"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" ~Albus Dumbledore

Tuesday 12 April 2011

Tuesday Twelfth - do you know what feedback is?

Hello there Blog. I am sat on the bed, eating apple crumble and custard, so you will have to excuse for a minute.

*five minutes later*

Still here? Awesome. Ok, today's blog is going to be about the lecture I had this afternoon. As my history seminar was cancelled because my tutor is in Rome (how dare she!), I had a late start and was only on campus for an hour. That hour was spent being lectured about feedback. Yes, feedback, you know the comments on a marked essay. Apparently, we all needed to be told to read and actually take on board the comments our tutors give us. Well, duh! But that wasn't enough. The lecturer this afternoon talked to us like we were five and completely stupid. I mean, I know some people don't, or at least appear not to, take the tutor's advice but usually, it's because we can't read their bloody handwriting! Seriously, you teach English! Surely you should be able to write it legibly! You let me know if I'm expecting too much!

In some respects, it was good that the lecturer treated us like idiots, because a lot of us (or them, I try not to associate myself with them) are a little thick to not write essays properly in the first place. At the beginning, she gave us some objectives and they all trickled down to this: to improve essay writing and knowledge. No sh*t, Sherlock! What else could we possibly expect from a lecture entitled "Using feedback to improve your essays"?

One comment she said reminded me of A-level when I studied psychology. She said it was difficult for a person to change their minds. Well, in psychology, we learned that was because people are stupid and stubborn. Yeah, I mean people, not a person - you know, like at the beginning of Men in Black.

One last thing she taught us was a phrase circulating between our university's tutors. If a quote has not been explained and just left hanging, it is called 'a dead kitten'. Yeah, don't really know why. But she tried the guilt trip: "If you leave a quotation hanging in your essay, you just killed a kitten." Well thanks for that!

OK, guys, this has been all for today. I'm feeling in the mood for Ice Age 3 so I'll see you tomorrow!

1 comment:

  1. I'm so glad I didn;t go to that lecture. Me and Sean flipped a coin as to whether we would go - tails it was! :) We played cards instead.

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