Courses that are a waste of time and tuition

Colleges & Universities A-Z Indiana University - Bloomington
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<p>Here is an assignment, one of four required essays, for a non-English/non-writing major. This might give you an idea of the authoritarianism, arrogance, and self-satisfaction of some IU professors. Talk about a professor justifying his/her paycheck! Also, it shows how your time and tuition money may be wasted on superfluous courses.</p>

<p>Assignment: </p>

<p>Objective: This essay will allow you to show how you can analyze Oliver Twist to provide insight into Victorian culture with the aid of secondary sources. Primary Source: Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens Secondary Sources: Your paper should include 3-4 secondary sources selected from the following list:
• At least one of the following secondary readings from class:
o Stephen Gill’s supplementary texts (the Intro or any of the Appendices) in the Oxford World Classics edition of Oliver Twist.[1]
o Brattin’s “Dickens and Serial Publication”
• At least two reputable sources that you find on your own
o At least one of these should be a longer work (15+ pp) from a scholarly book or peer-reviewed journal
Audience: Imagine you are writing for someone who has read the novel awhile ago but who is not a member of our class. This reader is scholarly and expects that you follow academic conventions of formality. S/he has not necessarily read your secondary sources.
Task: Write a 6-page essay answering one of the prompts below. Your essay should include an arguable thesis and insightful analysis of specific textual examples. Support and complicate your argument with your secondary sources.
1. In the introduction to Oliver Twist, Stephen Gill states, “It would be foolish to suggest that[,] in Nancy[,] Dickens says anything whatever of importance or interest about prostitution as a social phenomenon with historically specific characteristics” (xiv). To what extent do you agree with this statement? If you do largely agree with Gill, why doesn’t Dickens, who is usually incredibly conscious of society’s problems, use Nancy to examine the issue of prostitution?
2. Think about how Oliver Twist represents people from different classes. Which classes, if any, does Dickens tend to represent sympathetically? Which does he represent less favorably? (Keep in mind that there is an entire spectrum between “rich” and “poor,” including the working and middle classes, and that people in the criminal community may not fit neatly into this spectrum at all.) Using specific evidence from the novel and your research, create an argument about what these representations tell us about class issues in Victorian England.
3. As Appendix 2 notes, “Newgate Novels” like Oliver Twist were often considered dangerous reading because their novelists had “forsaken their moral duty” by glamorizing or at least exploring criminal underworlds (Gill 447). In what ways does Oliver Twist reinforce or challenge the idea that Newgate novels are dangerous? What about reading in general? What effect do these representations have on Dickens’s claims that Oliver Twist, unlike similar novels, was not an immoral or corrupting book? (It will help you to read and discuss Dickens’s defense of his work in the Preface to the third edition [lii-lvii].)
4. Readers have often recognized that Rose Maylie represents many or most of the qualities considered ideal in a Victorian woman. This might then lead us to ask, which characters represent the ideal Victorian man? What do these characters and their characteristics tell us about gender in Victorian society?
5. Oliver Twist includes many minor and major villains, ranging from the bully Noah Claypole to the professional criminal Bill Sikes. What are the sources of their wickedness (poverty, religion, greed, apathy, etc.)? What do these factors tell us about larger anxieties within Victorian society? (Note: Rather than trying to cover all the driving forces behind the villains, chose 1-2 factors that seem to consistently inspire antagonists or that inspire the worst of the novel’s villains.)
6. Many of Oliver Twist’s most iconic scenes center on children (the workhouse children eating their gruel, Fagin’s boys stealing handkerchiefs, etc.). Nevertheless, we often find the novel’s main child, the title character no less, disappearing from his own story. What do these appearances and disappearances tell us about the place of children in Victorian society?
Additional Rough Draft Task: Your rough draft, which will be conferenced with both me and your peers, will receive 20 points toward your daily work. Though this draft will mainly be graded for completion, you should write your best possible paper in order to get the best possible advice. Drafts of less than 4 pages will not be accepted. You must submit a rough draft before I will accept a final draft.
Your draft should also include an Author’s Note (worth 5 more points)—a set of comments that points out specific places where you want help from your readers. You can leave these comments by using the comment feature in Word. To add a comment, highlight the section of your draft that concerns you. Go to the “Review” tab and select “New Comment,” which will create a comment bubble on the right. Then explain your question or your concern about that passage in the bubble. Include at least one comment per page.</p>

