Is Our Children Learning?

Notes From a University Student  12

In order to be a teaching assistant, I had to take a course on how to teach writing. Other than that it was annoying that students in Mexico were taking the course long-distance and that the technical difficulties were interrupting the flow, I have no memory of learning how to teach writing. But I got an A and now I’m a teaching assistant. In the English department of this university being a teaching assistant doesn’t mean I assist anybody. I just teach. I teach two classes of university students Remedial English.

Watch Out For Inflation

Notes From a University Student 11

Pieter Breugel The Tower of Babel

Let me explain the meaning of the American word “course,” because that’s confusing. Not everything related to education here can be easily translated into Dutch. To American standards I’m studying at a university, but to Dutch standards that’s a rather big word.

Those Elusive Urals

Notes From a University Student 10

Sir Philip Sidney

Right now I’m doing a course about the development of the English novel, from the Renaissance to halfway the eighteenth century. The professor is a nice guy and a specialist in the eighteenth century. Every now and then it’s embarrassingly apparent that he doesn’t know much about the Renaissance, but once we had arrived in the eighteenth century it started to be fun.

Magner Come Lowdy

Notes From a University Student 7

I now have an American bachelor’s degree in English. Big whoop. I told them they could mail it to my house. The thing isn’t worth more than a ninth-grade report card. I’m so pissed off! My Dutch library degree was supposedly worthless,  so I had to get my American bachelor’s degree. It’s laughably easy, so I get the highest grades, and then they’re surprised!

Look at Me–I Can Read!

Notes From a University Student 3

The second summer course was Survey of English Literature from the Romantics to the Present. That was a great course. It was largely a survey of poets and poetry, but since I hadn’t had much poetry in high school, most of this was new to me. The professor was pretty good and also rather demanding to South Texas standards, and the course was fast-paced.