GradeBooster5000: PARTICIPATION!

So, you've decided to start the semester off right by living according to the following three-step recipe for college success:

1. Do any work at all!
2. Show up to class the vast majority of the time!
3. Turn in your own writing and your own exam work!

That, my friends, is seriously all you have to do to pass your classes in college--really all you have to do to get a B or even a B+ in today's seriously grade-inflated world. And, as I've said before, unless you're going to grad school, nobody cares about your college grades ever (see: Rick Perry. Actually, see: Me--my undergrad GPA was a 3.41 and I ended up all right--even though I did go to grad school).

So, if all you need to do to be a "B" student is a consistent minimum of your own work, what does it take to be that all-important "A" student? To get those "As" you apparently "need"? (If I had a dollar for every student who explained, at the end of a semester, that s/he needed a higher grade, I'd be sippin' Becherovka in Prague into my twilight years, people).

One thing you can do is write awesome papers, and for that, see this.

Another thing you can do is be a Champion Participator in class--great participation goes a really long way. I can think of at least 10 students whom, just in recent memory, I've seen bumped to the next half-letter up because of their stellar participation grades. In fact, I know professors who bump up other (written work, exam) grades that are "on the cusp" (an 8.98 to a 9.0 or somesuch) if the student is a truly great participator.

So what I'd like to do is offer (and debunk) a big participation myth, and then replace it with qualities of true Champion Participators.

MYTH: A Champion Participator is a student who talks a lot in every class and raises his/her hand to answer as many questions as possible.

REALITY: That individual, while sometimes a relief to the prof in an otherwise-dud-filled classroom, is actually this guy: a smug know-it-all who dominates the class, (sometimes unwittingly) bullies others out of talking, and sometimes, yes, "needs to shut the f*ck up." There is actually a way for participating all the time to damage your participation grade--and this is it. Ask yourself: Are you That Guy?

1. Do you dominate the discussion in every class? 
2. Do you hear at least one sigh every time you open your mouth

If either of those answers is "yes," then sadly, you are That Guy/Gal. Usually, your intentions are great, and you are seriously involved in the class (which we appreciate! We do! Srsly!), and on many days, yes, you do save it from being Prof Speaks Into the Echo Chamber--but, if you want to be a Champion, here's what you should do instead:

SOLUTION: If you're a smug know-it-all, tone it the eff down. Even if you do know it all. Don't act like you do. You don't need to act dumb on purpose--just make sure your tone is friendly and welcoming. 

Here's a good guideline of Threes: If it's the third time you've talked in a row and nobody else has talked in between those times--impose a gag order on yourself until three people who aren't you have talked. 

Yes, no matter what they say. If your prof is "letting" them say what they're saying, there's a reason for that. Let it happen. If your classmates think you're going to volunteer to lead every discussion, they're going to tune out and stop volunteering to talk themselves. Even if there are 30 seconds of cold, miserable silence after your prof asks a question and she just sits there staring you down: let it happen. 

Then, as soon as three people have talked, talk again! But relate to what they've said, make it a discussion. Et voila, now you've morphed from That Guy to Class Hero--the gal/guy who, when absent instead of present, causes the prof to have a heart attack.

Now, here are the seven habits of a true Champion Participatior. S/he:

1. exhibits leadership rather than tyranny. That is, s/he involves as many other students in everything s/he says and does as possible. Especially if there's a shy student s/he knows is brilliant but too terrified to talk in front of class: "Well, actually I thought something Gina just told me before class was fascinating--she said..." 
2. comes seriously prepared to every class--with all Study Questions filled out (if there are any) and then one or two of his/her own to ask if the discussion fizzles out.
3. participates relevantly and inquisitively--talks only about the discussion at hand (digressions that relate it back to previous, recent discussions in that class are actually OK and even encouraged!), does not act like a know-it-all (see above), and asks more questions than s/he can answer.
4. is nice and cooperative--doesn't pack up his/her crap early (PROFESSOR PET PEEVE ALERT), either pays attention or convincingly looks like s/he is paying attention, takes a few notes but doesn't insist on writing down every single thing that appears on a PowerPoint slide verbatim, does all in-class activities with enthusiasm no matter how silly they seem.
5. is respectful to everyone else in the room--prof, student, janitor, whatever.
6. is a learner rather than a grade-grubber--at least on the surface (that is, at least convincingly pretends to want to learn the material and be interested in it, even if all s/he really wants, erm, I mean "needs" is that precious "A").
7. isn't afraid to challenge the professor--respectfully (the only thing more annoying than a know-it-all is an unabashed sycophant--though, sadly, this is not true with everyone and many profs do love sycophants. BUT NOT ME).

