Plastic Brain

A major component of my research involves interacting with international colleagues and students, an aspect of my work that I enjoy very much. At some point years ago I decided that I should try to become more conversant in a particular language that would be useful to one of my long-running international research collaborations.

As some readers know from previous posts, after years of informal study and practice, I took 3 years of undergraduate classes at my university. The beginning, intermediate, and advanced language courses met 4-5 times/week during each academic year, and, as a result of these classes and the dedication of an excellent instructor, I finally progressed beyond a tourist-speak level of ability in this language. I also had some interesting experiences being an "undergraduate" again (example 1, example 2, example 3; others can be found by searching on the word 'language').

I took all the courses there were to take, so this year I have been meeting one-on-one with a language tutor, a young woman who is a non-science graduate student at my university. We meet twice a week for an hour or so of random conversation about life, the news, movies, books, anything. Although my tutor had no previous experience as a tutor, I was extraordinarily lucky to find such a kind, patient, and interesting person. I enjoy our meetings very much.

When I was taking classes, there were obvious milestones that helped me gauge my progress. We did oral presentations (typically twice in a term), and moved through a textbook series that systematically expanded our vocabulary and knowledge of grammar.

I was reasonably happy with my progress, although quite dissatisfied with my speaking skills. I was also very aware that it was getting more and more difficult for me to learn new words. It was considerably annoying to have to look up the same word over and over and find that it just wasn't sticking in my brain. In my youth, I had an excellent memory, but at some point I no longer did.

Now that my language learning involves mostly conversation, supplemented by some reading (newspapers, novels) and movie watching, I didn't know whether I was progressing or not -- I feared that I was getting stuck in some speaking-ruts, using the same simple words and grammar forms over and over. In my more pessimistic moments, I wondered if my ability to speak this language had plateaued, a victim of my aging brain and lack of time or opportunity to immerse myself in this language.

Recently, however, I had a few experiences that gave me some sense that I had made progress. For example, during a visit to another university to give a talk, I encountered a scientist from a country where this language is spoken, and we talked for more than an hour in this language. I couldn't have done that last year. I could have carried on some form of rudimentary conversation for an hour, but I couldn't really have conversed.

So, now I think that language learning is always going to be slower than I want it to be, but, even given the challenges of my aging brain and limited time, I think I can continue to make progress. I have not plateaued.

This gives me hope in general for my ability to learn new things. As a researcher, I hope that I can still explore new fields of knowledge, learn new techniques, and make connections between ideas. My detectable (albeit) slow progress with language learning is evidence that my brain isn't full (or emptying..) quite yet and that I haven't already learned everything I will ever learn.

I was thinking about this the other day, not only because I finally had a ray of hope about my progress with speaking skills in the language I have been trying to learn, but also because I was wondering what proportion of my time I spend transferring knowledge I already have (i.e., sharing my accumulated wisdom via teaching or advising) vs. having creative new thoughts about Science.

It's hard to calculate because, although I spend a substantial and perhaps steady amount of time on the former (knowledge transfer), the latter (acquisition of new knowledge, ideas) mostly comes in pulses, precipitated in part by a encountering a looming proposal deadline, reaching a particular stage with a paper, or needing to brainstorm with a student or colleague about some aspect of a project.

That's fine with me. As long as there is a not-infrequent component of my job involving creative thought, there will be a good balance between knowledge-out and knowledge-in, and my aging brain and I can continue to learn, discover, and have fun.

Professor-Student Update: Penultimate Goal

It seems like it has been a while since I wrote about my adventures taking an undergraduate language course, perhaps because, after three years with the same professor and the same core group of students, we are definitely in a routine in which not much surprising happens. A lot of learning has been happening, though. Earlier this year I traveled to a country in which this particular language is spoken, and I found to my intense happiness that I have made progress even since my trip last summer.

