A fellow exchange student's gchat status:
"Dear Cambridge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_learning#Rote_learning_vs._actual_thinking"
It seems the course 6 (compsci) kids got a bit shafted ... in CUED (Cambridge's Engineering Dept), the problem is less that rote learning is forced over deep learning, but that the focus is pretty much entirely on theory, rather than appplication/practical use of engineering .. so I have to disagree in this instance and vouch for Cambridge that it does encourage "deep learning" in the understanding-theory-and-principles sense. A little too deep to be practically useful in the real world, though, but fantastic if you want a career as an academic.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Exam Term's "Quiet Period"
At Cambridge, "Exam Term" = all else comes to a screeching halt.
The extracurricular activities that took up the already-tiny time commitment during the regular school year? No more meetings, and don't worry if you don't make any progress or can't make a rehearsal. It's all excused because of exams.
Noise? Talking loudly? Playing music in your room?
PSH.
It's nice in a way, to see how enforced from "the top down" (in terms of Quiet Term being enforced by administration, even) this whole "focus on exams and nothing else" attitude is, but I mean, come on guys, it's a bit over the top, no? I guess it's just coming from a place where you wouldn't ever miss a rehearsal just because you have an exam the next morning, or skip a meeting just because you have an entire p-set (examples paper) to do that night. Those are just the academic-work-time-crunches/sacrifices that you are aware of/make when you commit to the activity/group. And after years of doing it, you get used to all the mad-packing-in-of-work-into-tiny-time-frames. And students are expected to work out solutions to issues like noise, study inconveniences, etc. amongst themselves without the admin stepping in, I guess.
Anyway, this was extremely amusing. It's really quite awesome of the Dean/porters to enforce such a strict environment for the sake of people taking exams, but I feel like I'm in a boarding school where the faculty have to step in and make everyone hush up so that people can study ..
Email from King's College Dean to all students:
The extracurricular activities that took up the already-tiny time commitment during the regular school year? No more meetings, and don't worry if you don't make any progress or can't make a rehearsal. It's all excused because of exams.
Noise? Talking loudly? Playing music in your room?
PSH.
It's nice in a way, to see how enforced from "the top down" (in terms of Quiet Term being enforced by administration, even) this whole "focus on exams and nothing else" attitude is, but I mean, come on guys, it's a bit over the top, no? I guess it's just coming from a place where you wouldn't ever miss a rehearsal just because you have an exam the next morning, or skip a meeting just because you have an entire p-set (examples paper) to do that night. Those are just the academic-work-time-crunches/sacrifices that you are aware of/make when you commit to the activity/group. And after years of doing it, you get used to all the mad-packing-in-of-work-into-tiny-time-frames. And students are expected to work out solutions to issues like noise, study inconveniences, etc. amongst themselves without the admin stepping in, I guess.
Anyway, this was extremely amusing. It's really quite awesome of the Dean/porters to enforce such a strict environment for the sake of people taking exams, but I feel like I'm in a boarding school where the faculty have to step in and make everyone hush up so that people can study ..
Email from King's College Dean to all students:
Dear All
I am writing to remind you of the College regulations for the 'Quiet Period'. These will come into force on Friday 14 May (when Easter Term divides) and remain in place until Friday 11 June (when Easter Term ends).
Parties, student events and outside receptions are not permitted during this period. Musical instruments may only be played in student rooms between 1.30 pm and 5.30 pm each day. Music students who are offering a performance paper will have priority booking for music practice rooms.
Many students are already taking, and if not, preparing for, exams. A great deal rests on people's performance in these, and they have a right to an absolute minimum of disturbance. I ask you all to make a special effort to be considerate for others' need for peace and quiet.
Remember that activities you may engage in to help you through stressful periods (playing loud music, singing, drinking, sharing anxieties with friends in corridors late at night etc) may not be at all relaxing for others in the vicinity.
I take a particularly serious view of all forms of disturbance during exam term, especially after 11 pm, and anyone reported to me for this offence can expect correspondingly serious consequences.
Please also note the following:
- Ball games and playing frisbee are permitted only on the field between Old Garden Hostel and West Road. They are forbidden anywhere else in the College, including Bodley's Court and the Fellows' Garden. Studded footwear must not be worn when playing on the Garden Hostel field, and noise must be kept to a minimum.
