If you were wondering, I finished the semester on Monday with my last two finals. Here's the breakdown: all A's except one B in my geography class, and I got A's on both papers, the one about Native American homosexuality in Texas and the one about the Mike Nichols films and marriage in the late 1960's.The geography class ("The Modern American City") was a bit frustrating. Overall, it was one of my favorite classes I've taken at UT. The lectures were fascinating, the professor is very funny and opinionated, the reading was interesting. If you gauge the value of a course by how much it illuminates your view of the world, this one would score very high.
But the exams were insane, not so much hard as loopy. They defied any notion you might have about what is important to remember and what is not. Questions were often along the lines of, "What was the pun I made in my lecture about residual spaces?" The class grade was based completely on 3 exams, and I studied hard and couldn't get much above an 85 on any of them. There just didn't seem to be any way to prepare for them, they were so unpredictable. If you didn't write down that pun and memorize it, you were out of luck. (Yes, I know this is essentially about my ego. Whatever. I'm not a B student!)
2 comments:
Hmmm...sounds like a great teacher. I know that you are being perfectionist-y about this, and grades do count, but maybe the point of his tests was that the tests weren't the point? Sounds like he wanted everyone to have a memorable experience of his class, to help remember the material.
I don't remember all that much about my high school junior year English class, but I DO remember Mr. Browne, my favorite teacher and how he pronounced "Hester Prynne" when we were reading The Scarlet Letter. He tried to make it fun, and it was (way more than Hawthorne, for sure.)
I hadn't thought of it that way -- and you're right. Thanks for the perspective. :)
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