But at the end of this academic year, I will have reached the end of the line in terms of taking undergraduate courses in this language, and my options are limited for taking courses on literature and culture in this language. I may hire a private tutor because I don't want to lose what I've learned so far -- my abilities in this language are still quite precarious.

It will be a sad moment for me when I take my final exam and complete the class, especially with no further classes to look forward to in the fall. And I will miss our little group that has been together for 3 years.

These three years of intensive language courses (4-5 days/week) have taken a lot of time and energy. The effort, however, has definitely been worth it for me because of the immediate practical effect of learning how to communicate in a language that is useful to me for many reasons and because it exercised my brain in different and interesting way.

So there is much to feel good about, but I have not yet attained my Penultimate Goal: I want to give a complete scientific talk in this language.

In the classes I've been taking, we don't learn any science jargon, so I've had to acquire that by reading the scientific literature and asking questions of colleagues who know this language. Little by little I have been acquiring the words and skills I need to speak Science in this other language, but it's going to take a lot more work to be able to give a coherent talk. It might take a year or three, but that's my next goal.

And then I would like to become fluent in this language. Fluency -- the Ultimate Goal -- may, however, be unattainable given my advanced age, limited time, and lack of opportunities for immersion in the language. But that's OK. Any progress I can make en route to proficiency in the language will be worth it for me.

Not Great Expectations

The FSP Statement of Purpose Awards Committee is still conferring, but so far we can state with confidence that many of the best (= worst) involve mention of childhood and emphatic statements about how great the applicant is.

The topic of today's post involves yet another of my experiences as a science professor who is also a student in an undergraduate language course.

In the 3rd year language class I've been taking, we had an in-class written final exam and an oral final exam, and those went pretty well, I think. This term, we also spent one class per week studying a related form of the language, and for that we had a separate, take-home final exam involving a translation exercise. We studied Language 2 (the related language) entirely in Language 1, so although Language 2 twisted my brain in strange and difficult ways, studying it has helped me with Language 1.

It sort of comforts me that the native Language 1 speakers in the class also struggled with Language 2, although I know I would have an easier time with 2 if I were fluent in 1.

Anyway, I spent many many hours on the take-home final exam, translating Language 2 into Language 1. I didn't count, but it was at least 8-10 hours over the course of a week. It was difficult, but in the end I was pleased with the result, although I know my translations are imperfect.

Before I turned in my translations, the professor said to me "I know this exam will be difficult for you, but don't worry, I am not expecting that you will do very well. Just do as much as you can."

It is always fascinating for me to have these interactions in which I am a student having a conversation with a professor about a topic (e.g. exam performance) that I might have with my own students. In this case, I know the professor was being kind and trying to relieve any stress I might have about the exam. She was saying "Don't worry", but what I heard was "I have low expectations for you."

I don't particularly like being the focus of low expectations, and I hope she will be pleasantly surprised when she reads my translations. Then maybe she will have medium-low expectations or maybe intermediate expectations for me. Either would be better than low expectations.

I did not directly ask the professor "So, how do you think I'll do on the exam?" -- she volunteered the information. When a student asks me how I think they'll do on an exam in a class I'm teaching, it can be difficult to get the response right in terms of not being too encouraging ("If you've really learned the material, you should be able to do fine on the final exam") yet not unreasonably optimistic ("Don't worry, it's easy and you'll do fine!") or too negative ("Well, you've failed all the other exams, so it doesn't look good for this one, does it?").

It's better not to make a guess about the difficulty/outcome of an exam except as is necessary to provide motivation to a student who is wondering if they need to study. When I am confronted with questions about exam difficulty/outcome, I prefer to answer instead by asking the students if they have anything they want to ask or discuss about the course material.

What I have learned from my recent conversation with my language professor is that telling a student, however indirectly, that you have low expectations for them may not actually be as comforting as the statement is intended to be.

Third Time's a C..

This is my third year of taking a language class at my university. For two years I was a model student, doing my homework on time and well, getting A's on tests, and making steady progress in the language along with my fellow students. There are three of us who started in the beginning course three years ago and are now in the advanced course.