- Barbeques must not be used anywhere in College grounds, including hostels, without the express permission of the Bursar acting for the Council (and this is rarely granted).
- Advice about bookings for garden parties in the Fellows' Garden, which are permitted only after the end of term and only for personal bookings, not University societies etc, can be obtained from the Domus PA, Jennie Franks (jennie.franks@kings.cam.ac.uk, tel. 31427).
I hope all goes well in your exams if you are taking them this term. If your life is made difficult by noise or other disturbance, and the matter cannot be amicably resolved, please inform the Porters (tel. 31656) and/or me (tel. 31237) without delay.
With best wishes,
John Barber
Lay Dean
Friday, May 7, 2010
MIT vs. Cambridge Systems
I've ragged on Cam quite a bit in some of these posts. It seems, even after a year of being here and seeing some perks of this university, that I still heavily lean in favor of MIT. I've tried to make objective comparisons and diminish the effect of my biases on these observations. But here let me explain the root of the favoritism.
It's not that Cambridge is a bad university. It's not that, as an institution of learning, MIT >> Cambridge. They just approach education very differently. While the English/European system hammers home the focus on your single discipline/major, pushing students to definitively choose their course before even applying to university, the American system views the undergraduate experience as only part-classroom-learning and a hell-of-a-lot-of-outside-the-classroom-learning-experiences. The Cambridge/Oxford systems hold an overall similarity with the Chinese university system in that these institutes are extremely academic. People don't care so much for seriously exploring interests, hobbies, or passions completely unrelated to their studies - there are a lot fewer "just for fun/just because .. why not?" sort of activities available (or taken up by students) at Cam, and most of the time outside the library or lecture room is spent going to guest-speaker lectures or political debates at The Union (imagine if Kresge held debates with invited speakers all the time). It would be a lot less likely to, without much of a conscious decision to do so, pick up a sport you've never played before, join Dance Troupe just because you want to try something new, or stumble into joining an a cappella group and wind up seriously dedicating yourself to these activities that have nothing to do with your coursework. There's a lot smaller chance for discovering new and perhaps so-far dormant passions, and a lot more you're-only-going-to-do-things-laid-out-on-your-exactly-planned-college-track. Sure, some people may perceive extracurricular pursuits as 'a waste of time' since college 'should be about learning your subject' - but we'll get to that point later*.
MIT's method of teaching is "learn by doing."
Cambridge's method of teaching is "learn by writing about it."
Seriously. I'm doing my best to be unbiased, and those statements come from the collective experience of a large sample set, not just mine.
MIT stresses application, whereas Cambridge stresses theory.
As with the International Baccalaureate program (in high school), Cambridge's method of teach-and-examine is: teach, teach, teach. Talk, talk, talk. Think, think, think. Write, write write. Then, at the very end of the year, compiled all your year's worth of knowledge and prove yourself on a final exam. It's a lot of self-planned study, revision that the student must themselves pace out, and basically, "here's all the material. learn it. we're testing you in May." With MIT, the method of teach-and-examine is: teach, teach, teach. Do, do, do. Apply, apply, apply. Lab, lab, lab. Pset, pset, pset/exam, exam, exam. Continual assessment creates constant and continual stress, is way extremely more stressful, but you're constantly being tested on what you know/don't know, and getting wake-up calls in the form of checkpoints - with each exam, the student is forced to prepare and at least be on par with the curriculum so far. The stress at MIT may be immensely more and thousand-times more intense, but at Cambridge, you could fall behind to god-knows-where before you realize you're that far behind. In a way, this may get the student to learn the invaluable lesson of time management that they somehow bypassed before uni, or, as is the case with some freshers, it could result in them practically wasting their entire first year here. (But don't worry, even if you fell waaay behind during the first 2 trimesters, you get AN ENTIRE FIVE WEEKS of vacation right before exam term to catch up. Oh, plus like, extra weeks once term starts and classes stop.)
