Graduate School - Class Discussions

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I can't post exactly what it is I've said because, unless I've written something down, I'm horrible about recalling verbal exchanges.

But what I've decided is that my comments do tend to push people out of their comfort zone - not because my comments are controversial or even argumentative - but because my views are so outside-the-box that unless I can sit down and have a good discussion with someone about where it is I'm coming from (which never seems to happen in school), there's just no way they get what I'm trying to say.

In a paper, I get to have that discussion with the reader: I get to lay out the foundations of my argument and build on my main points - in person, not so much.

So, yes, I am challenging other people's preconceived ideas and they don't like it or they don't get it - either way, they don't take the time to examine their own ideas, so I guess it's their loss.
Meanwhile, I'll keep on being the weird one in class and participating in my own way, while trying hard not to care what everybody else thinks about me (which doesn't often get to me, but sometimes does - hey, we're all human, right?).

The idea of writing out notes in response to class discussions is a good one - I may begin with next semester by approaching my professors with this idea.


ps: Sorry it's taken me this long to respond - I've been completely stressing about a presentation I had to give last night in the class in question: not sleeping, anxiety level through the roof, the whole nine yards. I survived it, plus my professor seemed to like it, and then I actually slept well last night, so WHEW. That's over!

I am glad your presentation went well, and especially glad to hear you had some good sleep.

I am jealous about the sleep.

I think they might be nicer if they got more sleep as well.

Maybe your grad school professors are different than mine were, but I was exactly the same way and from everything I've heard they loved that about me. All of them. My views may have been even weirder to them, because I got mine in behavior analysis but had an undergrad perspective and degree in bioanthropology.

The issue that might arise with such perspectives are probably more with classmates than professors. I remember getting invited to take a Ph.D course on radical behaviorism the 2nd semester of my first year of my masters (and please believe this is not to toot my own horn or something, I just had a great experience with it and am astonished that I got that invite), and most people in there were all right but there were a couple who were clearly tilted out by my presence and approach.

I gave a presentation in there based on a paper I wrote, everybody else essentially did literature reviews and critiques, but I wrote about the application of behavioral principles on a few "turning points" of human evolution-regardless of how I played it, I'll probably never forget a guy in the class death-staring me and blatantly holding up and tapping his watch when I was at 17 minutes in a "15 minute" presentation, despite the fact that some people went well over a half hour on theirs, both before and after my presentation.

Despite that guy, the professor gave me an A+ on the paper/presentation. People are as*holes.


As an aside, but maybe pertinent, my brain was so out of control in that class that prior to writing that paper I asked my professor if I could do it breaking down the Dyatlov Pass incident and projecting a "behavioral solution" to it She rejected that as a topic, but didn't really know what that was and after a brief explanation asked me to send her the best "information" I could find online so she could read up on it late at night sometime

Last edited by amazon_television on 17 Nov 2012, 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

double posted, sorry

Also if everyone stayed inside the box then everything would say markedly similar. A new idea that is good and actually true might have to change.

It's true, my classmates are far more troublesome than my professor, but my professor is rather conservative in her views, especially when it comes to how she thinks History should be approached and discussed.
Thus, when I comment on something in class, not only do some of my classmates sit there and roll their eyes and sigh exaggeratedly, but my professor has no idea what to say, so she just rolls right over it, like I never said anything. It's all very frustrating and, on bad days, disheartening.
In comparison, the professor in my other class allows us to explore our ideas, no matter how "out there" the ideas may be. We have wonderful discussions and I always leave wishing the class were longer than 3 hours because the time seems to fly by.

But it's ok - the semester's almost over and now all I have to do is work on my final paper - then never, ever take another class from the conservative professor again!

Yes! This is what keeps me going: the notion that people who were thought to have ridiculous ideas often made great strides in advancing their fields.

I don't claim to be brilliant, but I do know that my ideas are valid and far more interesting than a recitation of all the ideas that have gone before.

Out of curiosity, what was your paper about? I'm an undergrad bio major and my main interest is in primate behavior and human evolution. I know this is off-topic, so if you want to respond could you PM me?