<p>Formatting: Please include the number of the prompt you are answering in the assignment heading. As usual, the paper should be typed in Times New Roman 12 with double-spacing and 1-inch margins. The Works Cited page should be in MLA format. Please submit this entire assignment as one document. See the formatting documents on Oncourse for more information.
Hints:
• Though you are discussing the historical context of this novel, remember that you are not writing a report. That is, you are not just accumulating a set of dates and facts about Victorian England. Instead, your paper should analyze the novel for the deeper insights that it provides about the culture.
• Remember that secondary sources are good for more than just agreeing with your argument. Especially for this paper, they can help you provide historical and cultural context for your claims. They might also offer theories you want to test or reapply to new situations. Moreover, the best papers tend to also have a point of departure from what other scholars have said. You might therefore find it helpful to identify whose ideas you disagree with or want to complicate.
• Remember that your secondary sources are just that—secondary. The novel is your main evidence and the heart of your paper. You should discuss specific passages from it in every paragraph of your paper, only using the secondary sources where they are relevant.
• Pay careful attention to specific details. Use quote sandwiches to ensure that you are analyzing your examples fully.
• Always cite examples from your primary and secondary texts, regardless of whether you are quoting or not. If parenthetically citing from unpaginated websites, just put the author’s last name.
• Remove the Author’s Notes before submitting the final draft.
Grading:
Rough Draft (20 points):
• Ö+ (20 points): Though there is still room for revision, you have a strong start with a largely complete paper that is already usually offering clear and insightful ideas.
• Ö (17 points): You have a satisfactory draft for this stage in the writing process. Ideas may still need to be deepened or clarified, and the writing probably still needs reorganization and polishing. However, a moderate amount of revision should be able to improve these things to create a passing paper.
• Ö- (14 points or below): Your draft will need considerable work in order to create a passing final draft. This may be because the draft is quite short (remember, papers less than four pages won’t be accepted at all). It might also be because you have significantly misunderstood the assignment or are missing key components like secondary sources.
Author’s Note (5 points): Your Author’s Note will mainly be graded on completion and thoughtful reflection about specific sections of your draft.
Final Draft: Your final draft will be graded on how successfully your paper…
• Fully and thoughtfully answers the prompt;
• Presents an interesting and arguable thesis shaping the rest of the paper;
• Analyzes specific examples from the novel to support and complicate the thesis;
• Effectively uses 3-4 appropriate secondary sources to support and complicate your thesis without taking over your paper;
• Has a logical organizational structure with clear topic sentences and transitions;
• Follows scholarly conventions, including MLA citation guidelines;
• Is properly formatted and well-edited to avoid mistakes in grammar, spelling, etc.;
• Shows significant revision by re-seeing ideas, organization, and other large-scale issues rather than just editing or adding to a short paper.
Note: I will not consider this assignment complete until you have turned in your folder with photocopies of your outside research. Failure to submit these copies on time will result in a late penalty for the paper</p>

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<p>Comment on this absurd assignment:</p>

<p>George Dickens’ Oliver Twist is a wonderful story and a satire concerning the mores and hypocrisies of the Victorian age. Dickens was an inveterate gin martini drinker and derived the name of his title character from his bartender’s inquiry, “Olive or Twist?” Dickens, like Roger Clemens (Matthew Twain), was a sharp observer of humans. That both authors detested human irrationality and perversity is clear from their novels.</p>

<p>Oliver’s predicament is analogous to that of a student taking this course (elaborate). Likewise are the assumptions and ethos of the Victorian age not dissimilar to those prevalent within the circumference of today’s mundane academia. </p>