Honestly, I realized what makes me so biased against the Cambridge system. It's that the set up, curriculum, schedules, and methods make Cambridge undergraduate university much like a graduate school, and at this point in my life, I don't want that. I want an undergraduate college experience. Additionally, I'm an engineer - not an academic who wants to read textbooks until I know enough to become a university professor. I want to apply my knowledge, not simply be a bookie. For those of you who enjoy the lone-researcher-don't-bother-me just-let-me-sit-here-and-pore-over-these-books-every-day style, Cambridge would probably fare better for you than the constant DOING of MIT. It's more relaxed, self-managed time here, with a lot of flexibility of when/where to do your work, as long as you produce a year's worth of evidence ... at the end of the year. For me -- I enjoy being constantly busy, juggling development-lab, robot-design-class, lathe-making class, finance class, music class, psychology research, a cappella rehearsals, athletics practice, event-planning committee work, dinner out with friends, and spontaneous most-random-stuff-ever with people at the same time, with little to no flexibility because you can't add extra hours to the day. I love running on 150% intensity all the time and being so bogged down with work/activities that I have negative time to sleep. (Acceleration trap? Ok ... maybe that does exist, but the fall out doesn't happen until the semester's over. Then we all die. But it's worth it.)
*For me, those are the things that the undergraduate experience is about. I have the rest of my life to go to grad school, work toward a PhD (never), and conduct calm, quiet, studious, narrowly defined, focused research. But. At this point, we are only 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 years old. We have just finished high school, which we finish at age 17. You know, when you're still living at home with your family taking care of you and blah blah blah. College -- you're out on your own, and there's a lot to learn. And not just about topics taught in the classroom. This is the prime time in our life. The undergraduate experience in America is about exploration, discovery, passion, imagination, and creativity. It's about learning more from your peers than from your lecturers. It's about figuring out things about yourself, your dreams, your life, your social self, your academic self, your financial self. We have the rest of our lives to narrow our social group to the small group of lab partners, or the few coworkers at the office, and do research about a new HIV vaccine or develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool ... but there are some things we might never discover about ourselves if we're never given the chance. Personally, I value the chance to open every door and take a stroll into several rooms, ultimately choosing my final door and having an enriched rest-of-life due to the various experiences .. over heading down the hallway, not bothering to dip into any rooms along the way, blindly and determinedly fast-walking to 'my final door.' Sure, I'd get there faster that way .. but the journey itself would lack most of the enrichment it would've had otherwise.
The scope and opportunities in high school are limited by virtue of economies of scale, but in college - and especially somewhere extremely diverse and supportive of its students - there are so many opportunities for anything and everything you have ever wanted to do, it will blow your mind. Glass-blowing lab? Chocolate-truffle-making lab? Wine tasting class? Square dance lessons? Researching fuel and materials for nuclear energy systems with world-renowned scientists? Flying 2500 miles away and touring California with your a cappella group, performing at schools and plazas along the coast? Yes, of course my academics are important to me. Yes, I'm getting a world class education from my professors. But these types of opportunities -- these, I will no longer have at my beck and call, all free (funded by the university), once I finish undergraduate. These aren't things I must do, and certainly things I wouldn't seek out voluntarily, but the fact that these opportunities are offered and encouraged to me throughout my early 20s allows me to explore things in a scope 100x bigger than I'd ever imagined. For that, my undergraduate college experience is absolutely irreplaceable for me. And I surely don't want to have that replaced by 4 years of premature grad school.
It's not that Cambridge is a bad university. It's not that, as an institution of learning, MIT >> Cambridge. They just approach education very differently. While the English/European system hammers home the focus on your single discipline/major, pushing students to definitively choose their course before even applying to university, the American system views the undergraduate experience as only part-classroom-learning and a hell-of-a-lot-of-outside-the-classroom-learning-experiences. The Cambridge/Oxford systems hold an overall similarity with the Chinese university system in that these institutes are extremely academic. People don't care so much for seriously exploring interests, hobbies, or passions completely unrelated to their studies - there are a lot fewer "just for fun/just because .. why not?" sort of activities available (or taken up by students) at Cam, and most of the time outside the library or lecture room is spent going to guest-speaker lectures or political debates at The Union (imagine if Kresge held debates with invited speakers all the time). It would be a lot less likely to, without much of a conscious decision to do so, pick up a sport you've never played before, join Dance Troupe just because you want to try something new, or stumble into joining an a cappella group and wind up seriously dedicating yourself to these activities that have nothing to do with your coursework. There's a lot smaller chance for discovering new and perhaps so-far dormant passions, and a lot more you're-only-going-to-do-things-laid-out-on-your-exactly-planned-college-track. Sure, some people may perceive extracurricular pursuits as 'a waste of time' since college 'should be about learning your subject' - but we'll get to that point later*.