In the third year language course, however, there have now appeared some new students who grew up speaking this language at home but who have never had a formal course in it. They speak this language extremely well. They do not write or read as well, but even so, a great deal of this year's course involves speaking, and I have fallen behind.

It is a bit humbling to find myself a mediocre student. It can also be frustrating, as the pace of the course has increased by an order of magnitude in terms of what we are expected to be able to say and understand. We are also now expected to speak about and write essays on cultural topics that I have to spend a lot of time researching but that those who grew up in this culture can expound on from experience.

Perhaps being a mediocre student will give me a better perspective on such students in my own classes, and therefore make me a better educator and/or human being. At least, that's what I tell myself when I have more trouble than most of the other students using relative clauses correctly.

Despite the frustration of having to struggle to keep up, I am still enjoying the class, I don't mind being stretched to my limits (and beyond), and I happen to like the curve-wrecking students -- they are nice and interesting people. Also, I am taking the class Pass-Fail.

Top 10 Things I Have Learned as a Professor-Student

This is now my 5th consecutive semester of taking an undergraduate language course. I have learned a lot from the course about the target language, but I have also learned (or relearned) some important things about being a student.

Top 10 things I have learned by being a student (again):

10. how strange it is to get constant emails from companies and organizations that want to sell me term papers, notes, books, or recordings so that I will get high grades without working hard or attending class;

9. how important it is that the course syllabus be followed; or, if changes are made, that these are clearly explained;

8. how much I dislike getting motivational stickers on my homework assignments;

7. how much I like sitting in the same seat in the classroom each day;

6. how difficult it is to have many hours of homework for one class due in a short amount of time;

5. how fun it can be to be part of a small group of nice people working together on something;

4. how stressful it is to take exams, especially impossible ones;

3. what it feels like to not want to be called on in class;

2. how good it feels to be learning something completely new;

1. I am old.

Out of the (Language) Lab

For the past two years, I have been taking classes in a language that is very useful for me to know for my research and international collaborations. In four semesters of taking this class 5 days/week, I have done a lot of homework, taken a lot of quizzes, and done a lot of reading, listening, and speaking. Then I went to a country in which this language is spoken. In fact, I am there right now.

I was nervous about going to this country for the first time since I took the language classes. What if I had made no more progress than I had been able to make previously on my own using books and CD's? What if my two years of language classes had made me an expert at doing homework assignments in a textbook but had left me unprepared to comprehend and communicate in this language in the real world? I have long been able to communicate at a basic level in this language, but this basic level has been deeply unsatisfying, hence my decision to take formal classes.

As soon as I got off the plane, I could tell the difference in my comprehension level, and this has been confirmed as I have spent more time here. My comprehension level is not 100%, but it might be somewhere near 80%, and that's a huge difference from the last time I was here.

My speaking abilities are not as good, but I knew that. Spending time here has helped a bit, and I am optimistic about improving with more time here (and more classes next year).

I have been having fun surprising people who don't expect me to speak the language, and have tried to convince a few people (strangers who started talking to me because it is obvious that I am a foreigner) that I am from a mid-sized provincial town in this country. I picked a town that city people have heard of but that is a place that someone who looks and dresses like me would be unlikely to be from. The response is always entertaining, then I laugh and explain, and then they laugh.

There are some rather conservative parts of this country, and in these places, the culture clash is more startling and less entertaining. In these places, men will shake the hands of my male colleagues but will not even look at me or speak to me, much less shake my hand. [Don't even bother with the 'You're probably imagining it' comments. I have been spending substantial amounts of time in this country nearly every year for the last 15 years and I have a significant dataset of unequivocal experiences, ranging from trivial to serious]. My language skills are of less use in those places, though it is still helpful to be able to understand what people are saying.

