Passive Protest

[plumtreeblossom]

I like that a drop of my sweat fell on my homework and smudged the ink jet print a bit (not enough to ruin it, but you can see where it dropped), just like a melodramatic symbol. I'm handing it in that way. I sorta wish it was blood. It represents the profoundly unrealistic amount of homework I've had to tackle this week. And it's not backlogged homework, it's just this week's unfortunately typical load. For only two (2!) classes, I had three hours worth of work/research on a group project, two essays, four short answer exercises of 20 questions each, and three chapters to read, one of which I still have to squeeze in somewhere. Woe is me.

Comments

[joyeous.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Group projects. Those are always the worst. Not that working with people can't be fun, but scheduling a time for everyone to meet and dealing with that *one* person who makes things difficult or doesn't do their part is always interesting. Good luck.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Although I believe group projects can be useful for child students to teach them to work responsibly in groups, I believe they have NO place in an adult educational environment. We already know how to work in groups, and with our life and work and childcare responsibilities, it not like we can just float to campus whenever we please to meet with our group. Fortunately, our professor begrudgingly let our group do our project by e-mail because there was a single mother of young children in the group who couldn't afford the extra childcare. But I might not be so lucky next time.

Our professors (who are usually moonlighting from a traditional teaching jobs teaching young college kids) need to take a minute to look across the classroom at a our crow's feet and our bifocals and our work clothes/uniforms and acknowledge that they're teaching adults with lives, not kids with endless free time.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

I agree. I managed to do a group project this past semester, but I had only one other partner to coordinate with, and she was an undergraduate, and I am a full-time student whose only main, important job is being a(n admittedly adult graduate) student. And it was STILL very difficult for me, as I don't live on campus or even near it. We only met once. I hope never have to do one again in my adult student life. I don't think they're appropriate at ALL, ever, for adult commuter students. (To be fair to my professor, this was an undergraduate class. I think I was the only adult/grad student in it.)

[docorion.livejournal.com]

Welcome to summer session, where they cram three months worth of work into one month.

Sucks, huh?

Also-in some groups, the group-work is part of the assessment dunno if yours is like this). For instance, in my Organizational Behaviour class, the groupwork was a big part of what you were there for; analyzing how you were in a group, recognizing how other people were, how to work with people like that, etc. If approached properly, that is useful and educational.