Now, YOU HELP ME: I would love to see any of my Interventionists try any/all of these out in their next classes--please do, and tell me how it goes! I want to know: if it made class more interesting for you and if it helped your grade! Good luck!

Cheating in the Foreign-Language Classroom: Nein, ¡No!, Non, Nie, Ne, Voch, Lay, Mhai, Nej, Nyet.

Chances are, if you are in college, you are taking at least one (preferably two!) years of a foreign language. This "requirement" (I prefer to think of it as a "privilege long-overdue, considering everyone in every other developed nation speaks at least two languages," but hey, semantics) can be a source of stress to many students, who either had bad experiences with a Peggy Hill type in middle/high school*, or who simply continue to believe that "everyone speaks English anyway."

*Many middle and high-school foreign-language teachers are among the most gifted I have ever known, but I do understand that sometimes there are some duds.

If you're in the first camp, well, I feel for you, and I hope you'll give your college instructor the benefit of the doubt. Here's why:

• If you go to a big state university, your instructor is a fresh-faced grad student much like me circa 2006--and don't despair about this fact. Their newness means they seriously care a lot, and that they are (usually) on top of the latest methods of SLA (that's jargon for Second Language Acquisition, something we study in very serious graduate seminars!). In other words, your graduate instructor is going to be seriously, awesomely invested in your class, and you should be happy you don't have some 90-year-old Russian lady who just does Russian grammar all day (especially in a Spanish class, har har). 
• If you go to a small liberal-arts college, your beginning-to-intermediate language teacher will be a regular-old prof--and this individual will be experienced, as well as delighted to be teaching first- or second-year classes, because (another dirty professor secret) they are really. Easy. To prepare. Especially if you have taught them before. 

So, be happy in the knowledge that college is different, and give your foreign language class a chance.

If you're in the second camp, well, replace "English" with "Mandarin" and maybe you're right. This is a blab for another time, but: really? We live in a global world! Do you know how good it looks on your resume to be "fluent" in another language? Employers love this: they see "fluent French/Spanish/Hindi/Farsi/Russian" and they think, "This individual is disciplined enough to gain fluency in another language--s/he can certainly handle the demands of this job!" 

So, adjust your attitude, Mein Herr/Meine Dame, Sr/Sra, Madame/Monsieur, etc.

However. Even the best attitude won't get rid of the stress associated with foreign-language learning. Some people have a natural gift for languages--but for everyone else, it takes a lot of hard work. 

And that's where we generally reach an impasse (that's French for "sh*t students and profs disagree on"). We want you to work hard and get better at your language; you want to not work hard and it's scheiß egal to you whether or not you get better.

So here's the secret I'd like to share today: It's actually less work to work "hard" (or hard-ish) and get better (at which point you don't have to work as hard!) than it is to cheat--especially if you get caught.

And here's the second secret: a first- or second-year foreign language student who cheats is remarkably easy to catch. So easy it boggles my mind that anyone gets away with it.

Here's how we do it. Would you like to read the first sentence of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, one of the most famous opening lines of all literature ever? Well, here it is, translated into English from the original German courtesy of an online translator:

When Gregor Samsa of one morning from uneasy dreams awoke, he was transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

"But wait," you might be thinking. "I thought Kafka was supposed to be a good writer. That sucks!" You're right--it does suck. And that's why professional human people with advanced degrees in translation translate things, and not robots. A full Babelfish- or Google-translated edition of The Metamorphosis might be really cheap to produce, but it will be gibberish. 

