Going to lectures

[raven]

I may, possibly, have misjudged American Girl. When you get her talking, she's actually quite nice. And I wanted to know if she had any more questions, or if I could help her with anything else, and she said yes, she had a question. Go ahead, I said.

"Tell me," she said, "do you people ever go to lectures?"

"Um," I said. "That depends."

The thing is, I know what it depends on for me - I would go to my compulsory ones if I had any, I go to the good ones (c.f. Morison and Pooley), and the later the lecture is in the day, generally the more likely I am to go to it. But I am curious, and procrastinating, and therefore spamming.



[Poll #668385]

Comments

[ladyfalcon.livejournal.com]

If you don't get assessed during term... what's the point? When DO you get assessed, and how do they judge how much you're learning and how well? And if you're not getting assessed, why are you stressed? Not that you don't have every right to be, I'm just wondering where the motivation could possibly come from, because I don't think you need to worry about having any. I've read a lot of "So much work must workworkwork" entries from you to make me doubt any claims of laziness.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Well, it's quite hard to explain. At the end of this year, I sit the exams we generally call "prelims" (although the university calls it the First Public Examination) which have a very low pass mark, typically less than 40%, and a pass rate of higher than 98%. If you fail those, you get chucked out, but this hardly ever happens. The University is never informed of your grade, only that you passed or failed.

At the end of my final year, I'll sit eight Finals papers and the marks I get on those will dictate my degree class. So far, so hoopy.

Week-to-week... well. We just don't get assessed. We have to, barring accidents and illnesses but no other excuses, have to have to have to get essays written for tutorials, otherwise there's no point in going to the tutes. Given that we generally have at most three days to do all the reading and write the essay, there's lots of "workworkwork!" posts in my LJ. At the tute, one person reads out the essay and gets a little verbal feedback, and the other person hands it in to the tutor and gets some margin scribbles. The essays aren't really the point of it, they're to make sure you do the reading and have some knowledge for the discussion that follows. In a group of two, if you haven't done the work it really shows, so you need to have done at least some reading.

At the end of the term there is the Master's and Tutors' Handshaking, where they sit you in a tutor's study with all the tutors you've had that term, and they give you some verbal feedback on you (usually along the lines of "you're doing fine" or "do more reading on topics X Y Z"). And that's basically it, assessment-wise.

My apologies for rambling at you. :) Also, it's worth noting that Oxford is unlike most universities in doing this - other places have exams and assessment and other unpleasant things.

[ladyfalcon.livejournal.com]

That is just... so, so strange. And terrific. You should find out if Oxford's master's degree program works the same way, I might hop the pond for my next degree.

Do English degrees work the same way, Bachelor's-Master's-Doctorate? I never even thought about that.

Hell, you should just do a little series of 'This is Britain' editorials for us non-natives. I'd be fascinated by anything, since I've seldom been anywhere very far from D.C., and never outside the U.S., so Strange Differences amaze me. I don't even understand the cultural differences between seperate parts of my own country, much less the way things work for other people.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I don't know, but I would be willing to bet that the master's degree programme is just the same but with even less structured assessment. We have so little structured anything, the mind boggles; my working week involves on average only five hours where I actually have to be somewhere at a given time.

The degree system is the same, sort of, but a little different in Oxford, which always complicates things.

I will quite happily do such a series! *g* Give me an idea for Something Wot Is Different, and I will oblige. :)

[ladyfalcon.livejournal.com]

It would be difficult for me to give you a subject, since I don't know what's different, never having been to the UK myself. But you've been here, to my very own city, even! What did you see that was like 'Huh. That's weird.', and what was in weird in comparison to?

(Besides 'Lambda Rising' in Dupont. I've never been anywhere else like that, either).