So, in answer to the question (which I asked myself) of whether two years of language study at a university can be useful, in my case the answer is definitely yes. I am sure I would learn more/faster if I were immersed in this language more, but it's hard enough making time to take the class. Based on my experiences on this trip, I am very happy with what I have learned in my classes and how useful the course experiences have been. In fact, I am about to send an email to my language instructor telling her exactly that.

Note: I am not sure of my internet access after today, so I will likely off the air for the rest of the week, returning some time next week. This is post #500, so maybe it's time to take a short break anyway.

Weird in a Good Way?

In the language class I am taking, my fellow students and I recently gave final oral presentations. We also did presentations in the middle of the semester, so this is the 8th presentation we have given in the past 4 semesters.

In these presentations, we get to talk about anything we want to talk about. I like to tell stories about random Professor Adventures I have had over the years, and many of these end up being about unusual situations that result from my being a FemaleScienceProfessor.

In my most recent presentation, I picked a somewhat complex story that I didn't feel I could adequately describe until now. As I was telling the story, I was very focused on the vocabulary and grammar, though I also enjoyed the storytelling aspects of the anecdote, which was about an incident that took place several years ago in a country that speaks the target language of this class.

The typical procedure is that everyone claps at the end of every presentation and then each student in the audience asks a question of the presenter. Typical questions are "What is your favorite thing to do during your summer vacation?" or "When did your grandmother teach you to sew?".

When I finished my presentation, which I ended in a very clear way by saying (in the appropriate language) "The End", there was only silence. That was unnerving. Had I been completely incomprehensible?

Then one student said "You have a strange and interesting life." And then everyone clapped.

I liked that comment a lot, especially since it was said kindly. If one's life (or the person living that life) must be strange, strange and interesting is vastly preferably to simply strange, or strange and uninteresting.

There are certain adjectives that will never be used to describe me even though it would be professionally advantageous to have these characteristics -- e.g., cool, elegant, tall, distinguished, sane, bearded -- but, given my limitations, I am quite happy with strange and interesting.

What We Sound Like

Owing to my recent travels, I had to take a make-up exam in the language class I am taking. I teach my own class exactly during my instructor's two office hours, both of which occur in identical time blocks on Mondays and Wednesdays. Memo to instructors: If you set your office hours like that (at the same hour on M W or T Th), any student who can't go to your office hour on one day owing to a class conflict will likely be unable to attend either office hour.

The instructor kindly allowed me to come to another class she was teaching and take the exam then. She thought it would be less distracting for me if I sat in the corridor just outside the classroom, rather than in the classroom while the other class was in session. This was a good idea, but neither of us realized that the professor whose office is across the hall would talk extremely loudly for an entire hour at one of his graduate students.

The sound of this professor speaking loudly and continuously bothered me at first, but then I realized that he wasn't saying anything that I understood, and I was mostly able to tune out the sound. He was speaking in English, but he had a strong Humanities accent, and he spoke a Cultural Studies dialect containing many words that were unknown to me in the context in which he used them.

When the hour was up, it was time for my own language class to start, and some of my classmates arrived. As we waited in the hall for the classroom to disgorge students from the previous class, one of my classmates said "Oh no, did you have to listen to That Guy for the entire hour? [points at office of Loud Professor]. I hate it when I come early and have to listen to him for even a few minutes." "Yes", I replied wearily, "He's been talking like that for an hour." Another classmate said "I hate That Guy too. He thinks he's so smart, but he isn't."

Hmm. At the beginning of the conversation with my classmates, we were on the same page, marveling (in a somewhat unkind way) at a certain professor's ability to speak loudly for an extended period of time about an obscure topic, never giving his student a chance to do more than murmur in assent. But then my allegiance shifted.

Why did my classmate think this professor wasn't smart? Do my students think this about me when I am talking about my research? This professor clearly had comprehensive knowledge of something, as he was able to expound on who had written what in various texts spanning centuries of literature in his chosen cultural specialty. I suppose my classmate just didn't like the tone of his voice, which could perhaps be interpreted as oozing with I'm-smarter-than-youness and you-have-nothing-interesting-to-say-but-I-doness.