<p>Post grad literature majors and PhDs on their quest for tenure have spewed thousands of pages of superfluous, nitpicking, jargon-laden, criticism and microscopic analysis concerning both writers. Little chance that an undergrad could possibly add insight, however trivial or even fictional, that would enhance the existing steaming piles of literary waste excreted pursuant to academics’ digestion of Dickens’ work. </p>

<p>Worse, what lesson/knowledge/attitude does the assigned drudge-work impart to the unfortunate student? Preparing him for the world of work? Perhaps for “work” in soft academia, but certainly not for work in the real world where valuable goods and services are produced. There is no (free) market for literary analysis/slop. What university would aspire, and why, to graduating students who could complete this assignment?</p>

<p>As a _____ major, I cannot discover the finest thread connecting my future to the requirements of this course. I assume that members of the English department conspired, during a tuition-funded drinking bout, to design a course that offered the least possible value to an undergrad while demanding a surfeit of stultifying effort from students. Agreed, it must have been hilarious to the inebriated staff. Who could have imagined that what began as a drunken joke would end up in an IU curriculum? </p>

<p>Parents who read the requirements must think, “Oh boy, we sure is gettin’ our money’s worth, cause we don’t understand a word of this assignment.” What prestige such a course must bring to the university, given that people seem always to admire that which they do not comprehend. The authoritarianism, arrogance, and apparent self-satisfaction of the professor who penned this assignment are stunning. What a waste of an apparent intellect. What a waste of a tuition-funded paycheck.</p>

<p>To supplement my learning experience and to obtain real value for the tuition I’ve paid IU, I request copies of A-graded papers submitted pursuant to similar assignments by previous students of this class and professor. I think that students deserve examples of fine work on which to model their efforts. Perhaps in those copies I will find the key to understanding the worth of the assignment, though I doubt it
.
I intend to publish the essay requirements, with my comments concerning their relevancy to my education and future, on YouTube, Facebook, and on other sites where comments concerning IU and college work in general are invited.</p>

<p>To require an undergrad who aims to work for a living to write the sort of formulaic slop required from this professor boldens the conclusions of the documentary film, “The College Conspiracy” ([THE</a> COLLEGE CONSPIRACY - YouTube](<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube)). This course further validates the widespread suspicion that colleges sell pieces of paper rather than a pertinent education. </p>

<p>Below is a list of courses my major requires students to complete that seem irrelevant to the major or to any aspect of a graduate’s future endeavors (list will appear in the final draft). </p>

<p>How many pointless courses exist within all syllabi of IU majors? I may pursue that question by polling current and past students. “What courses were irrelevant to your major at IU and provided no discernible takeaways for your future life/work?” </p>

<p>In summary, Dickens’ Oliver Twist could easily be re-written to satirize the hypocrisy and irrelevance of many current university syllabi with the student taking the part of Oliver, only saying, “Please sir, may I have less, but more nutritious?” It will not be written by me.</p>

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<p>What the heck is your problem?</p>

4

<p>College is meant to expand your horizons, trite as that may sound. It is not trade school where you only learn “practical” things directly related to your major. </p>

<p>Some of my daughter’s favorite classes had nothing to do with hers.</p>

<p>Suck it up and complete the assignment or drop the class.</p>

5

<p>

Well, that’s rather the point. You aren’t ready to add any new insight. Just getting to the point where one can put together a half-decent rehash is a challenge.</p>

<p>

Ah yes, college as a commodity product - I paid my tuition, now give me what I paid for! Bzzt, wrong, sorry, doesn’t work that way. You paid for the opportunity to earn a credential. If you don’t put in the work deemed necessary by the faculty of the university to complete that credential, you get nothing.</p>

<p>If you want a degree with no breadth requirements and no core liberal arts foundation, I bet ITT Tech would be happy to take your money.</p>

