It's easy

I had this comment directed at me once:  "College is easy for you because you're older."  It was said by a 21 year old girl who is having a rough time in college, apparently.  Now, I won't deny that I am older, and especially older for the traditional college aged student.  However, college is college and I believe that teachers and professors teach not based on the age of their students, but on two things.  One, the curriculum and two, their specific interest in the subject.   I'm not going out on a limb here by saying that college professors teach what they like and what they are interested in.  Or they should anyway.   

But I have been thinking about her comment.  Is college really easier for an older person, and what defines "older" in such a way as to cross over into some magical knowledge based area that makes learning "easier?"  My answer back to her was not one of anger, but of old age wisdom, "Perhaps you need to stop screwing around so much and study more."  I wasn't angry when I said it, but I do feel that if the younger students who complain about college being "too hard" would apply more effort into learning, they might get something out of it.  But that is not the way of the young.  I was the same way, so I know of what I speak.

College is wasted on the young.  Or many of them anyway.  Not all young people are there to just get through it and get their degree.  Every once in a while I run across one of these youths, and it usually is enough to restore my faith in our youth.  They are usually bright, active, nice, courteous, thoughtful, intelligent, and you know they are going to go far in life.  Unfortunately, there are many that are just the opposite.  I hear them complaining in the hallways, in classes, and on the shuttle buses.  They complain that they have to work for a class, or do homework, or actually study.  Now, let me say that I have done my fair share of complaining on this blog, but having now seen the difference between teachers who are worthy of complaint and the ones who are just trying to impart some type of learning is a stark contrast to each other.  I think of the differences between document design and Spanish.

I'm not going to rehash in great detail those two classes and professors, but suffice it to say that one was unwilling to see his students through (document design) and the other pretty much did everything he could to make sure the students who wanted to succeed, did (Spanish).  Yet I got the lower grade in Spanish.  If interested in the whole story, go to the earlier blogs, but at this point, I would consider these two classes my hardest classes, but for very different reasons.  Keeping in  mind the little chippie that tells me college is easy because I'm older, I found that these two classes were anything but easy.  Both were stressful, time-consuming, and probably meant for a younger student.  Learning a foreign language in your mid-40's is  a kind of stress I never want to endure again.  I came away with an anxiety/panic disorder from it that still leaves me reeling at times.  That same anxiety came back with document design, and we all know (again, see previous blogs) how that ended.  As a side note, that professor is not teaching that class next spring.  You're welcome.

The DD professor did not teach.  He did not lecture, show by example, clarify the subject matter, or even make himself somewhat approachable to answer questions.  He dumped the material, gave impossible tests, and texted his way through classes.  He taught in English, but it may as well have been (pick a language you don't know) for all the good it did.  What got me an A in that class was reading the four textbooks, realizing that I needed to get through the class in order to graduate, and not wanting to ruin my GPA.  Spanish was very similar in that the same reasons applied to my motivation.  But the Spanish professor cared, or appeared to care, that his students mattered and especially their comfort level in learning Spanish.  I'm thrilled with the B's I got in the two semesters because I worked my old keister off, and know when to be grateful for working as hard as one can for a decent grade.  And, again, the Spanish teacher really did make the difference here.  Had he been like the DD teacher, I'm not exactly sure what would have happened.  But I do know that it was never easy because I was old or older.  Never.  Not once.  Neither class was easy, and I don't think I was given special treatment because of my age.  I was given the same amount of homework as the younger students and not once was I told I didn't have to work hard because I was older.  In fact, I sometimes think I'm held as an example because of my age.  Not openly, but sometimes I feel like a mother hen to some of the younger students, and that was never so true as in DD.

I realized about 1/3 into the semester with DD that I had developed a group of kids who would sit by me.  I think it was mostly because I would read the material, and I actually asked and challenged the teacher on questions.  This was confirmed when a kid came over one day before class started and he asked if he could "sit with my group."  I was a bit shocked and said sure, it's a free classroom.  But it got me to thinking that the kids sitting by me did so because I would not back down when I didn't understand something.  There were several episodes in that class where the teacher just walked away from me because I kept asking questions about the material and he finally admitted he didn't know the answers to some of the questions I was asking.  I also noticed that he got twitchy because my group had grown to about 15 people by now, and they were all listening because they too had the same questions.  At that point, the teacher should have stood up and started a lecture on the subject because if half the class is leaning in to listen (think of the old 80's TV commercial for EF Hutton), then he has a responsibility to at least go over the material once.  Not to mention the amount of tuition I paid for this class and his "expertise." 

The epitome of this experience was when the last test was given and, again, a major portion of the class failed it, a girl asked him a question about the duo tones question he had asked on the test.  She asked her question and then looked at me and said, "right, Nicki?"  I had gotten the question wrong and was wondering the same thing  myself.  Because here's the thing:  I knew the book answer and wrote it almost word for word as my answer.  I said, "yes, I'm wondering why that answer is wrong because I put down the same answer as the book."  He challenged me and said to bring the book in an he'd reconsider.  I then pulled the book out of my backpack (you HAD to have known I had it with me), went straight to the page and showed him.  He came over to my spot, leaned down and read the passage, and looked up at me with a heated, angry look in his eyes.  I was proud of myself in that I didn't flinch, move, smile, look down, or otherwise back-down.  However, what he did next shocked me.  He gave me the points for the answer, but denied the girl who had asked the question.  She had the answer right.  She should have been given the points.  But because he didn't lecture on the material, it was open for interpretation.  He felt that because she didn't write down the memorized passage from the book, she wasn't right.  But because he didn't lecture, he couldn't argue with my answer which was pretty much verbatim from the book.  I think that is one of the most evil things a teacher can do (well, besides illegal things...).

