it, the reply that immediately came to my mind was, "What business is it of yours?"
I keep dropping in on American Lit every so often. Today, we were discussing Death of a Salesman, a favorite of mine.
The Econ discussion was pretty lively today, all about welfare. OK, so the only people who were lively were the teacher, one middle-aged student, and myself, with another middle-aged student putting in a couple words now and then and most folks just listening. But three is more than enough to have a good debate. I intend to find some relevant facts and post them on the blackboard tomorrow.
Every so often this semester, the prof has been giving someone a copy of the Wall St. Journal. Today he gave it to me, along with three issues of The Economist magazine. I intend to read them, even if it's at the expense of that dratted textbook.
May 8, 1998. Friday.
I've enlisted the Media teacher from last semester to help me with the 223 campaign. I asked him if I could give a presentation to his "American Mind" classes. He said yes, and he'll authorize me to copy 300 fliers and put them in all the faculty and staff mailboxes. Great!
I've decided to take a summer class. I expect to have my free time back by then; all this work shouldn't go on past May. I hadn't meant to take anything over summer. I'd planned on spending the time on independent reading and writing. But then I found out that that composition teacher (see March 5) is going to be teaching a literature class, and I decided I couldn't pass that up, even if it is another darn survey course. The class is "Literature of American Ethinic Diversity."
I got to Econ early and posted two quotes on the blackboard. One, from the local paper, gave the amount of money that an average local welfare family receives. The other, from the Wall St. Journal, said that of all the people who try to get jobs through the CalWORKS welfare-to-work program, only 23% are expected to get them. When the guy I'd been arguing with came in and read it, we started arguing about it some more, and he wrote some stuff on the board about what a $6-an-hour worker would get. A couple of other folks joined the debate when they arrived, and then the teacher showed up and gave his interpretation before changing the subject to the Daimler-Benz/Chrysler merger.
In conclusion... (written June 17)
I never would've thought I'd ever choose to do an in-class essay when given a chance to do a take-home one, but that's what I did. For the final exam, the teacher announced the same deal as last semester: either do two questions in class or do a take-home paper (making an economic proposal to deal with the sorry conditions of schools in poor districts) and substitute it for one of the questions. I was busy. I was tired. I didn't feel like writing the paper. So I didn't.
I guess I'm getting used to essay exams. It used to drive me bonkers to have to hand in a hasty, unrevised essay in which I'd scrawled down whatever I could think of quickly. It was bad writing, and I didn't want to do bad writing. It doesn't bother me now. I've stopped comparing it to the writing I do out of class. There's real writing, and then there's exam writing, and exam writing is supposed to be an uncontemplated mess. I'm good at it, and it can even be fun in a weird way.
For the test, I chose a list of things to define (of course), hurried through it in 45 minutes, and had 1:15 left for the second question I picked, an article to analyze from various angles. I received 50/50 for the definitions and 48/50 for the analysis, more than enough to give me an A in the class.
The grades I report here probably sound pretty impressive, but here's something to keep in mind when you read them. There's not all that much to getting straight A's when you go to school part-time and only take classes in subjects that you really love to learn. That way, you want to keep up with the reading and write good papers and come to every class and ask lots of questions and figure out whatever confuses you, and you have time in which to do so. And once you've done all that, getting A's is pretty easy. My case is pretty different from going full-time and pursuing a degree. In that situation, you've got way too many classes to be able to do your best work on all of them, and a large portion of them are things you don't want to study anyhow. I sure wouldn't be getting straight A's in such a fix. Perhaps I could--I don't know--but I wouldn't want to go to all the trouble.
I won't be taking any more Econ classes here because this place only offers the two. I'd like to try at least one or two more when I transfer. And one of these days I will read The Wealth of Nations! I am determined to! Maybe this year after the summer session is over...
I've ended up growing to like the Econ professor much better than I once thought I ever would. It's funny. Early in the fall semester, I decided he was arrogant and selfish and I'd never take another class from him, but at the same time I still sort of liked him and couldn't explain why. What I finally found out is that he used to teach at a big, fancy, prestigious university, and teachers there just don't act like the ones here. It's standard for them to act hopelessly arrogant and not give students the time of day unless they deem a particular student to be worth their while. Compared to some of what I've heard, this guy's remarkably agreeable, and the things that made me so mad were just... maybe you'd say they were cultural differences. Once I got used to that, I found he was well worth knowing. I'm glad to have had the opportunity.
The Writing Lab was a good thing for me to take. It was terrific to get so much individual, specific advice on writing.
I asked the American Lit teacher if she knew "Philosophy of Furniture", and she said that while she'd thought she had the complete works of Poe, she'd never heard of this one before. she was interested, so I gave her a photocopy. Since this was at the tail end of the semester, I couldn't go back and ask what she thought of it. I'll probably do so in fall.
I wish I had had more time to spend on my Poe/Emerson/Whitman studies instead of on crazy family matters, but I was able to do some. In particular, I was able to read all of Leaves of Grass except the annexes (which I'll get to one of these days). I read most of it up on the same hill where I read Emerson last semester. Whitman just doesn't belong in a living room or even the back yard. He belongs in a free and beautiful place where one will not be disturbed with any trivial concerns, and so that's where I read him. I read some of the poems silently and some softly out loud, and some I shouted as loudly as I could because it seemed that nothing else would do.
Fall '97
Fall '97 (conclusion)
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