6

<p>Of course you are correct in your analysis of the idiocy of this assignment. What place does analyzing information, synthesizing it, and evaluating information, let alone writing, have to do with the world of work? </p>

<p>Sarcasm fully intended.</p>

7

<p>I agree…my job is exactly that…analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating info., then writing it up.</p>

8

<p>If you don’t like the class or the professor, why don’t you just drop the class?</p>

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<p>artberndt:</p>

<p>Wow! With as much time and thought it took you to post this on CC, you could have been half done with the assignment! ;-)</p>

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<p>Most who replied to my post are clearly in the business of selling academic hot air. I’ve read Dickens and a whole lot more. I showed this assignment to three attorneys (two of whom graduated from IU law school), to three H.S. English teachers (all with Masters Degrees), and to a Purdue English professor. All but one laughed. One groaned. The person who “teaches” the course is supposedly trying to encourage students to look for depth in fiction. The course is not titled analysis, critical thinking, or “deconstructing literature for fun and profit”. Recall that Oliver Twist is a novelized series of chapters written for a periodical and read by ordinary folks who were spared superfluous college degrees. My classmates vow they will never read another novel by Dickens. They might have, but for this dreary assignment. Ordering students to dissect, analyze, criticize, fornicate with, and create pseudo explanations for Oliver Twist/Dickens in the name of improving undergrads’ job performance or thinking skills in ANY field is no more than tortured rationalization for overstaffing an English dept. This assignment is a dead parrot. No one, except perhaps one more English PhD candidate (which the teacher is, by the way) (don’t we have a surfeit of such already?), cares a hoot about the assignment or literary analysis. The prof might as well ask undergrads to analyze and critique owl pellets, hairballs, or elephant dung. Same impact on their future work skills, probably better for developing writing skills, clearer assignment, and the task would stink less. Or is it “more lesser”? Question: Do students pay discounted tuition for classes taught by grad students who aspire to new heights (depths?) of pedagoguery? Who will ever employ this teacher? At doing what? I know! The CIA needs torturers at its rendition sites. “Tell us what you know or we’ll make you complete this assignment!” So much for water-boarding.</p>

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<p>“If you want a degree with no breadth requirements and no core liberal arts foundation, I bet ITT Tech would be happy to take your money.” </p>

<p>The above statement is an example of the logical fallacy “False Dilemma”. And, from an IU grad student. </p>

<p>“no breadth requirements”? Really?</p>

<p>Advice: Sue to get your tuition back.</p>

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<p>Again, a False Dilemma! Certainly, only an assignment so abstruse and befouled with academic jargon could ever induce analytical, critical, and creative thinking. This assignment or nothing. Who are you people? Let’s go count angels on pinheads. Plenty of them in the IU English dept. I don’t mean angels.</p>

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<p>You did not get it? You must be an IU English major. More clearly: MY PROBLEM IS THE ASSIGNMENT. Got it?</p>

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<p>Whining about it on College Confidential isn’t going to change anything. If you were trolling for sympathy, I’m sorry that everyone who responded seems to disagree with you.</p>

<p>HTH. HAND.</p>

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<p>Your problem isn’t the assignment, it’s the size of your ego. Get used to doing things like that or cry me a river, build me a bridge, and get over it.</p>

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<p>“Suck it up and complete the assignment or drop the class.” AKA America, love it or leave it. I cannot drop the class. It’s required pursuant to, I assume, lobbying by the English dept. </p>

<p>“Just getting to the point where one can put together a half-decent rehash is a challenge.” - From my talks with employers, finding a grad who can write “What I Did This Summer” without multiple misspellings and punctuation/grammatical errors is difficult enough. This one course demands more of my time than my other courses (in my major) combined. I don’t mind writing or thinking. I mind pointless intellectual ditch-digging.</p>

