Some Things Never Change

I haven’t written anything about students in a long time. A lot has happened in this intervening period, like the election of  Barack Obama that solved racism in the US. Inauguration Day 2009 was a day of unmatched historicality. Here’s what happened to me on that January 20th.

My wife and I went to eat lunch at a downtown eatery where we watched the Bush era board a helicopter and fly away. Afterward as I was walking to the data analysis center to do some data analysis, a former student stopped me on the sidewalk. At first I didn’t recognize him but he had been in my class the last fall. He blew it off most of the time and didn’t put one iota of effort into the work, which earned him a C-. Seems like a pretty good deal, but you have to get at least a C to get credit for the class, so giving it to him I felt like he at least had to deal with the repercussions of his negligence by taking the class over again. Since it’s unlikely he ever had to deal with repercussions before and didn’t want to start now, he sorrowfully told me he didn’t get his Political Science degree because of this and asked me to give him a chance to bring up his grade–that’s the grade that had been assigned more than a month earlier and about which he never said anything. It seems to me that not getting your degree is pretty serious business and that you ought to be a little concerned about it while class is actually in session and not just when you randomly bump into your former instructor, but to each his own, right?

Ten Second Movie Review: The Proposal

The two votes of my mother and wife outweigh my one vote for Harry Potter.

Doors

I was thinking about Silver Spoons on Tuesday. You know, Silver Spoons starring Ricky Schroeder and Alfonso from Fresh Prince, not to mention the fabulously dreamy Kate who was even dreamier on Buck Rogers. Anyway what came to mind was that stately Spoon Manor was a sprawling castle from the looks of it on the intro, but everyone always hung out in the same room, right at the front door.

That’s not surprising in itself given that sets cost money, but what else occurred to me was that it seemed like most of the other sitcom houses I could think of shared the stage left front door. One after another, I thought of sitcom houses with the door on the left: Kate and Allie, Good Times, Sanford and Son, Golden Girls, Who’s the Boss, Small Wonder, Full House, Mr. Belvedere, Growing Pains, the list went on and on. Of course exceptions immediately popped into mind, like Seinfeld, the Cosby Show, Diff’rent Strokes, and Family Ties. But it seemed like for every right-hand door I could name there were three or four left-hand doors. I began to wonder if there was some reasoning behind left-hand doors: is it somehow cheaper, or do they put the cast snack table on the right according to hallowed tradition stemming from medieval theater days?

After a while I had to discard this whole notion as a case of selective memory. I started to realize that I could name just about as many right-hand doors as left. Even the turbolift door to the Enterprise bridge was on the right (classic and TNG). Nonetheless, every time I remembered a right-hand door I felt a little dispirited, like a novel discovery was slipping from my fingers, and I wished it would go away. “Curse you ALF set” I would think.

Now as a social scientist, I know there’s something to be learned in this. I now know how my fellow social scientists feel when they see their theories melt away when subjected to empirical testing. So the lesson might be the importance of a value free scientific method, rigorous hypothesis testing, and consideration of alternative hypotheses, all of which guard against the introduction of personal bias in scientific investigation of the social world. But since I think that’s all so much hokum, I think the lesson is probably that it might be unnatural that I remember so many fictitious houses as well as any I actually grew up in and that I spent half my waking hours as a kid watching TV.

Ten Second Movie Review: Star Trek

Start to finish thrill ride. And it’s good to see the Orions have been emancipated.

Ten Second Movie Review: Juno

Funny, heart-warming, delightful. Except all of the parts with Juno, which were insufferable.

On the Fence

You know, when I was an undergraduate I didn’t want to go out on a limb and make any strong statements in papers and tests (much less in class) because I was so keenly aware of my own towering ignorance and didn’t want to say something ass-backward and sound foolish. So I’d sometimes write in an indirect fashion or qualify my point away. That’s why I understand when my students write things like this:

Huntington’s theory may have some truth, but it is easy to refute with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Sen’s approach to development is universalistic but subjectively so.

Criticism for each can often fall in opposing camps, but for many there are problems for both that the other cannot fulfill.

With much more time invested . . . a very good, distinct answer could be given, at least in a general way.

It still sounds absurd, though. At least in a general way, and there might be overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Perfidy!

It’s the end of the semester, which means I’m in for a week or so of sturm und drang (for the untraveled and unworldly, that means storm and stress in German [I know a lot about languages and stuff]). I’ve already had to handle breathless students on the verge of a meltdown and the perpetually perplexed who just can’t turn in their paper on time because they’re unable to find my office after sixteen weeks of classes. What are they supposed to do when that happens? I mean that’s nobody’s fault. I’ve also had to field several requests to guarantee a certain grade before I even calculate them. Since students don’t usually get to request the grade they’d prefer to take home that might sound presumptuous, but these students all assure me that they would only ask such a thing because they have good reason to, usually that they’re graduating this or some future semester and just have to have a certain grade in my class. And they’re always quite flexible; it’s not as if they’re asking for an A, just a B or B minus, unless of course they really want an A.

