Re: schools banning homework

morrisjcroy@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
I got a rude awakening during my first undergrad term. I quickly found out
that university wasn't like high school and that I had to work even harder.
I took up the challenge, though my final GPA wasn't as high as what I
graduated high school with. I guess that it didn't do me any lasting harm
as I did finally earn my Ph. D.


Most folks' GPAs drop from high school to college or university.

Try explaining that to my students. I got a lot of "I was a genius in high school and I had good marks until I started your course" or some such caterwauling.

The
only folks I knew of who had a higher GPA in college/university than
high school, were typically the folks who goofed off and did nothing
at all during high school, but who cleaned up their acts many years
later and subsequently went to college.

I knew some who were like that. They went working on the rigs and, after a few years, they figured out that I wasn't so dumb after all. They went to university and got their engineering degrees.

<snip>

I've encountered a few weirdos at the Mensa gatherings I've attended.


I couldn't figure out what these particular folks' definition of
"strange" was. If I had to guess, maybe they thought my interests
were too "esoteric" for them and/or my interests didn't coincide with
any of their interests.

That could be likely. By weirdos, I meant genuine eccentrics.



Life seems to be that way. The relation between one's early life with
one's later life, has very little to no correlation.

Unfortunately, one can't teach that to the students.


Even if one told the kids that upfront, they wouldn't believe it.

Unfortunately, one can't even get to that point any more. It might discourage them and then they don't want to learn the course material, or so I was given to understand.

Most people have to learn it from first hand experience to know what
it's all about.

As the saying goes, ve get too soon olt und too late schmart.


It seems to be an almost universal truth that young people will
generally not listen to anyone that isn't telling them what they want
to hear. The optimistic naivety of one's youth, I suppose.

I wasn't a whole lot different, but, then, I had a more positive view of humanity when I was younger.



I suspect that the
co-op programs in, say, engineering give a warped perspective on what the
working world must really be like. I recall that I was treated quite
nicely while I worked during my last undergrad summer, though I heard
mutterings about the place and the company from the engineers who worked
there. A year later, though for a different employer, I was able to
confirm that what they said was true.


I've heard many stories about co-op assignments which resembled a
whitewashed "Potemkin village".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village


That's a reasonable comparison. It gives employers a way of evaluating futue employees for next to nothing. (If I'm not mistaken, companies doing that get government support for that.) In addition, they get cheap labour.
.

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