I still empathized with him, though. Do our students want us to be unsure of our expertise and say things like "I don't really know what I'm talking about even though I've spent the last 20 years thinking about this, but one possible interpretation is that .."? Would that make us seem smarter?

I suppose there is some ideal middle ground in which we can converse in an articulate and confident way about our passionate intellectual interests without making everyone hate us and doubt our intelligence. And I suppose also that, ideally, one should let students ask questions or make comments now and then -- at least once every 30-40 minutes or so, when we pause to take a breath.

Competitive Whining

One of my fellow students in the language class I am taking has been trying to register for a class that she wants to take this summer, but the class is already full. She missed her assigned registration time slot, and by the time she remembered, all she could do was get on a waiting list for the class. It must be a popular class because she said the waiting list is fairly long. She wants to take this class in the summer so that she can organize her fall schedule to have all her classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays so she can sleep late the other days.

We were talking about this before class the other day, and she was upset because she had been trying to convince the professor to let her into the class but the professor is refusing. To her, this indicates that the professor is mean and unreasonable. I said "But there are other students on the waiting list. How could the professor let you into the class and not everyone else on the waiting list?" She said "But I begged her. I really want to get into this class."

I said that I hoped she got into the class, but that professors don't make these types of decisions based on the quality of begging. Why would we? How could we? Count up the number of reallys in an email saying that a student really really really wanted to take our class? Let in students who make the most dramatic pleas? My mind and soul will be riven with grief if I cannot take your class.

And furthermore, I said to the student, if she was going to beg, I recommended that she give an intellectual reason for wanting to take the class. She just sighed. Professors..

Professor-Student (again)

It's time to start registering for classes for the fall term, and I have been trying to decide whether to sign up for the third year of the language class I have been taking.

Con:

This class meets 5 days/week and there are buckets of homework assignments and quizzes and presentations and such, and some weeks the last thing I need is to study for a midterm exam. (Students reading this will not sympathize, I know..).

Pro:

I really love taking this class (and the ones I took the previous 3 semesters). Although my speaking ability in this language lags behind my comprehension, reading, and writing skills, I have made a lot of progress and I feel great about that. After nearly two years, I can't imagine not taking this class. Can one become addicted to language-learning?

A third year course in this language has not previously been offered, but my fellow students and I lobbied for a third year course, and it looks like we were successful. Even though I'm not a real student in the sense of working towards a degree, I do register for the courses (pass/fail), so I count in the enrollment numbers.

OK, I will probably sign up for the course. I've managed so far, I am enjoying it, and I'm making (slow) progress. I feel like I'm using a different part of my brain in these courses, and that feels good to me, though I don't know why.

Impaired

For the past year and a half, I have been doing pretty well in the language class I’ve been taking. I do much better at writing and reading than I do at speaking, but I’m making progress on all fronts. Recently, however, I encountered a major obstacle. As part of an exam, we had to listen to an audio clip that was played on a mini-laptop set on a table at the center of the classroom, and then answer questions about what we heard. The audio clip had background music, there was construction and traffic noise outside the classroom, the laptop vibrated on the table, and the speakers on the laptop were lousy. I couldn’t make out most of the words in the audio clip.

The other students also had trouble understanding the audio clip, but not as much trouble as I did. The instructor played the clip again and let me sit closer to the laptop, but that didn't help. When I was closer to the speakers, I mostly just heard the background music. I had to leave that page of the exam mostly blank.

I have been aware for the past year or so that I have been developing a mild case of Cocktail Party Syndrome, the inability to differentiate sound from background noise, but I hadn’t previously encountered a situation in which it mattered. I don’t think I have a severe case. We watch movies in this class and some of these have background music, but as long as the movies are played with a good sound system, I can understand them fairly well. When we have audio assignments for homework, I use headphones and definitely don’t have a problem then.