<p>“Whining about it on College Confidential isn’t going to change anything.” OK, false dilemma time: One either whines or does nothing. Another rhetorical ploy/fallacy: your use of the word “whine”. Within the circumference of the university, doing nothing and academic escapism appear to be the accepted responses to deficit spending, war, graduating the unemployable, and paying outrageous tuition for being forced to work on pointless assignments. Ask the IU placement dept. how many grads over the past three years obtained jobs in their chosen field or one that was related to their major. What do IU counselors tell students about choosing a major/planning a career? If I choose to major in, for example, mathematics, who says, and why, that I must take “The History of Victorian Writing”? How about a basic course in lit., writing, or even rhetoric? They would serve me better (and have). This course is not about education; it is about collecting tuition and academic arrogance.</p>

<p>“Your problem isn’t the assignment, it’s the size of your ego. Get used to doing things like that…” Yes. College should teach us to conform, to accept, to tolerate the intolerable without question, and to shut up. The world needs more sublimely educated sheep who have been indoctrinated into the sorority frame of mind. You might consider a semi-colon after “assignment”.</p>

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<p>I wrote to the English dept. about this assignment/course referencing this thread.</p>

<p>Jody Hays replied, " The purpose of this e-mail message is unclear to me."</p>

<p>I retorted:</p>

<p>Yeah, it would be. Did you read the assignment or my comments? The assignment assumes a thorough knowledge of Dickens and his times, Victorian mores, MLA formatting, time to read many pages of reference sources, and appears to be the basis for someone’s PhD thesis. An undergrad assignment?! The essay is one of four required for this one semester course. Does the assistant professor understand that undergrads take more than one course per semester and not all undergrads are aspiring English PhDs? Tell you what…I’ll pay double my tuition for this one course to have it waived. That way, I can work on courses in my major.</p>

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<p>artberndt, I say this out of concern. You sound angry and obsessed. Please go to the counseling center. Or, consider that perhaps IU is not the place for you. Maybe a school without core requirements or with more flexible core requirements would be a better fit.</p>

<p>You are trying to change something that is not broken, just isn’t a good fit for you. My D, who is an English/Foreign language double major, had to suffer through math and science courses which were very difficult for her, and which didn’t directly relate to her major. Though they were not her favorite, she knew going in that she needed to do them and do well, so she put her energies into getting tutoring and getting them behind her.</p>

<p>I’m just saying to put your energy into positive channels rather than negative. This anger will only hurt you in the long run.</p>

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<p>PS after getting through her math and science requirements, she actually did see the benefit of them. Perhaps you, too, will see the benefit of challenging yourself if you change your outlook. Perhaps you will always find the class a waste of your time. But that doesn’t mean that it is a waste for everyone. I think the assignment sounds very challenging but very worthwhile.</p>

20

<p>I actually thought this was a pretty good assignment – tough, with depth, but also with tons of guidance so that the student wasn’t floundering around with trying to figure out what the professor really wanted or what were good sources to use, etc. etc. Let me try and draw this out a bit further as to relevance. Just taking the much-maligned but highly lucrative investment banking world as an example, when analyzing a company as to its investment merits (and what sorts of financial instruments best make sense for it), it is imperative to first do an industry overview (growth, technologies, competitive positioning, etc.) which is essentially the “historical context” that the Professor wants here in this Dickens assignment. I could go into additional point by point English lit = financial analogies of this type, but if you never wrote up an “historical context” for the action of Oliver Twist, you would be unlikely to write up or understand the equivalent industrial context applying to a company to whom you are rendering advice worth millions and thousands of jobs. Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus – you have to actually eat the gruel of this level of analysis and coursework at the Oliver Twist level to have any concept of how to earn million of $$$ in the business world. Can’t have a better level of training to make money, if that is your primary concern. Believe me, understanding industry context (“historical context”) is far more important than knowing how to add up a balance sheet. Talk to the millionaire Bain and McKinsey consultants the next time you have this academic issue and, I assure you, they will tag you as “clueless” – context and analytical rigor (of the most obscure type) is where they uncover the issues that can change corporate futures.</p>

<p>Now, go to the assignment and get it done.</p>