Sunday, June 16, 2013

Genteel Edumacation - Rant #2

Chasing me like chasing your tail your never catch it
Respect is something you never get if you never had it
I'm lookin' back and laughin' this life of mine
Brought me all the way here from my life of crime

Well I mean it's that time of year again. End of June and I don't even care about the end of financial year crap. Which is weird. 'Cause my father is an accountant. And that makes me a part time accountant. By force. Not by choice. Just throwing that out there. But that's not even what I care about, anyway!

It's the time of year when all uni students curse their collective lives, their lecturers and, most importantly, themselves for not taking more notes earlier and paying more attention in lectures. Displacement probably accounts for about 80% of the hatred towards lecturers too.

"If they hadn't taken a week of strikes, I would've actually gone to that lecture"

"If they didn't have so much content maybe I WOULDN'T DIE!"

It's pretty enjoyable to watch first years quake in their boots at the prospect of massive exams. Bitch, please. Your exams are all multiple choice. If you don't pass that then I deserve to give you a cuff upside your head. Panic, panic! But seriously, how much we grow over the years. Being a third year, I couldn't care less about the first years except those I have the pleasure of calling my friends. I'll go out of my way to help those ones. In general though, us third years look down on first years in the same way that a year 12 kid looks upon a year 7 kid. Or, in fact, in much the same way that a full-time worker looks upon uni students. Let's be honest, no love lost (in my defense, I've worked more 50-hour weeks than I care to count, worked more double shifts than most adults, worked more jobs in one day than an average student would have over 5 years).

But here's the problem with uni. It doesn't cater for everyone in the sense that content is delivered to a very narrow type of mind. It's all lectures, which admittedly isn't a bad thing, but when it gets to being text wall after text wall, speech after speech, frantic scribbles after frantic scribbles, it becomes...lopsided. To those people that learn that way, you're cheering. To the people that don't, you get left behind regardless of how intelligent you may actually be. Don't get me wrong, you can study hard in any case and do well no matter how you pick up and retain information, it just becomes a different experience. And therein lies the inherent allure of university life.

Personally, I'm the kind of hands on, visual learner. Throw me in the ring with a pair of gloves and I'll beat the crap out of any heavyweight problem standing in front of me. Practical experience is the key. Or a visual representation of whatever it is you want me to learn. Videos are exceptionally great for learning. YouTube is an awesome educational experience if you're built like me. University, unfortunately, does not cater to this type of learning in my course, and I'm assuming most other courses. I face a lot of theory everyday and now with these semester finals, I spend most of my time hibernating in an attempt to catch up. Uni, get your shit together (see, displacement).

I demand a revolution,

The Sleepless Dreamer

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