The instructor says that part of learning a language is learning how to understand the language even when the sound is not ideal. You have to deal with sounds as they come, even if the words are indistinct or partly obscured by other sounds. What if you are in a crowd? What if you have to understand a message broadcast over a loudspeaker in a bus station? It is important to understand what is being said outside a classroom setting, and therefore being able to do that is part of being able to do well in this class.

I agree with most of that, but there’s only so much I can do about my hearing in certain situations. I don’t know what I would do about this class if I were a real student and found that I couldn’t do the audio portions of the exams. Perhaps I would get my hearing impairment documented and request some accommodation, even if this involved creating an unrealistic language environment.

This situation made me think about all my students who need accommodations for exams and assignments owing to various physical and learning disabilities. It is rare to teach a class these days without at least one student needing to take exams at the disability services office, needing extra time, or needing some other accommodation. For example, I recently taught two hearing impaired students who needed interpreters in two different classes, and had to alter my in-class teaching style accordingly.

Providing accommodations for students with disabilities involves time and effort – sometimes a lot of extra time, and that can be difficult for an instructor. There have been times when I have been frustrated by the additional time and effort required, especially when I didn't have any time to spare.

However, these accommodations are an important part of making university education accessible to as many people as possible. I have heard the but-that’s-not-how-it-is-in-the-real-world argument against these accommodations before and have never found it very compelling. Now – much to my surprise – I find it being used as a reason for why I should just try harder to discern sounds from background noise*. Although my situation is not dramatic or dire, I am more convinced than ever that accommodations in a course can make the difference between success and failure.

* As it turns out, I didn't fail the exam after all, as the instructor just informed the class that she won’t count that part of the exam very much. However, she does want us to work on our listening skills more, and we may encounter an audio clip on the final exam.

Homework Help

This is probably cheating to ask for help with this, but I am puzzled by a question on my language homework this weekend. Here is the question (translated):

To be a good teacher, it is necessary to be

(a) patient
(b) strange
(c) optimistic
(d) hard

Too bad 'all of the above' is not a choice.

(and yes, I do know which one I am 'supposed' to choose).

FSP as Student, continued

This week in the intermediate-level language class I am taking, each student has done an oral presentation on a topic of our choice. These presentations are not supposed to be practiced talks, and we certainly can't read from notes. We are supposed to stand in front of the class and start talking -- e.g., about a book, movie, recipe, trip, friend, relative, pet etc. -- and then the presentations evolve as we are asked questions by the others in the class and by the instructor.

I decided to talk about some of my research experiences relevant to the countries where this language is spoken. In these places, being female has definitely affected my experiences, but that point wasn't central to the story I wanted to tell today. It was important for understanding the context of my experience, but mostly I just wanted to tell a story that I thought was funny.

The others in the class kept interrupting me with questions like "Why did Person X say that to you?" or "Why did you have to do that?" and in each case the simple answer was because I am female. The students asked me why that mattered. So, for a while the discussion was about gender roles and sexism, something that had not been a topic of direct discussion yet in this class. This is the second year of a class that meets 5 days/week, so we all know each other fairly well by now and have talked about a lot of things, but not this particular topic (and hence my knowledge of the relevant vocabulary was limited). The instructor had not had exactly the same experiences, but she had come to the U.S. so she could teach at a university, so some of it resonated with her as well.

Eventually I got back to telling my funny story, and by the end, everyone was laughing. Perhaps this says something about my priorities (at least for today), but I was more pleased that I was able to make people laugh in another language than that I had educated my fellow students about the international nature of sexism, though perhaps it is possible to accomplish both.

