I find myself accidentally using British terminology when I talk to people from home. I've absorbed it without even thinking. The following gets giggles from my U.S. friends:
- Uni (what you call university)
- Kit (it's what you call your uniform or jersey for sports).
- Pitch (it's a sports field not a baseball throw)
- Keen (I'm keen to go out tonight) and Fancy (Do you fancy a drink?)
- Laters/ Lols (pronounced lahls) (Okay. I don't say this. But Brits do and if I did I would get giggles from my U.S. friends).
Anyways, the big news from this week was that I got sick (again, gosh darn foreign germs) and that I got to meet Jimmy Wales! Who, for anyone who lives under a rock, is the founder of Wikipedia. I'm helping out with a study comparing Wikipedia to Britannica, and he came to Oxford to meet the research team.
It was quite exciting because it was a small group of people. He dresses in what I will deem Steve Jobs style: glasses, black turtleneck, and was surprisingly conversational. It's always a bit intimidating to be in a room with someone whose more or less a level of celebrity with our generation, particularly when he's the focus of attention of everyone in the room, but I decided to just go for the bravado approach and introduced myself fairly early on.He was a very friendly guy, given that he must attend about 20 of these types of luncheons a month. I chatted with him about the Wikipedia blackout (he wanted to see the effect on journalism because he hears all these reports from journalists about how they use Wikipedia to ask intelligent interview questions; he wondered if there were a lot of stupid questions in journalism that day) and about how time-consuming email was. Apparently he's friends with the founder of Amazon, and the founder of Amazon's motto is: "If I don't answer your email within 10 minutes, I won't answer at all".. essentially saying that if it doesn't capture his immediate attention he doesn't care. Approach worth thinking about. He has no qualms about talking about the limits of Wikipedia.
Yes, one person did call him Jimbo to his face. I had real trouble stifling a laugh into a cough.
Anyways, since I've been studying more or less these last two weeks, I thought it would be interesting for everyone from home to get a kind of inside sociological look of academia at Oxford, told from a U.S. perspective.
Anyways, since I've been studying more or less these last two weeks, I thought it would be interesting for everyone from home to get a kind of inside sociological look of academia at Oxford, told from a U.S. perspective.
Difference 1: Specialization v. Liberal Arts. In the U.S., most colleges require a broad range of subjects (example here), partially I assume an acknowledgement of the need for a flexible workforce in today's society. The U.K. takes the opposite approach. You pick your subject area at age 16ish and stick with it. They spend only three years in college rather than four (or five or six). Considering I believe in liberal arts I have trouble arguing effectively for the British approach, but I will say it offers a much more streamlined path into a career, and gets rid of the quintessential problem in the U.S. of freshmen puttering away/partying/ wasting money for a year before they have any idea what they're doing.
2: The Student Definition. In Oxford, you're defined as a student. Very few students hold jobs during term time. Very few work over Christmas break. I felt like I was always searching for the next employment opportunity in the U.S. during college. Someone once pointed out that that might be a symptom of going to an Ivy-league school rather than emblematic of the U.K. But I do think there is a more cultural emphasis in the U.S. on getting work experience while in school (illustrates multitasking and time management skills; the "soft skills" needed for post-grad employment), and also more need to work during the school year to compensate for high tuition costs. It will be interesting to see whether the 300% tuition hike starting next year in the U.K. will see a subsequent boom in the part-time student job market here out of necessity.
3: The Formative-Summative approach: In the U.S., you could have 15-20 assignments or more in one class in one semester, all being worth fractions of your grade. At Oxford, you're evaluated very few times during the year. Rather, you get lots of formative assignments that don't count for credit, but give you valuable feedback on how to approach the assignments that do count (summative). Summative assignments might be given out once a year and your entire "grade" is resting on them. I really like this approach; it lets you experiment a bit and see what's kosher and what's not without it impacting your grade.
4: Down With Grade Inflation. Gone are the days where I earned 105% in a class. Extra credit? Not a concept. Whereas in the U.S. an A is a 93-100 and frequently one can get above that, here the highest pass is an 80+, which our orientation guide told us was "Newton-level" (he used the same grading system, how weird is that to think about; our grades are compared to some of the best historical figures of all time).
Whew. This post is long enough. Next up, social life at Oxford, through a sociological lens!
Toodle-oo, Lisa
2: The Student Definition. In Oxford, you're defined as a student. Very few students hold jobs during term time. Very few work over Christmas break. I felt like I was always searching for the next employment opportunity in the U.S. during college. Someone once pointed out that that might be a symptom of going to an Ivy-league school rather than emblematic of the U.K. But I do think there is a more cultural emphasis in the U.S. on getting work experience while in school (illustrates multitasking and time management skills; the "soft skills" needed for post-grad employment), and also more need to work during the school year to compensate for high tuition costs. It will be interesting to see whether the 300% tuition hike starting next year in the U.K. will see a subsequent boom in the part-time student job market here out of necessity.
3: The Formative-Summative approach: In the U.S., you could have 15-20 assignments or more in one class in one semester, all being worth fractions of your grade. At Oxford, you're evaluated very few times during the year. Rather, you get lots of formative assignments that don't count for credit, but give you valuable feedback on how to approach the assignments that do count (summative). Summative assignments might be given out once a year and your entire "grade" is resting on them. I really like this approach; it lets you experiment a bit and see what's kosher and what's not without it impacting your grade.
4: Down With Grade Inflation. Gone are the days where I earned 105% in a class. Extra credit? Not a concept. Whereas in the U.S. an A is a 93-100 and frequently one can get above that, here the highest pass is an 80+, which our orientation guide told us was "Newton-level" (he used the same grading system, how weird is that to think about; our grades are compared to some of the best historical figures of all time).
Whew. This post is long enough. Next up, social life at Oxford, through a sociological lens!
Toodle-oo, Lisa
No comments:
Post a Comment