<p>How do you all find it?</p>
<p>I go to a state school, so the undergraduate advisors often cater to the majors who don’t go onto graduate school. Some of them make a distinction in their advising styles between more ambitious and less ambitious students, but others don’t. Many of them nonetheless adhere to the notion that students should strictly adhere to certain course requirements (or take this course before this, and allow for no other options), which can get rather irritating. Some of them may relax such expectations for the more ambitious, some do not.</p>
<p>Anyways though, since I have a learning disability and learn at a totally different pace and style than most others, I generally avoid advising like the plague. The attitude towards those with learning disabilities is that they should follow the same sequence as everyone else and get extra accommodation [which really only results in a net increase in work/time spent], when in reality - they may learn even faster than those who don’t have learning disabilities if presented in a different environment => but they can’t do that if all they can get is some extra “accommodation” on top of their standard courses, and are still expected to attend lectures [hey, advisors don’t know about MIT OCW and Stanford EPGY]</p>
<p>There is the theoretical possibility that some advisors are surprisingly liberal however (especially more so than a lot of professors - who tend to be extremely conservative about teaching methods/the way to learn the subject)</p>
<p>I know what you mean. I have a very mild LD and I just get accommodation’s on exams, particularly the ones with lots of wording and subjective questions or answers. I typically ignore the undergraduate advisers advice since I know myself far better than they do when choosing my course loads. For example, I can take 21 credits of math/physics/engineering courses in a semester without too much trouble but taking 9 credits of any subjective type course like writing, humanities or social studies in a semester is an absolute killer. The advisers can’t determine how many of what type of courses I can handle, only I can. </p>
<p>Every one at my state school, even most of the professors are oriented towards preparing people for industry jobs after graduation. I too, get very irritated at that. I can definitively notice it in lecture when the professor chooses which subjects to cover and how it is covered in the class. I know I probably annoy many of my classmates when I routinely ask questions where the only response by the professor is, “That’s beyond the scope of this course” and they just continue on with the lecture.</p>
<p>“That’s beyond the scope of this course”</p>
<p>Thank you for reminding me of that quote!! I had intended to address it for some time, but it had escaped my conscious awareness for a period of time. Oftentimes, I ask questions I already know the answer to - to bring the response into conscious awareness [and the extra stimuli provided by the person’s answer, along with the emotional responses to such stimuli, may be enough to propel the response into a level to which I can finally analyze it without putting so much “activation energy” into it]. That’s what you have done with reminding me of the quote as well - it’s now fully in my conscious awareness so I can address it, without the specter of competing ideas that compete for “clout” in my consciousness.</p>
<p>It’s irritating even with respect to the research professors. A lot of them do research - but see their students differently. Since most students have homogeneous goals, this approach usually works, and they rarely encounter criticism for their advising!</p>
<p>You might find “Deschooling Society” by Illich interesting. While you may not agree with all he says, some of his insights are amazing. His main insight => people get psychologically dependent on “needing to be taught” - on “getting the material from a teacher” - when they haven’t even considered the possibility that they can learn the subject just as well when they investigate it by themselves!
<a href=“http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html[/url]”>http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html</a></p>
<p>“That’s beyond the scope of this course”</p>
<p>Yeah I get this a lot too…</p>
<p>Personally, I find it really annoying when people go off on a tangent to the course during the class itself. That’s what office hours are for. It’s great that you find the course interesting, but most people just want to get through most classes, and I think people should respect that. </p>
<p>Besides as Inquiline said, it’s not like the professor is the only, or even main source of knowledge. If a topic really interests you, you shouldn’t mind searching for answers yourself. The active learning process gives you a better understanding in most cases anyway. I generally don’t pick up on the material until I read the information in a text. I know this may be a problem if you’re dyslexic, but there are plenty of people(grad students and other researchers) who’d be more than happy to talk about material they work on.</p>
<p>yes, unrelated tangents are annoying, but if it is pertinent and beyond the scope of the course but on the same subject, then I think it is valid. </p>
<p>The higher education system wasn’t designed for how it is being used now. It was designed to instigate inquire by those leading the investigations into the subjects. In todays schools, it’s being used as a credentialing tool and not advancing knowledge in the subjects as it was intended.</p>
<p>Again, office hours. Hearkening to yesteryear doesn’t do any good in today’s world. When higher education was designed, there was no such thing as a Ph.D. There was also a lot more unknown in the world. If you went back 200 years, how many of the material we learn about in science and engineering courses would even exist? You need to learn the fundamentals before you try and find new theories. Lectures are for the former, research and graduate work are for the latter. </p>
<p>Again, I’m not saying it’s bad to be curious and want to advance knowledge, but there’s a time and a place for it, and it’s not the lecture hall. Waxing poetic about the beauty of Navier-Stokes while the rest of the class is still trying to wrap their head around the principle will just get you a whole lot of angry looks.</p>
<p>I prefer going to the advisors of your major department if you know what you’re doing already. But I think it’s very rude of them to give your an attitude just because of who you are. Actually, I don’t like going to the academic advisors that much either. If you know what you’re doing (like you know the major requirements) then it’s ok not to go, but I still recommend going during your last year just to give it a check and make sure you don’t miss anything.</p>
<p>I swear I only went to the advisors to ask for a petition for overload of credits form, they were like “why do you need it? well you need a letter from the department of the course you’re taking to FILL out the form.” I’m like…so does that mean I can’t get the form unless I have a letter of approval? She ended up looking at me like I didn’t get her answer and fricking rolled her eyes at me and look at the girl behind her who took out the form and gave it to me. I mean I get her message of the letter part, but all I want is the form. -_- why make things so complicated.</p>