Model Student

Last year I wrote a few things about my experience of being a professor taking an undergraduate language course. This year I am taking the next level course of this language, with the same instructor and most of the same students, all women. The class meets 5 times per week, and a few times each semester we get together for social events, so by this time we all know each other fairly well. It is a harmonious group and we all feel comfortable speaking out in class, making mistakes, correcting each other, and asking a lot of stupid questions. [editorial opinion of a professor-student: yes, there are such things as stupid questions]

It is lucky for me that the other students are so nice, as the instructor persists in holding me up as an example of a 'model student'. If this were a less nice group of people, I would be loathed. Last year the instructor told the class that she was basing the class grading curve on my quiz scores because they were the highest in the class -- that is, she assigned each of my quizzes a grade of 100% and calculated the other grades based on that. It was therefore in the interests of the other students that I get more answers wrong. I felt that if I did really well on a quiz, I was harming my fellow students, and that's a terrible feeling.

I do not think it is very good professorial practice on the part of the instructor, but it must be strange for her to have a senior professor in her class of undergraduates.

Yesterday the instructor held up my homework assignments as the example of the way she wants them done. I know what it's like to grade a pile of disorganized or messy homework, and I do have that in mind as I do my homework. Even so, I would have preferred it if the instructor just described how she wanted the assignments done rather than using me as an example.

Aside from being embarrassing, the incident yesterday made me think about how being a teacher might help me to be a better student and how being a student now might help me to be a better teacher. That said, I really wish I didn't have a quiz tomorrow.

Eye of the Beholder

In my continuing efforts to learn a new language that will be useful for my research, I have found that watching movies in this language to be a fun and effective way to keep my skills (such as they are) from eroding over the summer. Not long ago, I was watching one of these movies with some undergraduates (all female, by the way) with whom I took a language class last year, and they all agreed that a particular character was ‘really old’ and therefore they did not approve of his relationship with a younger female character. I was surprised at their reaction -- he didn’t look very old to me. I argued that in fact he was a very attractive man, but I was alone in this opinion. The male character has some gray hair! He has wrinkles by his eyes! Later, I searched online to find a biography of the actor, and discovered that he is exactly my age. I guess that proves it then – he clearly can’t be old..

We all agreed, however, that a different male character, who had recently become engaged, was in fact not ready to get married. The proof: he had large posters of cars and motorcycles on the walls of his bedroom. Perhaps this particular opinion transcends a woman’s age.

Don't Do This Either

My language class finally got to take its midterm exam today, but we had less than the full class time to do the exam. Two students were late, so the instructor made everyone wait until they arrived. The last one to arrive was 15 minutes late, so everyone got 15 minutes less to take the exam. It just seems obvious to me that the on-time students should get the maximum time and those who are late get less time.

I can't decide whether to say anything to the instructor about this kind of thing. If I do, would I be a more experienced teacher kindly sharing my wisdom with a less experienced teacher, or would I be an obnoxious student whining about not having enough time on a test? As a teacher, I would hate it if students saved their criticisms for the evaluation at the end of the class, especially for something that is easy to fix. I much prefer getting constructive criticism during the semester, when there is time to change or explain. I sometimes do a mid-semester evaluation to get comments while they are relevant. If students comment on something I can't or won't change, I can at least explain my reasoning.

As a student in this class, though, I am getting more of an appreciation for how difficult it can be to criticize your instructor, especially because I don't feel comfortable (as a professor-student) telling my instructor how I think she should run her class. I think it might seem especially obnoxious in this case because I am a tenured professor and she is a lecturer on contract. Just because I have more status doesn't mean I am a better teacher. However, if I can think of a kind, non-obnoxious way to talk to her about teaching, I will. There are certainly many positive things I can say about her teaching as well (as long as I don't sound patronizing..).

Back Seat Driver/Professor

Last weekend I studied a lot for the Monday midterm exam in the language class I am taking, but at the beginning of class on Monday, the other students asked the instructor if we could have the test another day instead. The instructor said OK. I would never agree to that if I were the instructor, though of course I didn't say anything. I have moved homework assignments and due dates around (with advance notice to the students), but a last-minute reschedule of a test? Never! I try not to be a 'back seat driver/professor' in this class, especially since I have no idea what it is like to teach a language class -- but sometimes it is hard.. like this week.

