Thursday, December 11, 2003
"A high potentiality for the common motherfucker to bitch out"
I just checked my first books out of the LSE library... until now I'd been using online journal articles and the two texts I got through Amazon and Waterstones. I realised this sad state of affairs existed last week, and had planned to hold out until the end of term tomorrow, but I just came up with a potentially good idea for a paper that's due late in January and wanted material now. It was rather thrilling.
Today I handed in a working copy of my simulation model, and a brief on the experiments I plan to perform over the term break. Doesn't that sound like the most exciting way to spend the holidays ever? But wait, because the excitement is only beginning. I also have a mathematical program to model, and a large stats project in which I need to figure out what the categorical variables are for a collection of paintings. And reports to write for all three projects. Whee!
With classes ending tomorrow, the OR department held a mini-post mortem to discuss how things have been going so far this term. I haven't been writing much about the MSc thing, because there's not much to say other than it's keeping me incredibly busy, I am learning tons, and I love being a student again. But when someone complained about how we didn't learn much in simulation, I delivered a mini-rant on the fact that if people would actually listen in class instead of talking to their friends throughout, we might actually get through more material. Except then I felt like I'd said it all wrong, so I e-mailed the other Masters students:
Executive summary: if you’re one of the people who rarely if ever talks to their friends during lectures, clearly this isn’t directed at you. In fact, I am a huge fan of yours and love you to bits on that basis alone. Not to say that I’m not a fan of yours if you are a talker, but you are making me crazy.
I want to clarify my comments from yesterday's mini post mortem about stupid questions and noise levels in classes. I don't actually think anyone's questions are stupid and should not have said that. The problem is also not that I think any of you are stupid or that I dislike any of you, and I really hope I didn't give that impression. In fact, it's the opposite. I've been impressed by everyone in both the OR and Decision Sciences that I've talked to, which is why I find the way some of you act in some classes so insulting and annoying.
I understand that some of the lecturers don't hold your attention. If you're not getting anything out of a class, of course you'd rather be talking to the person next to you than listening. But when there are 2 or 3 conversations going on, it becomes very challenging for anyone else to hear the actual lecture. If you're confused about something in the course, obviously it makes sense to ask a question. If, however, you were talking to your friend when someone asked a question so you missed it, and you ask the exact same question five minutes later, you're wasting all of our time. Since it only happens in some courses, it's obvious that the talking is a conscious behaviour and is not inevitable, which is why it’s so frustrating to me.
This may be a cultural issue, but I interpret both the constant talking and the time wasting with repeated questions as showing a severe lack of respect both for the lecturer and for everyone else in the class. I feel like you're making my LSE experience less valuable, so not only do I feel insulted, I'm resenting the drop in the return on my tuition investment.
I have a few requests that might improve the atmosphere in lectures next term:
- if you're getting nothing out of a class, instead of complaining to the person next to you, consider talking to the professor in their office hours, or bringing it up in some productive way that could actually improve the class for everyone
- if you have a trivial comment to make to the person next to you, please whisper or, better yet, text them
- if you find yourself talking for large portions of a class, maybe it makes sense to meet your friends for coffee instead of coming to that class, or to write notes to each other, or to find some clever way to keep your social interaction from being seriously distracting
Obviously if you're one of the constant talkers, you're free to ignore this and to do whatever you want in class. I'd rather not spend my time in lectures so annoyed that I'm snapping at people to shut up, but it's either that or grind my teeth to stubs. In which case, I would be tempted to send my dentist bills to the worst offenders.
Regards,
Christina
I was aiming for a tone that skated the line between funny, moderately bitchy, and semi-diplomatic. I think it worked because one of the Greek students who is a frequent but not constant conversationalist in class told me the last sentence made him laugh, and now he has two conflicting opinions of me: "One is, I think you're a total bitch. Other times you are incredibly sweet." I told him that was about right, that if you push me too far I will stop being sweet and bitch out.
It remains to be seen if our project class tomorrow will be any quieter.
Update at 13:00 Friday Dec 12: It was! It was much quieter. I am so damned pleased with myself. There were also fewer attending than usual, what with it being the last day of Michaelmas Term and all, so my high self regard is probably a classic example of how "Most people display unrealistically rosy views of their abilities and prospects [Weinstein (1980)]. Typically, over 90% of those surveyed think they are above average in such domains as driving skill, ability to get along with people and sense of humor." (from Barberis, N., & Thaler, R. (2002). "A Survey of behavioural finance." Working paper.)
Weinstein, N. (1980). "Unrealistic optimism about future life events", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39:806-820.
