Okay, now I'm getting seriously pissed, and I'm not just talking about the gin and tonic in my hand.
Surely the whole modern thrust of education, at any level, is about recognising the individual? And yet the university courses themselves are lumping us into random groups, where we are forced to depend on each other's skill or foibles rather than on our own unique and individual ability. A few weeks in, and it's just as I feared. The others are dragging me down.
No, I can't work at my own pace. I have to wait for every other student in my group to get their acts together and find time in their busy lives to do their uni work... so that we can then all race the clock at the last minute to get our own submissions ready on time. Wow, let's even out the demographic with a measure of stress! That sounds fair! (removes tongue from cheek with tyre iron)
Now, believe me, I'm not standing in judgement on other students who are struggling to follow the time line and have a million conflicting responsibilities to juggle; it's not their fault, it's the system that sucks. Because hello, I also have a million conflicting responsibilities, and the way they fall for me makes it a little idiotic (okay, a LOT idiotic) to leave things to the last gasp. Sample: as of next week I plunge headlong into four weeks of 11-hour days (and that's before I deal with minor little things like shopping, cooking and looking after my share of the farm duties), and I'm not going to be exactly spoiled for choice about how much time I spend on academia.
Here I am, trying to do the responsible thing like a grown-up (after years and years of leaving everything to the last minute while I was at school) and plan ahead. But no; we're working in groups. I have to wait for everyone else to be ready. I'm just considered impatient. No girl scouts allowed; be unprepared!
So of course, the moment someone else posted something to my group in another subject (a full two weeks after me) I fell upon it with joy and went to work 'helping'. Great result; I have already had my wrist slapped for failing to observe the niceties of working in a group.
Here are the rules, as I've perceived them (retrospectively):
Make academic comments only, but don't cross-reference to other courses regardless of relevance. Each course is a discrete entity. (well, there's some up-to-date educational theory...)
Comment on as many minor tasks as possible on the forums, regardless of how superficial your comments might be. LOOK BUSY! (pass me my brown paper bag)
Above all, don't be honest about anyone else's academic standards, not even to help them improve their work. The only way to improve others' work is through referencing. (uncrosses eyes, uncrosses t's and undots i's)
Alright, I will now stop taking the piss, despite feeling so pissed, and get back to the story. Apparently what we're meant to be doing is giving each other a leg-up by helpfully pointing out references to support each other's personal writings. I might add that so far I'd gained absolutely nothing from this, as nobody had commented on my work at all. But what I saw in the post brought out the teacher in me; it made me see the individual fellow student struggling with that assignment.
Okay, I went beyond my brief in the letter of the law, but I did NOT go beyond my brief as an educator. I decided to use what I'm 'learning' in this academic literacy course to help her get on task, answer the question and write using acceptable sentence structure, because there were some serious problems in her work that were just going to get more problematic as she 'developed' it if someone didn't give her a nudge. It was not the student's fault for not listening in grammar class, either; English is her second language, and I tried to help her come up to standard.
NOT APPROPRIATE!
Oh dear. Apparently I was far too honest. And apparently this isn't my job. I have to remember that I'm a student, not a teacher.
Oh, for crying out loud... here we are acknowledging that children can teach each other, that children can even teach US, their teachers, but I'm not allowed to teach my fellow students? I've been helping uni students sort their work like this for years.
The difference, I guess, is that those students chose to have me help them. This student was forced under my nose, and so I did what came naturally and tried to teach her how to pass from first principles (yes, the word 'irrelevant' was used) instead of sticking to the given task (which was to prop up her work with references, regardless of how dubious her starting point may have been).
So much for helping people. Good on you, uni, for demanding I be less caring and assuming I have nothing useful to offer beyond what's dictated to me.
And so I will do as others do, and produce a string of false praise (to be politically correct, because we're supposed to be nice to each other), vaguely relevant references and, no doubt, hypocritical 'thank yous' for what they write on my own work. It's more than depressing. It's completely counter-intuitive, it's insulting to who I am and it makes me want to quit the course.
I don't think that's what I'm meant to be experiencing. I don't think that's what I'm paying rather a lot of money to gain. And I don't think sitting here losing sleep over it is particularly helpful to me as an early childhood educator, either. God, how I hate hypocrisy.