I am trying to decide whether to sign up for the intermediate level of the course for next year. I think I will. It has been very hard making the time to take a class that meets 5 days/week, especially since I travel a lot and the course involves a lot of homework and writing assignments, but it has been a great experience overall. I am slowly slowly making progress with this difficult language. Also, learning a new language makes me use different brain muscles than I use in my research, and I like that. I do not, however, like studying for (or taking) tests, especially when the experience becomes more protracted than expected.

Model Student

It happened yet again: I was the only student in my language class today to turn in the homework on time. It happens rather often. Fortunately, I am already sufficiently bizarre in being a professor in an undergraduate, 100-level class, so this model student behavior is perhaps more understandable and less odious than it might otherwise be. Perhaps.

I have a strict policy in my own classes about late homework (1/2 credit up to 24 hours late, no credit after that), so it is unusual for student homework to be late, but I am trying not to be a 'backseat driver' in the class in which I am the student.

Today my fellow students asked me about illnesses like mumps that they are all vaccinated against but that kids, including me, got back in the olden days. It is nice to feel like the old, experienced person every once in a while, before returning to my department to be the flaky blonde female in a sea of bewhiskered men.

Professor-Student, continued

Today I registered for the second term of the language class I started last semester, and I just acquired my new textbooks for the course.

The main challenge is of course TIME. The class meets 5 days/week, I am busy enough as it is, and I travel a lot, but I very much enjoyed taking the class last semester, so I want to keep going with it as long as I can. It was bizarre at first having homework every night and having to study for periodic quizzes and tests, but I got into the routine after a while. I liked feeling that I was making progress with the language.

One great thing about having class 5 days/week, in addition to how much you learn, is that you really get to know the other students and the instructor. I wrote last semester about how this was strange at first because I am at least twice the age of the students and older than the instructor, but we all got used to it and I really liked my fellow students and the instructor.

There were a few times when I was really stuck for what to say. For example, as I walked out of the classroom after an exam that I thought was kind of easy, the student walking beside me asked "Am I really stupid or was that exam impossible?". I made some sort of ambiguous sympathetic statement about a particularly difficult part of the exam, so as not to make her feel bad but at the same time not be too insincere.

After the first quiz and the midterm, the students started worrying that I was 'wrecking the curve', and we talked about it in class. The instructor told the other students not to worry about that because I was technically registered for a different section of the course, and I said "Don't you want your professors to get good grades?". They laughed and the issue sort of went away, except for occasional semi-joking pleas for me to fail a quiz.. or the final exam.

The instructor was amazing. She worked very hard to design a variety of different learning activities, and she was teaching 2 other classes. She also invited the class out for coffee and we had dinner at her house and a movie night. Even when I teach small classes, I seldom have the time (or social skills) to do things like that with my students. And I'd have to clean my house.

Face(book)less

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I am taking an undergraduate language class this semester. So far, it's been great, though it's always strange for me when we do conversation drills about what jobs we want to have when we graduate, what classes we are taking, and what our parents' hobbies are.

By far the strangest experience was when we had to show and talk about photographs of our family and friends. Many of the other students got out their laptops and opened their Facebook pages. It was just like what I've read about -- endless flash photos of drunken parties with people hanging off each other whilst holding alcoholic beverages. This might have presented opportunities for learning some words and phrases that are not in our textbook, but the instructor didn't seem to want to linger much on these photos.

I have a webpage with photos of my family (husband, daughter, cats), but these photos must seem boring to my fellow students, who are all at least half my age. What would a Facebook for science professors look like? Perhaps I should start bringing a camera to conferences so I can take crazy photos of people clustered around a poster display. Or, if I wanted to get really wild, I could take pictures at faculty meetings. Now that would be scary.