The Shrine

yes it's thursday and yes i'm drunk

it's been awhile since my second-to-last drunken message...possibly i've never posted one here???

at any rate, for entertainment, enlightenment, or sheer what-the-fuckitness, here it is, and here i am, for all i am worth. viva bacardi, chicas, hombres, vida, y todo otro bueno en lo que sabemos y lo gue saberemos!!!!!!

por que no hay crazy motherfuckers aqui que estan willing to get drunk on a thursday night and babble in a random manner....AI QUE SI!!!!!!!!!!! NO SE LO QUE ESTOY DICIENDO!!!!!!!

This is why I get so trashed that I can't use the internet.

I don't know why, but I've always been able to write perfectly fine on the Internet while drunk; maybe a grammar slip up here and there.

Well, Mental is doing pretty good Spanish so far. Where did you learn it? Are you bi-lingual or just using a translation tool for fun?

I know a chick that is bi-lingual and sometimes when she's really blasted, she'll just start talking in Spanish without realizing it, or she'll actually forgot how to speak in Spanish when asked.

No, I learned it in high school...

You can't speak Spanish that you learned in HS. High School Spanish is fucking useless.

No te la perdono!

Sine, if you took high school Spanish and it was useless, I can't help that, but mine was excellent. Part of the problem I had at Stanford is that my high school teachers were such better teachers than my Stanford professors that I just ended up hating the whole lot (or the greater part of the lot) of my professors.

Stanford? There's a Stanford HS?

no, sine, i went to Stanford for college/university.

Comparing Teachers to Professors is like comparing a computer to a calculator.

They both do essentially the same thing, but which would you rather have? :p

Oracle wrote:Comparing Teachers to Professors is like comparing a computer to a calculator.

They both do essentially the same thing, but which would you rather have? :p

:smiles

which is which?

Mental wrote:Sine, if you took high school Spanish and it was useless, I can't help that, but mine was excellent. Part of the problem I had at Stanford is that my high school teachers were such better teachers than my Stanford professors that I just ended up hating the whole lot (or the greater part of the lot) of my professors.

At universities (not small teaching colleges), professors are generally hired for their ability to do research, not their ability to teach. For many professors, research is their job, teaching just pays the bills. To be fair, I've had many good professors and many poor middle and high school teachers. In my experience, the distribution of good and poor teachers is about the same at the college level as it is at the middle and high school level. While middle and high school teachers are actually <i>taught</i> how to teach, it's not as hard to become one. Professorships are hard to come by.

My department is going through the interview process; we went through it last year, too. This year we're interviewing mostly people who have assistant or full professorships from other universities, but last year it was all fresh PhDs.

What I found surprising, and even a little disconcerting, was that I had as much teaching experience as some of these new PhDs. (I've taught intro to programming labs.) It seems like we just kinda hope people figure out how to teach while they get their PhD. Then they become professors and start grooming the next crop of academics. And that's how our system works.

With all of the candidates I've seen go through the interview process here, this year and last, it's research, research, research. That's what they talk about, that's what we ask about. And my school has a strong undergraduate teaching reputation.

well, research is fine at a graduate level...but when it comes to undergraduate classes, especially freshman/sophmore year, i feel strongly that the teaching needs to be the priority. i really hate a professor who just turns you off to the material because he or she is too busy or self-important to care about his or her students...i felt like i had at least one of those at stanford...

o well.

i don't think it's too much of a secret anymore that i'm fairly bitter about my stanford experiences. i feel like the school's undergraduate reputation is at least a little overrated. there are a lot of people who seem to like it...i can't really understand it, but they do...