As a native speaker of English, you can immediately recognize the robot-translated Kafka sentence as gobbeldygook. As a native or near-native speaker of the language you're learning, your instructor will similarly recognize everything you turn in from an online translator as gibberish--and not the gibberish a regular beginner will produce, special robot-gibberish that makes mistakes only a robot would make.

Here's another issue: the straight-up cut-and paste. This is also remarkably easy to catch. Here's how. 


Here's the English version of the kind of stuff that (unfortunately) shows up in my classroom all the time:

The Otto von Bismarck was an very good ruler. As the leader of what historians call "revolutionary conservatism." Bismarck became a hero to German nationalists; they built hundreds of monuments glorifying the symbol of powerful personal leadership. Historians praised him as a statesman of moderation and balance who was primarily responsible for the unification of the German states into a nation-state.* Bismarck was great and I would like to known him in my day today.

Notice how the first and last sentence are both short, simple and contain several small grammatical errors just like someone first learning English might make? And the middle part (which as the asterisk notes, was cut-and-pasted verbatim from Wikipedia) sounds fancypants and is full of expert jargon that only an experienced historian would know? Notice how painfully, painfully obvious that is? 

So, in order to "successfully" employ the aforementioned cheating methods (i.e. not get caught), you would have to go through each word and either make it "not as good" (in the case of the cut/paste job), or "look like a human wrote it and then make it not as good" (in the case of the online translator). This, in the end, will work against your original goal (not to work harder) in two ways:

1. It will actually take you longer to locate material to cheat with and then alter it than it would to just write the whole damn thing from scratch--which, being a first- or second-year level assignment, is rarely, if ever, going to be more than 250-500 words long (that's two pages, you lazypants).
2. You will not get any better, so things like this will continue to be "too hard" and the cycle will just repeat itself (plus you will probably fail your finals because you didn't learn anything).

Here's another dirty professor secret: the purpose of writing assignments in the foreign-language classroom is precisely for you to turn in a poorly-written assignment full of mistakes so that we can help you correct them--and that is how you learn to write in a foreign language. So, in a way, the worse your draft is, the better, because a) we know you actually did it yourself, and b) we can work with you so that writing in the target language will actually become easy for you.

So here, at long last, is a five-step list for how you SHOULD write a writing assignment:

1. If it's a project that requires research, do said research in whatever language you want and then simplify the facts about that research until you can think them out in your target language. Then, take a short list of notes wherein you write these facts down in the target language.
2. With these facts in hand (or with only your big smart mind if it's not a research project), think in your target language in your head. DO NOT THINK IN ENGLISH/your native language. No matter how rudimentary it is, get a target-language inner monologue going.
3. Write that inner monologue down. DO NOT worry about making mistakes. Just write.
4. If you come upon a concept you simply cannot express in your target language, FIRST try to "explain around it" the best you can using words you know. 
1. Funny example: once, when I was learning Czech, I was asked to describe a cartoon wherein a hedgehog named Krtek tried to climb up a ladder. I did not know how to say "try," "climb" or "ladder," so instead what I said was, "At first Krtek tries to go up high alone." My teacher was de-lighted. The woman next to me just said, in English: "How do you say 'tries to go up a ladder?'" That was totally useless, because you do not learn a foreign language by translating your English verbatim. That produces results you can only use once, whereas using vocabulary you know in different ways and slowly building new vocab actually helps you. Which brings me, finally, to this:
5. For a word you absolutely, positively need, look it up in a dictionary with the understanding that with your limited knowledge of the language, the version of the word you choose may be a synonym that doesn't fit (see the above post, re: MS Word Thesaurus). 
1. Another one: A student once wrote in a German essay the equivalent of, "I saw my boyfriend and I kissed his visage." The word the student used for "face," Angesicht, is the antiquated, highfalutin one, as opposed to Gesicht, the regular one. It was noticeably off, but it was a teaching moment rather than a "haul you in to the Dishonesty Dean" one.

