brevity is the death of all.
lately, on the middlebury campus, the cool way to preface everything you say is "briefly" or "I am going to go into this briefly," or even 'real quick." I happen to have many classes right now that have student presentations and trust me - from architecture, to art, to film, they're all doing it. now, when you give a presentation, you own that 20 mins or 5 mins or whatever. the professor has allotted the time to you, you own it, the audience is captive, use it. To preface everything by saying 'real quick,' you diminish your point. obviously what you are about to say doesn't merit full consideration, explanation, or even more than a fragmented thought. I think this is a poor skill and it's going to hurt in the end. yes, granted we're all so busy, and we all have so much going on (all the time) that we can't spend more than a minute fleshing out an idea or answering a question. I think it's easier than ever to get away with not doing your reading. basically, in class, people aren't going to take the time to ask you what you thought about so and so's argument or the author's evidence, they are going to say "real quick the author said "blah" the blah will be filled with some meaningless buzzword to prove that they too are capable of skimming the article on the way to athletic practice, while talking on a cell phone, eating a sesame bagel, and chewing gum (did I mention they were walking - or around here, driving a SUV). Maybe college students generally and Middlebury students specifically are this bright and promising bunch... well, too bad you won't get to know that for yourself, they are too overcommitted and obviously incapable of gleaning any more than a bolded term from a reading assignment. I saw 2 bad presentations today, and of the 6 students involved, all were guilty of the aforementioned vice. I don;t know what education is coming to... I guess I have just spent too long couped up in the library and revising my work to stand for such obvious acceptance of sub-par performances.
I have a lot to do for my thesis and otherwise, just having a hard time starting anything tonight. I am also a computer lab nomad because my usual spot is consumed with an econ experiment. (boo!) and I have a feeling the other labs are mobbed. I am on a mac right now, and let's just say i am glad I stuck with dell and windows based machines. if I got an Ibook or a g4, maybe my 5 and 6 keys would still work!
posted by lmjasinski at 8:13 PM
