Lime told me today, as we were talking about the educational system in Korea, “I don’t believe this country’s future is so bright.” The reasons she gave, though, were interesting.
Category: teaching in Korea
The Wrong Guy
I’m probably the wrong guy to be teaching about punk rock & the Sex Pistols. The most wrong guy that could ever be found, perhaps. But I’m doing it anyway, and boy am I grateful that I ordered that Greil Marcus book Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. And that I didn’t get rid of it the first time I tried (unsuccessfully) to read it. I may actually meander my way through the whole thing sometime soon. It’s interesting, if a bit circumstantial at points. UPDATE: As if on cue, I came across something at Antti’s site, …
Disconnections
Two separate forms of disconnection, I’m on about here. One, I’m reading Pico Iyer, on the recommendation of ___, and the other, I’m getting annoyed with some kind of glitch in my on-campus net service. Getting internet connection for free is cool. Sort of. It’s cool when it works, but for the last few days, it’s only been working sort-of. Connection drops out for a little while, or else I get flagged as having a virus — ha, yeah, the Ubuntu Linux system is so vulnerable to computer viruses! The University server seems to think that continuous connection with updates, …
The end of the pile…
Those who have made a habit of glancing at the progress bars in my sidebar will note that I am nearly done grading my midterm essays for this semester. I love teaching writing, but the grading, that’s the rub. It kills me every time, and for some reason, I always forget about this fact and take on too many writing classes. Well, two writing classes would be okay, if only I were wise enough to get the midterms desynchronized enough to give myself two weeks of reasonable marking work, instead of one week of insanely intense grading. Anyway, I’m halfway …
Dammed Flue
Er, damned flu, I mean. Been sneezing like mad. Talked with one of the two plagiarists in class tonight, was was very contrite and in tears. (She settled for a C and a horrible assignment involving multiple paraphrases of what she plagiarized, but was mostly just embarrassed and felt awful about “quoting information” without actually quoting it.) The other, who basically just copied and pasted Dokdo rants, fled from the room at the end of class. Sniffle. I hope to be feeling better tomorrow, so I can hit the gym, but I have six more essays to mark, and then …
Balance
Between hearing snippets of a supposedly excellent book Lime’s reading, containing a Chinese student’s reflections on University life in Korea, and one of my student’s essays on the education system here, I realized something else about why so many Freshmen are so whacked out and extreme in their socializing and drinking and everything else when they first start University. It’s not just the group thing — you know, the having to follow along, and “because everyone else is doing it”, which is so widespread here. And it’s not just the relief of finally being finished with college entrance exams, either, …
My Own Thank Goodness!
No eye pain, no major strain, Essays: only sixteen remain. Thumbed through the pile too, Looked interesting, save a few. Two comp courses is easier than three, If I had but one, I’d be madly happy. So and so on the world shall turn, I think I shall make it so next term.
Still Going…
After a short talk about the importance of considering representation and stereotypes — with examples of the aggressive, violent, murderous, raping American GI and the pedophile Japanese photographer characters coming up from student discussions in the past — I finally had my drama class students start discussing the plot and characters of the plays they’re going to write and perform, and they had a blast. We had some interesting discussions in the small groups, such as the importance of making character sets who could interact as much as possible — and thereby, have a stake in one anothers’ actions in …
More Weird Assertions
Man, when will I learn? So my writing class students have been working on compare-and-contrast essay structures — the structure of the essay, and the words used to make comparisons and show contrast. So I thought I’d get them working on a simple essay that would let them work on this a little more, and collaborate with a partner. What did I have them compare? English and their mother tongue. I made sure the Chinese students were together. I didn’t think about what else might come up. One essay, of course, was “Hangul is better than English”. The guys didn’t …
A Female Problem
So about once a semester, I have one female student who asks to be excused from a class… it’s usually a very conscientious student, and she comes to me and says that she’s not feeling very well and would like to go home, if that’s okay. As a friendly sort of professor, I usually inquire as to the student’s illness, thinking I’m being nice, and finally, after a few moments of hemming and hawing, I realize that it’s that time of the month and she is dreadfully embarrassed and not willing to tell me. This time, she and her very …