Now you're done! If it's a first draft of many (which, in a beginning class, it should be), just turn it in. Yay. If it's for a more advanced class, MAYBE look through it once to catch some of the more obvious errors, but don't stress it too much. 

All right, that's my spiel for the foreign-language students out there! Huzzah! Now get to work.

Back-to-School Special II: Oh, how I hate MS Word Thesaurus.

Happy Wednesday, everyone--today marks about a month to the day from my own first day of school (new job! new students! pencils with my name on! etc!), but many of you are already tush-deep in Fall Semester. So in honor of you who are already back to school, I have my official First Intervention of 2011-2012, and it's one I know my fellow faculty will be cheering.

Here's the scenario: you're writing your first paper for Intro to Amazing Humanities Under Siege and you have, let's say, 53% of an idea what you're talking about. You have a reasonably interesting idea and you're on a roll writing when suddenly you're not happy with your writing. "I've used the word 'argues' seven times in this paragraph!" you realize, or, "The word 'conflict' doesn't sound fancy enough for an academic paper!" So, as you were probably (erroneously) taught to do all through school, you right-click and see what good ol' MS Word Thesaurus has to offer.

This is for your own good:
STEP AWAY FROM THE RIGHT-CLICK OR I WILL REACH OUT THROUGH THIS SCREEN AND SMASH YOUR KEYBOARD.

I mean it. Put. The robot-thesaurus. Away.

Here's the truth: 99% of the time you use a robot-thesaurus, it's going to give you a list of words that might be synonyms for your word in some context, but will definitely not be in your context. The resulting sentence is going to look straight-up bananas at best, and we might not even know what the eff you're talking about at worst.

Don't believe me?

All right. Here is an actual sentence from my actual dissertation, mangled beyond recognition by MS Word Thesaurus:

The undemanding riposte to this is that logical verbal communication and literary idiom are not the unchanged article, and the Tractatus as a exertion of analytic language theory deals with logical and not literary language.

That, people, is straight-up gibberish. Here is the actual sentence from my dissertation (which still has some lame vocab in it, in hindsight, but, as you can see, my intended meaning of most of the words I right-clicked (I've put them in bold) is much, much, much, TOTES different than the "synonym" I used:

The easy answer to this is that logical language and literary language are not the same thing, and the Tractatus as a work of analytic language theory deals with logical and not literary language.

This sentence, and 10,000 just like it, was good enough to earn this gal a PhD from an actual university, and look at all the small, unimpressive, easy-to-understand words it has! If language like this is good enough to earn someone a PhD, it is definitely beyond good enough to earn you a good grade in an undergraduate course. So step away from the Thesaurus, NOW. Here's what you should do instead:

1. For words you repeat too much, like "argues" or "says," rather than right-clicking, circumlocute a little bit. 

Example "bad" paragraph (which I still think is a ton better than some right-clicked monstrosity):

Swift argues that by eating the babies of the poor, Ireland will solve both overpopulation and hunger. Because he argues this, many of his critics jump to the conclusion that he actually advocates on behalf of this action. In reality, his argument is meant to be satirical, arguing instead that it is exactly this sort of poor-blaming attitude that is the problem.

Now just fix this up using only words you already know:

Swift argues (keep the first) that by eating the babies of the poor, Ireland will solve both overpopulation and hunger. In arguing this (changed tense=related but not repeated), he causes many of his critics to jump to the conclusion that he actually advocates on behalf of this action. In reality, his argument (keep) is meant to be satirical, pointing out (simplify even more!) that it is exactly this sort of poor-blaming attitude that is the problem.

2. For prose that doesn't seem fancy enough--leave it, it's fine. I mean it. 

For your papers, you should be writing exactly like you would write an email to the parent of a new boy/girlfriend you are trying to impress. No "like," no curse words, no stupid slang or text-message abbreviations, proper capitals and punctuation, and that. is. it.

