Saturday, November 06, 2004
been wanting to post this entry for a long time, but either there was a lack of time, or there was no impetus previously. anyway, now i'm back into mugging mode and my mind's straying left right centre, this would be a good time to post. no apologies if someone accuses me of reifying or spouting reductionistic bullshit,so i make no definite conclusions. its just an observation man!!! relax!!!!
anyway, in core courses (meaning mostly science courses) there seem to be a graduated distribution of the type of people sitting at fixed distances away from the front. erm, much like a form of.... positional determinism? weird shit... can one really tell what type a person is by one's decision to sit at a particular place during lecture? damn.. anyway with tongue firmly in cheek:
1) the last third of the lecture hall is often populated by the slack kias. usually they tend to arrive late or can't be bothered with the course itself, so would usually read the student dailies or attempt to finish the crossword or do some egyptian PT(ie, sleep) during the lecture itself. needless to say, the population of the backrows often vary wildly. it fluctuates especially just before the weekend or before a holiday.
2) the first three rows are often infested with the super siao on buggers. They tend to come for every lecture, sit at exactly the same places (often with a small variances in positions, accounting for random distribution of students... damn i'm rambling here) and are wont to ask questions.. all the time. In bio-related lectures, those buggers are usually premeds. *gah* the professor usually notices those buggers and at a later part of a course, he most certainly would ignore that back rows and carry on a de facto conversation/lecture with the front rows only. This might be a major indication of how much the prof. cares for his/her class (or whether he/she has passed tenure review). If the prof at the later stages makes attempts to connect with the back rows, or if the guy's so interesting that no one is reading newspapers at the backrow, then the prof 1) is really good and/or this is his/her tenure review year.
3) the middle rows are the hardest to characterize. suffice to say, they're intermediate between the front and back. oh, and they like to roll their eyes when an overenthusiastic front row denizen asks a stupid question, which happens like... almost all the time? a significant minority of the middle row buggers.. don't know whether this is true or not.... tend to gravitate towards grad school.. well, thats an unsbustantiated claim... so...
but anyway, this applies to core courses. in the humans/arts courses so far... er.. the siao on buggers tend to be evenly distributed all round the room. so instead of a battery of cannons bombarding the dear old prof in science classes, its more of a Vietnam-era napalm bombing. the more interesting the prof, the more the whole room will flame/disagree/agree/debate with the prof.
going by this weird piece of "theory" alone, this might imply that science students in general are... unbalanced?
......
draw your own conclusions.
anyway, in core courses (meaning mostly science courses) there seem to be a graduated distribution of the type of people sitting at fixed distances away from the front. erm, much like a form of.... positional determinism? weird shit... can one really tell what type a person is by one's decision to sit at a particular place during lecture? damn.. anyway with tongue firmly in cheek:
1) the last third of the lecture hall is often populated by the slack kias. usually they tend to arrive late or can't be bothered with the course itself, so would usually read the student dailies or attempt to finish the crossword or do some egyptian PT(ie, sleep) during the lecture itself. needless to say, the population of the backrows often vary wildly. it fluctuates especially just before the weekend or before a holiday.
2) the first three rows are often infested with the super siao on buggers. They tend to come for every lecture, sit at exactly the same places (often with a small variances in positions, accounting for random distribution of students... damn i'm rambling here) and are wont to ask questions.. all the time. In bio-related lectures, those buggers are usually premeds. *gah* the professor usually notices those buggers and at a later part of a course, he most certainly would ignore that back rows and carry on a de facto conversation/lecture with the front rows only. This might be a major indication of how much the prof. cares for his/her class (or whether he/she has passed tenure review). If the prof at the later stages makes attempts to connect with the back rows, or if the guy's so interesting that no one is reading newspapers at the backrow, then the prof 1) is really good and/or this is his/her tenure review year.
3) the middle rows are the hardest to characterize. suffice to say, they're intermediate between the front and back. oh, and they like to roll their eyes when an overenthusiastic front row denizen asks a stupid question, which happens like... almost all the time? a significant minority of the middle row buggers.. don't know whether this is true or not.... tend to gravitate towards grad school.. well, thats an unsbustantiated claim... so...
but anyway, this applies to core courses. in the humans/arts courses so far... er.. the siao on buggers tend to be evenly distributed all round the room. so instead of a battery of cannons bombarding the dear old prof in science classes, its more of a Vietnam-era napalm bombing. the more interesting the prof, the more the whole room will flame/disagree/agree/debate with the prof.
going by this weird piece of "theory" alone, this might imply that science students in general are... unbalanced?
......
draw your own conclusions.
