I’m not sure if they were constructing a Maypole, but they sure were a bunch of hippies.

The obligatory end-of-the-semester-course-evaluations-round-up is below the fold.

I had four courses this semester, two of which I loved and two which I loved to hate.

Social Psychology of Marriage

I took this course because (1) it appeared to be the best of the list of courses I had to choose from for my Women’s Studies minor requirement and (2) the day and time fit into my schedule. Apparently the Women’s Studies department is not too strict on which classes can be cross-listed as “women’s studies”, because this class could have been left in the Sociology department and no one would have been the wiser. This course could have been subtitled “Introduction to the (Heterosexual) Family”. We met once a week for 2 hours and 50 minutes.

Our instructor worked with a second instructor who taught the day course and together they planned the course content. During the third week the class signed up for discussion leader topics. It would be our responsibility to cover the textbook chapter and the supplemental article or two from our reader, hopefully without boring the crap out of the rest of the class.

Needless to say, every group bored the crap out of the rest of the class. To make matters worse, our instructor created PowerPoint presentations covering each chapter of the textbook, lecturing at us via the PP for an hour or so, before each group presented. Thus, the class was subjected to the same material via PP twice: once from the instructor (who provided little extra beyond what was printed in the textbook) and a second time from the group, who also presented information from the textbook, but also gave the class a summary of the article from the reader. This at least saved us from having to actually read the article(s).

Each week we were given a discussion question, which we would then respond to in our “journals”, which were handed in near the end of the semester. Discussion questions/responses covered such topics as “Contrast societal assumptions about children during the colonial period with those that emerged with the modern family” and “Discuss the factors that are associated with higher quality marriages.” We were required to respond to ten out of 13 questions.

The only other writing assignment was a final paper of 4-7 double-spaced pages covering any topic or issue regarding marriage and/or family. We also had a mid-term exam consisting of 35 multiple choice and 6 “essay” (short-answer) questions. Our final exam will be the same format.

I lost interest in this class the first week, right after the instructor said, “I don’t want this class to be primarily woman-focused. I don’t want this to be a man-hating class.” Because apparently woman-focused equates to man-hating. In saying this course wasn’t going to be “woman-focused” and playing to the delicate sensitivities of the Concerned Christian Women in the class, she erased any hope of a feminist analysis of the institutions of marriage and family. Women’s Studies courses are all about being woman-focused, otherwise they are your regular, generic man-focused courses. WTF?

I hated this class with a fucking passion.

Methods of Social Research II

Methods of Social Research I focused on statistics: what they are, which ones sociologists usually work with, how to compute them, and how to analyze data. This course was a continuation of the first, but without all the math. The only saving grace of this class was our instructor’s name, which he shares with a popular novel/movie character.

Lectures were dry, boring, and hard to follow. Our textbook was the same. Actually — and I don’t recommend doing this yourself — I stopped reading the textbook after about the fifth week.

The instructor gave unannounced quizzes from time-to-time and for the first exam he told us to use the chapter outlines from the textbook as our study guides. Past exams (from 1998, the last time he taught this course) were available for purchase at the local copymat, but they did not include the answers nor would he give us the answers. That last bit pissed off a lot of folks, especially the ones who could not find the answers in the book.

This course was one huge jumble and I spent most of my class times solving Sudoku puzzles or reading the crappy campus newspaper. Our one major assignment was a group project where we could chose from one of the following: a critical review of scholarly articles, a content analysis of scholarly articles, or create our own research and carry it out (collect data, analyze data, etc.).

I don’t have much to say about this course because it was pretty much lackluster in-full. I didn’t hate this class, but I sure didn’t enjoy it. I’ve heard this professor rocks at the graduate level, though.

Spanish Level III

Spanish turned out to be my favorite class of the semester. Our instructor was a graduate student from Argentina who knew about as much English as we did Spanish. Perfect match, I say.

Meeting three times a week, the instructor was always in a good mood and had a lot of energy. Most of my classmates were frustrated at the communication barrier, but seeing as how I actually studied the language this time around, I think it was mostly due to their lack of studying.

In-class exercises were fun and some were challenging (and some were even a bit embarrassing, like the day we all had to dance to contemporary salsa music), but it helped me to look forward to attending the class. Exams were fairly easy, provided you studied regularly, and the fact that the textbook and workbook were written entirely in Spanish helped a lot.

I would love to have this instructor again, but I know I won’t. I enjoyed our after-class and bus stop conversations regarding sociología, me with my paltry Spanish and he with his broken English. If only every teacher could be so into their role as he was. He helped to rekindle my passion for learning Spanish.

Sociology Honors Seminar – “Self and Identity in American Life: Patterns, Problems, and Issues”

Admittedly the most stressful class I have yet to take, with only 10 of us the class was as intimate as it was intellectually thrilling. I wish all of my sociology courses could be of this class size because we go into so much more depth. Our instructor is a prominent scholar in the theories of self, identity, and self-esteem. His ability to recall articles he’s read over the years or to pull out random facts and statistics stunned me almost like I was in the presence of Zinn or Chomsky.

As a two-part course, this semester focused on providing us with an introduction to social psychology and various theories of self and identity, and prepared us for selecting a topic for our research thesis. We met once a week for 3 hours or so, discussing our reading assignments and hashing through our intermediate-level thoughts. One week we met in a conference room to sit-in on a presentation by a scholar the sociology/anthropology department was considering for an assistant professor position. We were given the chance to view his five-page Curriculum Vitae (CV) and were told about the academic track, from undergraduate studies to graduate, to master’s, to PhD candidacy, to sitting in a room filled with current professors with their eyes glued to you, questions ready. If I ever do decide to stay within academia, I’m in for a road of hurt, studying, and stress that I can’t even begin to fathom at this point.

The culmination of this semester was the completion of our research proposal, wherein we were to prove we knew what we were talking about, knew our theoretical base, knew about past and current research, and proposed a plan of attack for our topic. We will each be conducting our research over the coming summer months, then analyzing our data and writing it up near November or December of next semester.

This course is a great challenge for me, the ultimate procrastinator and she-who-bitches-about-her-classes-not-being-challenging-enough; I just hope I survive it.

May your semester end on a high note and may your shot glasses be full tonight.