Why? Because the most important person who absolutely must understand your paper is you. You are making an argument, you are backing it up, you are taking a position on a topic or issue, and you need to know what you're saying--because if you don't, I absolutely guarantee you nobody will.

BRASS TACKS: a paper that is written 'too casually' but has amazing insights may get an A- instead of an A, but a paper that is written with a bunch of crap you yourself don't understand will get (or at least deserves) a C.

Back-to-School Special I: You Must Chill!

Well, it's August 22, which might seem like "late summer" for you normals out there, but for many universities and colleges in Murka on the (sadistic) semester system, today is the first day of school! Welcome back! The students I know have expressed varying reactions to this auspicious occasion, ranging from reluctant industriousness ("Welp, guess it's time to get back to work, hope my classes are good!" to outright terror. Nobody seemed giddy with excitement, to my great disappointment--I guess I really am just that weird, because back in college (where I didn't even do that much work!) I really looked forward to the first day of class. Of course, back when I was in college, college was still a fun place where people went to learn and grow up, not the business transaction/pressurefest it is today. Le sigh. But look, I'm not like this guy from the Chronicle with a chip the size of the Rosetta Stone on his shoulder--I myself am so looking forward to the first day of school this year that I am jealous of my former students and partner and friends and anyone else who gets to start today! Starting school is fun! I mean it! So, I thought today to celebrate your return to school and my concurrent return to Paper Intervention (and yes, I enjoyed my vacation very, very, very much. Too much, from the pants-fitting perspective! What can I say, German Kaffee und Kuchen ist lecker), I'd give you a list of Five Reasons Going Back to School Rules, and Five Things to Take the Panic/Dread Down a Notch, in case the first Five Reasons aren't convincing enough (which of course they will be, as I am a master of written persuasion).

Five Reasons Going Back to College Rules

1. School supplies. Pencils. Pens. Notebooks. TrapperKeepers. All right, probably not TrapperKeepers anymore (NB: I believe I carried a vintage TrapperKeeper I got on eBay through half of my MFA, because my name is Rebecca and I used to be a hipster, back before being a hipster was soooo ooooover, all right now I'm just too old). But, come on, what's better than new pens? When I was a little kid my parents got me a set of pencils with my name on them every year, and it was the best. Don't tell me that you wouldn't love a pencil with your name on it. I seriously believe that anyone who doesn't love going back to school simply needs some pencils with his/her name on them.

2. New Classes=Potential New Smart Fresh Meat. Some of my students have been with their boy/girlfriends since grade school, but for the rest of you, college is a time to expand your horizons. Your DATING horizons! And what better place to meet the person of your dreams than class? (I may be biased because I may or may not have met my own partner in class).  To quote a very wise man, Sam Weir, "Just because a girl's pretty doesn't mean she's cool." And it's true! Some attractive specimen being a jackass at a party may look great through some (nonalcoholic) beer goggles, but you know what is nice? Exchanging two sentences with someone interesting. And the best way to do this in a zero-pressure environment (dating-wise)? In class, where being smart (without being a smug know-it-all) makes people admire you! (More on being a smug know-it-all in a future post).

3. Your life is better with order and a schedule. Tiny babies know this, your adorable pug dog knows this (PS: do you have a pug dog? If so, I am jealous), the six-year-old you babysit knows this: without something to count on every day, anxiety and depression happen, and they happen big time. As long as you manage not to stress out too much (and you shouldn't! See below), going back to college will actually make you happier and healthier than screwing around/working too much at a menial job you are hoping not to have anymore after you get your degree.

4. Slightly colder weather=something other than the same summer wardrobe you're now ready to burn. Even if, like me, you are just "shopping your closet" for back-to-school (I lack the funds and time even to make a new wardrobe this fall, le sniff), rediscovering clothing in which you could *not* be mistaken for a Lady of the Night and/or The Dude is fun--as is being able to stop looking at your near-bare self in the mirror every day.