Most of all, though, the end of the semester means grading papers, which in turn means keeping constant vigil for punctuation that undergraduates don’t use, complex sentence constructions, tongue-in-cheek asides, and for nuanced interpretations of identity politics in the Balkans, any of which signals the Big P. Nobody escapes scrutiny. I assume everyone’s trying to make a sucker out of me. I might sound like Torquemada keeping everyone under a veil of suspicion like this but when you get accustomed to a certain style of communication, departures from the barely literate just cry out that something is amiss. I also have a long history with plagiarists in my classes. I don’t know if cheaters just run amok on campus or if I seem like the soft-headed simpleton who’ll let anything past, but these plagiarists think they can play me like a violin.

I already have three confirmed cases of plagiarism and one more suspected with another twenty five or thirty papers to go. So now I’m stuck with the dilemma of what to do with them. And it’s a real dilemma, you know the kind with two equally bad alternatives. I can turn them in to the university people and have to deal with the paperwork and legal procedures and all the efforts to keep the cheaters from suing for slander, or I can just deal with it myself by failing them, which doesn’t necessarily give them the greatest disincentive to cheating again in the future. Exhibit A is one of the plagiarists I handled unofficially two years ago and has now turned up in a colleague’s class doing it all over again. A while ago I pledged to turn everyone in but that was before I was facing the prospect of setting up three “mediated discussions” in a non-threatening environment of equals to mutually come to an agreement on the appropriate action to take.

Fred Thompson Out, But Whither America?

In a bombshell announcement that has left the political establishment in upheaval, Fred Thompson announced his withdrawal from the presidential race today. His stunning move comes just as he was poised to sweep the remaining caucuses and primaries to become the Republican nominee and likely victor in November’s general election. His unforeseen decision leaves the remaining candidates in both parties scrambling to retool their campaigns in the wake of the heavyweight’s departure. Baffled Republicans who jockeyed for the vice presidency must now attempt to position themselves as worthy replacement candidates, while Democrats see their odds at winning the White House move from the astronomical to the plausible.

The race is now up for grabs, as indeed is the country’s future. While it is impossible to say what could have motivated Fred’s decision, we can only assume that it was in the best interest of the nation. In his brief statement Fred had this to say: “I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort.” We have Fred. I only pray leaving was the right choice.

Movie Review Review: Cloverfield More Like Crapperfield

I’m sorry to report my deep disappointment in the reviews for the latest blockbuster film by J.J. Abrams and some other guys I’ve never heard of. Ever since mysteriously untitled posters and deliciously cryptic teaser trailers started to generate excitement I’ve been eagerly awaiting the chance to read the critic’s appraisals of the disaster epic Cloverfield. Due to my modest income, rising ticket prices, and movie theaters’ profoundly offensive practice of showing commercials before frequently crummy movies, it’s very seldom that I’ll risk blowing a stack of Georges without first having digested the critical consensus and then passing judgment on that consensus. So while I haven’t seen the movie, I have read a lot about it and can say with some certainty that if I had seen it I would have wished that I hadn’t. Mind you, this isn’t just making an up or down call based on the Tomatometer, it’s a careful analysis of what the critics say, who says it, and how they say it.

Even though there’s a good deal of positive ink for this one (from no less than Roger Ebert, even), my disappointment stems from the uninspired city-smashing reptile formula with the illusion-busting implausibility of the camcorder recording conceit stuck on top, and none of that is in dispute among the various critics. I expected a lot more than another giant lizard from Abrams, something innovative and mindbending. But from what I read all you get is vapid hipsters and stomach-churning shaky cam. So while it might be a perfectly pulse-pounding and terrifying seat-gripper, that just ain’t cuttin’ it and I’m keeping the three dollars I still have safely in my pocket. Maybe in a couple of months I’ll watch a matinee at the dollar theater and review the movie itself.

Discovering New Knowledge Of Russia That Does Not Lack Facts

Well, it’s been a good three months since my last post, and that’s a pretty long time to go without making fun of students. Since it’s the end of the semester I’m in the midst of grading reams of tests and papers. This is mostly mind-numbing but it does afford a little comedy now and then because the students have to draw on what they’ve learned and articulate it on paper, giving them ample opportunity to sound ridiculous. So for this special holiday entry I’ve picked a few of the choicest insights from their essays which, for some reason, all pertain to the transition from communism in Russia:

It can be argued that russia invented communism through one of its organizers, Karl Marx, who laid out the blueprint for communism. Communism in Russia was not invented as a solution to democracy, but as a solution to communism.

Russia transition from communism started with the death of Lenin in the 1920s. Glasnost did not believe in revolution and tried to revive the communist party, but he was kicked out.

Aside from [the Hungarian uprising of 1956] radicalists like Yeltsin were willing to go so far as to blow up parliament and draft a new Constitution . . . After Yeltsin’s failed cultural revolution and the fall of the USSR Putin took over.

To be fair, most of these kids were toddlers when communism collapsed. But to really be fair, that’s why we have books. And why they were assigned to read them.