More exam happiness…
After writing notes/studying for literally 40 hours, this was my oral exam:
Prof (not mine, because he wasnt administering it): Where are you from?
Me: California
Prof: Where are your parents from?
Me: Um… Vietnam
Prof: Why did China miss out on the first industrial revolution?
Me: The chinese were too proud and did not see the importance of the inventions that were brought to them from Europe. They trivalized clocks as toys and saw guns and cannons as useless. They closed off their ports to trade. In England, there were many scientific societies and journals and the people generally were literate but in China the culture discouraged sharing and innovation…
Prof: Do you agree or disagree?
Me: I agree because empirical evidence showed that europe was much more profitable than China and in Japan…
Prof:Ok ok, your professor thinks you deserve a 24 (I have no idea how he would have known that), but Ill give you a 26. Is that ok?
Me: (In complete shock) Um… can I answer another question?
Prof: No. I don’t have time. You can have a 27. (and then he gets up)
I cannot believe this school. It’s absolutely absurd. My exam literally lasted less than 2 minutes. At first I had the knee-jerk reaction of “that’s not fair!” since there were many students who passed (18+ is a pass) who did almost no work. But upon reflection, life is never fair, and at least I learned a lot about economic history.
My international and european law was much ‘better’ insofar as it actually tested knowledge and comprehension. Then again, that course was taught by a Swiss lawyer.
This is a snippet from my marketing lecture notes:
To effectively use your online community:
brainstorming: gather ideas
selection: pick the product ideas that will be profitable and practical
design: make the product
promote and sell your product online
So are marketing classes always like this? What, then, does one actually learn in marketing? I would argue that the above does not need to be taught, as it should be plainly obvious. How is it that a course called “Technology for culture and communication” is actually about “Marketing online”? Does anyone know anyone who studied and enjoyed marketing? All those I have spoke to here more or less do it because they couldn’t think of anything else to do. For the first time, I found a subject in which I have absolutely no interest and have found no one to convince me otherwise.
And really, what is it with the Italian need to know one’s ethnic background? Never, was the answer ‘California’ sufficient when someone asked me where I’m from.
I think it’s a non-American thing. I get it too, like everyone must originally be from some real country. “Where are you from?” “California.” “But where is your *family* from?” “Uhh, California.”
December 15th, 2005 at 7:10 am
wow…goodness!
did you have to answer in italian?
December 15th, 2005 at 7:38 am
That’s (at least) the European thing. Even if your family’s lived in US (or Italy) for that matter for 10 generations, if you’re still largely the same ethnicity as your immigrant ancestors by blood, no one will consider you American (or Italian, or whatnot).
My mother, e.g., refers to jacks as “Swedish Jack” (to distinguish him from a HS friend of mine named Jack who, independently of having been born in CA gets “Chinese Jack”).
Think about it — it’s not as foreign to the average American’s perspective as you might think — after all, you’ll still consider a black person around here black even if his family’s been in the US since the 18th century. It’s just that Europeans have finer-grained distinctions of the same sort. And yes, the average European will (at least think that he can) distinguish ethnicities at that fine-grained level from just looking at the person.
December 15th, 2005 at 12:44 pm
also, they’ll probably independently look at you funny if you answer “california” because people outside the US are unlikely to consider states the “default” geographical entity — you’re either from the “US” or from one of the major metropolitan areas (“san francisco” is probably a reasonable answer, but not “san jose”). in europe you’re unlikely to hear someone say, as their first response, that they’re from “normandy”, or from “andalucia” unless you’re within the respective country (or the administrative subdivision in question is particularly adamantly clawing for a national identity, a la catalunya or wales or something).
you’ll also notice that europeans will be very confused if shown a US-style political world map where there’s one color per country but each US state gets its own color.
December 15th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
I get funny looks for saying ‘America’ too. Surprisingly, most people I’ve met dislike America in general and love California — one of the perks of being from an awesome state.
But usually people are being polite by asking where I’m from. The more common question is: Chinese? Japanese?
I would be curious to meet a black person here to ask if he/she needs to clarify from which african country he/she originates. BTW, that’s another thing that makes me uncomfortable–very little ethnic diversity here. I have yet to see a black student at school. There are also no facilities to accomodate the physically impared.
December 21st, 2005 at 1:58 pm
BTW, that’s another thing that makes me uncomfortable–very little ethnic diversity here. I have yet to see a black student at school. There are also no facilities to accomodate the physically impared.
Ah, yes. Ditto the above — welcome to The Rest Of The World. And Italy, IIRC, has by far the highest rate of immigration from subsaharan Africa in Europe. There were certainly hordes of people from those parts when I was walking around the Genovese ghettoes, so there’re surely a fair number around Milan, too, but I doubt they’ve dabbled in affirmative action over there, so their absence on campus is not particularly surprising (given that most of the immigration has been very recent, and from regions without any serious accessible education system).
December 22nd, 2005 at 1:27 pm
Fortunately, no. The lecture/notes were in Italian, but since there were only 2 exchange students in my section, our prof just made us take the exam with the english class.
December 22nd, 2005 at 3:50 pm