5. FRIENDS! Old friends! New friends! Frenemies! Especially for you returning sophomores, you will find it amazing how much you missed your friends over the summer and how great it is to see them in person. You hear it a zillion times over, but that is because it's true: (some of) the friends you make in college will be the friends you have for the rest of your life. Though we all live in different towns, I still count many of my college classmates as my greatest friends and among the neatest people I've ever known. Unlike your high school friends, your college friends will be with you as you transition to adulthood, and as such will remember both hilarious-youth you and semi-responsible grown-up you (just ask my friend Justin about the "Chumbawamba Dance" someday if you want proof).

Still not convinced? All right, then, here's Five Reasons to Calm the F*ck Down:

1. Contrary to what it might look like based on that 90-page syllabus (most of which is legalese designed to protect us, and our institutions, from lawsuits--i.e. if I kick some text-messaging miscreant out of my class, I sure as Hades better have a zero-tolerance mobile device policy buried in my syllabus somewhere, lest that student sue me for Acute Feelings-Hurting, which I'm pretty sure in today's college environment is a more punishable offense than cheating--AHEM)...anyway, contrary to what it might seem like today (or tomorrow), your courses are designed for you to be able to complete them with (relative) ease. It is the rare and unforgivable sadist and/or graduate seminar instructor who comes up with 10-16 weeks of work so extensive and strictly-graded that you simply can't do it even if you're a genius/overachiever. So remember that no matter how bad it looks, it is designed specifically for you to be able to complete it. DIRTY PROFESSOR SECRET: sometimes we even overload our syllabi on purpose because we can't yet figure out what to cut, and know that come mid-semester when we do pare the syllabus down, we'll look like heroes.

2. Your professor is a human person who only has two qualities that make him/her different than you: S/he is (usually) older than you, and s/he has already read the material you've been assigned. In most cases, this human person even likes this material and has assigned it because s/he thinks you'll like it too. Instead of viewing your prof as the Ultimate Fun Killer Out To Ruin Your Life, think of us as personal trainers FOR YOUR MIND who have developed a personalized program specifically designed to get you(r brain) into the best shape of its life.

3. IF you are advanced-study bound: as long as you maintain something above a 3.0, your college grades don't really matter that much. I once had a student who was so high-strung I thought s/he was going to explode--because, in her/his words, s/he "had" to get a 4.0 or s/he would not get into grad/professional school and become a doctor/lawyer/cowboy/whatever. To which I say: all right, for a top professional school you probably need something closer to a 3.6 in order to be looked at seriously, but I'll tell you, a 3.6 student with a great set of recommendations, super GRE/LSAT/GMAT/MCATs and an "A-" average in courses that directly pertain to the advanced study is a much better candidate than a 4.0 student with a bunch of lukewarm recommendations that either euphemistically or directly refer to that student as a pushy, grade-grubbing pain in the ass.

4. If you are NOT grad-school bound: as long as you actually graduate, your college grades do not matter even one little bit. If you put your graduating GPA on a resume, potential employers are actually going to laugh at you out loud. It makes you look like a 14-year-old. The professional world doesn't give two craps about your college grades. Look at Rick Perry--that guy got Ds and Fs at Texas A&M for goodness' sake, and he's Governor of Texas and running for President of the United States! Sure, if you're on a scholarship with a minimum GPA requirement, then you need to care a little bit more--but look at it this way. If you're on a partially-academic scholarship (which all scholarships are, otherwise they'd be called f*ckingaroundships), it is specifically because the granting entity wants you to do well in school and thinks you can.

5. It helps to concentrate on the baby steps rather than the big picture. A student who does a marginal-to-good amount of work for (almost) every single class is much, much more likely to get that all-important "A" than one who just sits there like a root canal patient for 10 weeks and then aces the final. Because you know what? The involved student is going to ace the final without even really trying, because s/he will have actually become involved in and taken ownership for his/her own success throughout the semester.

All right, kids/adults--that's my seventeen cents. Welcome back to school, do your best, and have a great year--and remember, when it comes time to write those dreaded papers, you are not alone.