MIT's method of teaching is "learn by doing."
Cambridge's method of teaching is "learn by writing about it."
Seriously. I'm doing my best to be unbiased, and those statements come from the collective experience of a large sample set, not just mine.
MIT stresses application, whereas Cambridge stresses theory.
As with the International Baccalaureate program (in high school), Cambridge's method of teach-and-examine is: teach, teach, teach. Talk, talk, talk. Think, think, think. Write, write write. Then, at the very end of the year, compiled all your year's worth of knowledge and prove yourself on a final exam. It's a lot of self-planned study, revision that the student must themselves pace out, and basically, "here's all the material. learn it. we're testing you in May." With MIT, the method of teach-and-examine is: teach, teach, teach. Do, do, do. Apply, apply, apply. Lab, lab, lab. Pset, pset, pset/exam, exam, exam. Continual assessment creates constant and continual stress, is way extremely more stressful, but you're constantly being tested on what you know/don't know, and getting wake-up calls in the form of checkpoints - with each exam, the student is forced to prepare and at least be on par with the curriculum so far. The stress at MIT may be immensely more and thousand-times more intense, but at Cambridge, you could fall behind to god-knows-where before you realize you're that far behind. In a way, this may get the student to learn the invaluable lesson of time management that they somehow bypassed before uni, or, as is the case with some freshers, it could result in them practically wasting their entire first year here. (But don't worry, even if you fell waaay behind during the first 2 trimesters, you get AN ENTIRE FIVE WEEKS of vacation right before exam term to catch up. Oh, plus like, extra weeks once term starts and classes stop.)
Honestly, I realized what makes me so biased against the Cambridge system. It's that the set up, curriculum, schedules, and methods make Cambridge undergraduate university much like a graduate school, and at this point in my life, I don't want that. I want an undergraduate college experience. Additionally, I'm an engineer - not an academic who wants to read textbooks until I know enough to become a university professor. I want to apply my knowledge, not simply be a bookie. For those of you who enjoy the lone-researcher-don't-bother-me just-let-me-sit-here-and-pore-over-these-books-every-day style, Cambridge would probably fare better for you than the constant DOING of MIT. It's more relaxed, self-managed time here, with a lot of flexibility of when/where to do your work, as long as you produce a year's worth of evidence ... at the end of the year. For me -- I enjoy being constantly busy, juggling development-lab, robot-design-class, lathe-making class, finance class, music class, psychology research, a cappella rehearsals, athletics practice, event-planning committee work, dinner out with friends, and spontaneous most-random-stuff-ever with people at the same time, with little to no flexibility because you can't add extra hours to the day. I love running on 150% intensity all the time and being so bogged down with work/activities that I have negative time to sleep. (Acceleration trap? Ok ... maybe that does exist, but the fall out doesn't happen until the semester's over. Then we all die. But it's worth it.)
*For me, those are the things that the undergraduate experience is about. I have the rest of my life to go to grad school, work toward a PhD (never), and conduct calm, quiet, studious, narrowly defined, focused research. But. At this point, we are only 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 years old. We have just finished high school, which we finish at age 17. You know, when you're still living at home with your family taking care of you and blah blah blah. College -- you're out on your own, and there's a lot to learn. And not just about topics taught in the classroom. This is the prime time in our life. The undergraduate experience in America is about exploration, discovery, passion, imagination, and creativity. It's about learning more from your peers than from your lecturers. It's about figuring out things about yourself, your dreams, your life, your social self, your academic self, your financial self. We have the rest of our lives to narrow our social group to the small group of lab partners, or the few coworkers at the office, and do research about a new HIV vaccine or develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool ... but there are some things we might never discover about ourselves if we're never given the chance. Personally, I value the chance to open every door and take a stroll into several rooms, ultimately choosing my final door and having an enriched rest-of-life due to the various experiences .. over heading down the hallway, not bothering to dip into any rooms along the way, blindly and determinedly fast-walking to 'my final door.' Sure, I'd get there faster that way .. but the journey itself would lack most of the enrichment it would've had otherwise.
