I'm shopping podcasts of college courses for something to listen to next after a reasonably successful fall "semester" of Intro to Greek History, Modern France, and Intro Psych. I get 5-6 hours a week of listening time during runs, walks to the park, driving around, etc., i.e. time that my mind is not fully occupied, my baby is content, and I don't have a book handy. I started listening to the occasional college lecture a year or two ago with Becca on longer car rides, loading up the iPod with Civil War history and such in addition to the regular programming of This American Life and Radio Lab. The quality of the thought and the sustained arguments over an hour or more were a nice antidote to radio news and its 90 second bullet pointed stories. Plus all of the lectures I've listened to so far have been from Yale, and I can reminisce about the lecture halls and get most of the cultural references.
For the next round of courses to listen to, though, I'm trying to branch out, particularly towards some California universities, in a fit of civic pride and as a small part of my overarching goal of learning about this place my new home. The campus references go over my head, or those that don't are just references to buildings and libraries, not memories and friends. And, particularly right now, when I am trying out a whole bunch of courses by listening to the introductory lecture, I am struck by how foolishly grade-focused undergraduates are. Half an hour or more of each of these first lectures is dedicated to detailing the grading system, the deadlines for homework and tests, the curve the class will be graded on, and other bits of course mechanics minutia that is entirely useless to a podcast listener like me who is uninterested and ineligible for grades and is only listening for my own edification. From a few years distance since my last degree program, grades seem quaint and useless, a motivational system useful only in the absence of real motivation and a measure of achievement both distracting and inaccurate. Plus they waste 30 minutes of valuable time describing it.
The best alternative to regular grading I've come across so far in the past few months of listening in: John Merriman's alternative final exam: an option to have a 30 minute conversation with a TA about the topics of the course in lieu of filling a blue book with essays. In French or English, your choice.
Yesterday's run destination: Wilshire and Ocean
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: popovers
lunch: carbonara
dinner: squash collards white bean soup
Grading seems so slight and silly to the adult learner
pirsig
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