My Mid Semester Critique of ACM CP

The more I am here, the more I find that this program, isn’t all that I was expecting it to be. I understand that there are many things that cause it to HAVE to be the way it is, but I don’t think I was really prepared to leave CC and the “way that it is,” to be so intertwined with other colleges and their “ways of being.”

The first, and probably most frustrating thing is the lack of response from the professors. Core Course has really been the only “class” in which I’ve had concrete papers or blogs due, we had a paper due the very first day we came to class. We are now a month in, and I have received ZERO feedback regarding any of my papers. I’ve completed two blogs, my third will be today, a poem, a paper regarding my home community, and a debate paper. I have no idea what any of my professors think of my work. Maybe I’m simply being too demanding because at CC if I go a week without knowing what my professor thinks of me I’m panicking because I’ve only got two more weeks until the end. But I do not believe I’m being that demanding. Each paper has been capped at three pages (even though I have played with margins and fonts and have written up to, oh my goodness, six for one paper), it’s not as if these professors have hundreds of pages to read for one assignment. Divided I believe they only have about 45 pages to read per assignment (unless everyone is cheating like me and then they 90).  Yes, I understand that this program is a lot more about personal development (and if it’s not then I am not seeing the academic development), but these personal developments that we’re making are extremely political and social, I would LOVE the extra guidance from people who I believe are EXTREMELY informed and intelligent in these respects. I think that’s what frustrates me most. I think each of these professors are AMAZING resources and I want to use them, but they are not responding to anything. On top of all of this, we have an internship blog that we are to write. I’ve invited all professors to “follow” my blog. It’s been two weeks, and NO ONE has responded to my invitation.

The other frustrating aspect of ACM CP is the huge diversity in students, and no I’m definitely not talking race. Core course is probably the most difficult course to teach, simply because it is once a week, and it is the only time when all the programs are mixed together. I am finally now understanding the amazing benefits of having a class be capped at 25. When there are 40 people trying to have an “in depth” conversation about something, in even a three hour long class, it’s simply difficult to get any where beyond the surface. Also, my roommates and I were discussing the huge diversity in the…uh…schooling other students have had. This is only something I heard from one of my roommates so I cannot be sure if it is 100% true, but I trust all my roommates. This last Friday we had questions, freewrites, and a thesis statement due. My roommate overheard someone saying that they did not know what a thesis statement was. Regardless of your college education, you should have been writing thesis statements in HIGH SCHOOL! I realize that CC is known for being writing intensive, but I thought that meant that you wrote simple ten page papers in math, music and english classes, not that it was the kind of college that taught you what a thesis statement is.

Beyond that, in my seminar class, we were discussing education and how it is not good for all races and ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds due to the fact that the curriculum was created by Rich White Men (i.e. children learn that America was DISCOVERED by Christopher Columbus, as if the fact that Indian Americans had known of its existance for generations previous to this “discovery” didn’t count and the fact that their existence is being delegitimized by this very statement).  A couple of students in my class couldn’t seem to understand that this was a bad thing, as if they had never even thought of the fact that NO there is not just ONE history, there are hundreds due to all the different perspectives everyone has. Also, discussing white privilege and white guilt seemed to be a new topic for so many of the students in this same seminar. How the hell are we supposed to get to a new deeper place in these topics if half of the students haven’t even SERIOUSLY considered race?

This is where the dilemma of all education comes in. How do you bring a classroom full of students to the same level when they’ve come from such different backgrounds? Do you separate them (which will ultimately never get them on the same level simply because the one ahead will always be ahead)? or, do you keep them together and let the people ahead feel bored and not learn anything new? I thought that I had gotten out of this dilemma, or at least the extreme extent to which the dilemma can be at, once I got into college. But this is ever prevalent within this program.

But in this program’s defense, I am learning so much, but I think a lot of it has to do with purely being in Chicago. The seminars and precepts really have a way of getting you emersed into the city, allowing you to see the culture and the problems within all the “isms” (racism, adultism, sexism and so forth). But now I am understanding, and truly appreciating all that dry, sometimes boring, and always annoying, three hundred pages of reading I am required to do at CC per night. Having that theoretical background, knowing what other highly academic people are saying about these subjects, allows me and my peers to jump over the obvious surface subjects and get right down to the nitty gritty within the first fifteen minutes of the class. I almost wish that everyday we could have the three hours in the morning that we have at CC doing the super in depth conversations, discussions and debates that are all deeply informed, and then in the afternoon making those city visits that we make here in Chicago. Putting the two together would definitely make me a super-student, a super-citizen, a super-human.

there. I’ve vented.

-elle

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