The scope and opportunities in high school are limited by virtue of economies of scale, but in college - and especially somewhere extremely diverse and supportive of its students - there are so many opportunities for anything and everything you have ever wanted to do, it will blow your mind. Glass-blowing lab? Chocolate-truffle-making lab? Wine tasting class? Square dance lessons? Researching fuel and materials for nuclear energy systems with world-renowned scientists? Flying 2500 miles away and touring California with your a cappella group, performing at schools and plazas along the coast? Yes, of course my academics are important to me. Yes, I'm getting a world class education from my professors. But these types of opportunities -- these, I will no longer have at my beck and call, all free (funded by the university), once I finish undergraduate. These aren't things I must do, and certainly things I wouldn't seek out voluntarily, but the fact that these opportunities are offered and encouraged to me throughout my early 20s allows me to explore things in a scope 100x bigger than I'd ever imagined. For that, my undergraduate college experience is absolutely irreplaceable for me. And I surely don't want to have that replaced by 4 years of premature grad school.
Bye Bye, Exams
DONE.
WITH.
EXAMS.
Hello, 4-week project term.
---------------------------------------
Clarification:
Cambridge's third trimester is "exam term," which consists of a first 4 weeks of studying + few wrap-up lectures/supervisions. Then, the second 4 weeks of testing. Also, a 'quiet period' is enforced (more about that in another post).
3rd/4th year engineers work on a different schedule, however - we have a 3-week exam period starting on the Monday before term, a subsequent 4-week period of 2 simultaneous projects (~20 hr/week each), and 1 week off before May Week jazz. So. There we have it. Today was the last day of engineering exams, so I'm officially done with all course 2 exams for junior year. Still have to take an economics paper in June with the econ folks for 14.02/14.11 HASS-C credit, but generally not the case for Cam students.
MIT has 1 more week before finals week .. then they'll be out. I'll enjoy being 'done' for now, and then when I'm in the middle of project term, they can shove it in my face :P
WITH.
EXAMS.
Hello, 4-week project term.
---------------------------------------
Clarification:
Cambridge's third trimester is "exam term," which consists of a first 4 weeks of studying + few wrap-up lectures/supervisions. Then, the second 4 weeks of testing. Also, a 'quiet period' is enforced (more about that in another post).
3rd/4th year engineers work on a different schedule, however - we have a 3-week exam period starting on the Monday before term, a subsequent 4-week period of 2 simultaneous projects (~20 hr/week each), and 1 week off before May Week jazz. So. There we have it. Today was the last day of engineering exams, so I'm officially done with all course 2 exams for junior year. Still have to take an economics paper in June with the econ folks for 14.02/14.11 HASS-C credit, but generally not the case for Cam students.
MIT has 1 more week before finals week .. then they'll be out. I'll enjoy being 'done' for now, and then when I'm in the middle of project term, they can shove it in my face :P
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Cambridge Exam "Term"
This is ridiculous.
I'm in the library right now, looking over everything one more time for my last remaining final exam tomorrow afternoon.
And I'm so tempted to just go to the bar. (equivalent to the stud, or floor lounge)
Actually, I think I'll go.
UGHHHH
Shireen: "words cannot express .. how much I hate you. haha"
yeah, me neither.
Cambridge engineering exams are basically blink-of-an-eye super short 90 minute exams, spread across a painfully, unnecessarily long 3-week period. Like snot dragged out and spread so thin that you barely notice anything's there. I don't know why but I feel really angry about this right now. AUGHAS;LKDGASJF It's seriously been THREE WEEKS of exams. And FOUR WEEKS OF VACATION right before that. that is an ETERNITY to study and prepare. I haven't had this much time to study anything in my life since .... .... ............. elementary school?!?! Or maybe the SAT if you count the cumulative hours aggregated across YEARS.
ok, I'm getting a little upset. You would want to tear your brain out too if you had this agonizingly long of a time to study. Should probably end post before this anger erupts.
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