Daring Feats in Academia
← previous topic | who’s submitted | story list | next topic →
From Cavazos to Dassett
After learning my Spanish vocabulary and grammar the first year from Senor Cavazos, I had to learn to speak it for Senor Dassett! It was always daunting to walk into his class and, being asked a question in Spanish, knowing full well he expected a fluent response. “Que Lastima!”
Dianne Davis Phillips
Being asked to turn out the lights
Falling asleep in Mr. Gustafson's 8 a.m. class was bad enough, but when he asked me to turn off the lights for a film, as I was right by the light switch sound asleep, was truly embarrassing.
Janet Taylor Dybdal
No Astronomy for me
I have fond memories of friends at Macalester, but living at home and working three jobs gave me few campus memories. Laughingly, I tell my grandchildren that the only class I did not like at Mac was Astronomy. I did not like sitting on snowy bleachers on cold nights for the lab sessions. Also, I could not see the people, animals and "soup ladles" that others saw. I just saw stars. I had great teachers — especially enjoyed Beth Leinbach and her small classes. It was a great preparation for life.
Carolyn Jensen Demcak
Learning the latest in teaching
Once I returned to teaching in the late 1970s, I again realized how great my education was at Macalester. Many of the “new” methods were ones I learned and taught in the ’50s. “Hands on” Science was a very important part of my teaching and I know the classes at Macalester taught me the basics of the method.
Edith Hansen Meints
That drat Psych exam
I acquired a strong distaste for certain educators when I took the introductory course in psychology. I can’t now remember the name of the course or the professor, who is my lifetime candidate for the person I would like most to skewer, but I was absolutely appalled by the final examination he gave for the course. I always thought exams should leave you with some sense of what you have accomplished in the course. I mean you study, you learn something, and then you prove that you have learned something in the course by showing so on the exam. Would anyone seriously test you on what you were unlikely to have learned and in any event don’t want to know? Well, in this case, the professor had developed an exam over the years in which he progressively removed the multiple-choice questions to which students tended to know the answers. As such, the exam increasingly became a test of footnote reading and obscure facts that had never come up for discussion during the course. Worse yet, this exam method by a learned professor of psychology was deliberately adopted by him. Did he know everything about psychology without knowing anything about education? I felt a rare sense of rage upon taking that exam which has remained with me for 54 years. I still burn when I think about that crap exam.
Thomas E. Johnson
Skipping out for the Big Question
We were warned not to skip classes but I dared to when I became impassioned about writing a paper on a Big Question: “What is art?”
Karen Helberg Dahood
← previous topic | who’s submitted | story list | next topic →
[ Submit your Brief Bio and Remember When stories ]