Saturday, April 14, 2007

Annoyances and Bad Things about MIT

It is slowly getting warmer in Boston. We didn’t really have a bad winter, but it has been in the lower forties and thirties lately, sometimes even higher, which means that spring is coming soon! I’m glad, since the last few months have been frustrating at times. Although I wish I had more people visiting my blog, like the official MIT bloggers, there are some pros about not being associated with MIT. For example, I have much more leeway to talk about the cons of MIT.

I did ok on my first batch of tests. As I said earlier, hardly anyone finished the 10.301 test, and I ended up doing above average on it (the average was 37), so that was good. I got a 96 on my first 5.310 lab, so hopefully that trend will continue. So far 5.310 is getting easier, we don’t always stay the full four hours in order to finish everything, which is extremely nice. 8 hours of lab per week is a lot of time. My first 10.213 test was not good at all, the average was 47 (but the prof was aiming for an average of 65—oops), and I scored below average. I was extremely frustrated because I know the information well, but coupled with some stupid errors and really harsh grading (hardly any partial credit, which I am not happy about) meant my score was not very good. I’m going to try and get the test re-graded, and hopefully I’ll be able to get some points back. My HASS class is going fine, I keep improving after each story so hopefully I’ll be able to get a good grade in that class.

I’ve been getting frustrated with homework grading lately (for both 10.301 and 10.213). I don’t feel like the graders are giving very much partial credit. There were some parts to certain questions that I got zero credit for, and I know that some of the stuff I wrote down was correct. How much sense does it make to give someone the same grade as a person who did not even attempt the problem, especially if not all of it is wrong? Homework is not a huge part of the overall grade in my classes, but every little bit helps. In the meantime, I’ll keep doing the best I can on the psets, and if this grading trend continues, I may go speak to the professor! It is not a good feeling when you spend hours on a pset and then come to find you get no credit for some of it.

What are some other things I’m not happy about? This semester I am not having as much fun in my classes. I still enjoy 10.301, and 5.310 is ok, but I am not a huge fan of 10.213. The professor is a solid lecturer, nothing special, but she does explain things pretty well. My qualm does not have much to do with her. I’m just frustrated because the way the material is presented, it is not very practical. I want REAL problems, not a bunch of partial derivatives and calculations. Some of the stuff they give us is just plain busy work. The frustrating part though is that many classes at MIT are like this. I’ve seen it in other classes too. Some stuff is just too theoretical. Theory is all good and fine, and sometimes I find it quite interesting, but when I’m learning something like thermodynamics I want something more applicable. Don’t get me wrong, I think learning the theory behind something is very important, but do they have to present it in such a boring and mathematical way? I was very happy when one class, our prof pulled out a fire extinguisher and told us about expanding gases, and she also did a very good lecturer about refrigeration, so why can’t more lectures be that way? It’s so much easier to understand the information when you can relate it to something in real life. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen just at MIT, it happened in high school and I know it happens at other colleges. I just think it is something that could be improved in general. Even though 10.301 can also be abstract and difficult, I find the problems are interesting, sort of like 8.022.

So I think that some of my classes could definitely be less theoretical and more practical. Overall though, I still really like MIT and I know I’m getting an amazing education and will be able to solve tough problems.

Anyways…that’s my rant.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would be a bit surprised that if there isn't any thermodynamics lab at MIT to supplement the theory one learns in lectures. I have also seen theory taking 'life of its own' too often in courses like fluid/thermo dynamics where intuition developed through directly observing a phenomena could be invaluable too.

on grading, one could say that getting partial credit depends on whether the student has got the basic concept right or not (this is subjective but grading is a subjective affair anyway unless you have true-false statements to answer which is rare). then one may sometimes get full credit even if s/he does some calculation mistake somewhere down the problem. (hey, I am not implying that you probably got concept wrong!, just my experience after being on the both sides of the table (i.e. student and grader))