This semester I'm in a class that teaches teachers on how to teach their students to compose and write papers and essays (way to many uses of the word teacher in that sentence).  I didn't know it was for teaching majors, and it didn't specify in the listings.  Again, UWM, you really need to work on those descriptions.  But I stayed in the class because it is really interesting to see the "inner workings" of how teachers teach.  In our readings from two weeks ago, this style of assigning material and not lecturing on it is an actual tactic used in making students "interact and know" the material.  By testing on the assigned readings and not lecturing on them, somehow makes students not only know the material, but be experts on it.  I was shocked this is a method of teaching.  Shocked and dismayed because I've always had the impression that teachers should lecture, show, answer questions, and generally explain the information (that's why they are called TEACHERS).  But a lazy teacher such as the DD professor would embrace this method whole-heartedly.  Four textbooks with hundreds of pages to read but never a lecture.  Not once.  450 pages alone on typography.  The entire book.  And not one comment other than "you need to interact with the material."  His words, not mine.  And how, exactly does one interact with the material when even the teacher doesn't want to teach it?

This brings me back to the college is easier for older people comment.  When I explained that the motivations may be different and that's why it APPEARS to be easier, she didn't want to hear that. I also think that A students have the perception from non-A students that it is just easy for them and everyone else struggles.  But chippie tells me it is easy for me because otherwise it makes her responsible for her own learning.  She needs to believe that somehow I have an easy time learning because of my age.  Why would that be true when studies have repeatedly shown that learning is better when started younger.  Foreign languages are the first example I think of.  It's proven that younger people learn faster and better than an older brain.  Yet I wouldn't say it is easier, but just different.

I'm not mad at her, but a little dismayed that someone who is sitting right next to me, doing the exact same work, getting the exact same experience thinks that it is easier for me because I'm twice her age.  I don't think she is any less intelligent than me, or that her learning is more difficult because of her age.  But her motivations are very different from mine, and that, that is where the difference lies.  I told her that her motivations will change and once she is older, she will see the error of her comment.  But by then, she will have a chippie telling her it's easy because she is old and I will probably be long gone....

The power of the Matrix

We are born, we grow old, and we die.  It is a simple concept made difficult by the growing old part.  From the moment we are born we begin to age and nothing can stop that until death.  This past weekend I almost met with my death and now I’ve been obsessing about not only the incident, but life, and my life, in general. 

On a divided highway I travel frequently, and through an intersection I’ve traveled probably hundreds of times, I was almost “T-Boned” by a Sheboygan County Sheriff SUV from my left.  I never saw him cross the northbound side of traffic (I was traveling southbound), go through the island divider of the north/south roads, and only until I had passed in front of him did I see him in my peripheral vision.  I had glided past him by the time I slammed on my brakes.  He glided past me just as smoothly as if we had coordinated the whole maneuver.  I remember seeing just a flash of blue and then the brown blur that is the front end of an SUV that sits higher than my Matrix.  I saw with blurry side vision his headlights, grill, hood, and the massiveness that is too close to a moving vehicle at 60mph. 

Once I came to a screeching halt, I looked back on my right and saw that he had slammed to a stop also.  I didn’t see him in the cab, just the side and back but once he determined I hadn’t rolled my vehicle stopping, he took off on his original call.  Not once through the entire episode did I hear his siren.  It wasn’t on.  I still don’t understand how I never saw him, and he never saw me.  I know they are trained to proceed through intersections slowly and cautiously, for this very reason, so I can only determine that he didn’t see me or made the assumption that I saw him. 

This is a wide open part of the highway, and I really should have seen him.  I’m still bothered and at a loss as to why I didn’t see him.  It was daylight so maybe his lights weren’t as effective, and he didn’t have a siren on so I never heard him.  I didn’t have music blasting, and was not texting, on the phone, or otherwise preoccupied.  I had just taken a drink from my soda bottle and I think I may have looked down to put it back in its holder and by the time I looked back up had traveled far enough that I didn’t scan the horizon and intersection like I should have.  If he was responding to a call, he was distracted because they have to concentrate on the details coming over the radio and writing stuff down.  That’s as bad as texting.

My point is this.  I never saw my life flash before my eyes, but I do know that had we collided, I would have taken a direct hit to the driver’s side door and probably would not have survived the collision.  I guess in some regard I would have never known what hit me.  As the days progress from it, I have stopped being in shock and fear, and have moved on to some kind of melancholy about the whole thing and how quickly life can end.  I’ve had close calls on the road before.  I travel so much that it would be impossible if I haven’t had some kind of incident.  I would think every driver has had close calls.  But I’ve never felt so sure that I wouldn’t have survived before and this bothers me.  Maybe it’s those awful commercials and tv programs that show the impact of a side collision that is vivid in my mind, but I think I was given a second chance on Saturday.  However, the question is, why?

As human beings we search for meaning in pretty much everything.  And I’ve never really been the one to think that it is all coincidence.  I think some is, but basically I think there is a Divine plan that we are part of, but may never know why or how we play our parts.  I guess some would say they don’t want to be manipulated in that regard, but if I am on this Earth to fulfill a reason, no matter how unclear to me, I will count myself grateful that I was a split second faster than the Sheriff.  Now, to figure out why.