Jan 18, 2009
Overview of my Yale Coursework: Fall Semester 2008
In a nod to my readership’s interest in general but especially to David Kane, I am going to do another overview of my classes from last semester. Obviously this is a little bit late since that semester is now -over-, but at least I can write about them with completely clear hindsight and a full knowledge of their academic topography. I have more-or-less finished selecting my classes for this spring semester, but will wait until I have actually had more classes to talk about them further.
You can look through Yale classes on your own if you want at http://www.yale.edu/oci, and some (not many) Yale classes are available online at http://oyc.yale.edu/. Unlike Harvard and MIT, Yale is a little bit more comprehensive in its online-course offerings, but the unfortunate trade-off of the Yale approach is that it is rather narrower: there are not very many courses available, not the normal plethora you find on iTunes. They’re also delayed by a year or so, which means that if you are in a given class you can’t just skip it and see the lecture online.
ANTH 473 / ARCG 473 / EVST 473 / NELC 188: Civilizations and Collapse, Prof Harvey Weiss
This course, taught by Harvey Weiss, took interdisciplinary sources and directed them to the study of the collapse of civilizations. This was less a question of slow, tragic, romantic declines and more along the lines of “everyone starved to death in a centuries long drought.” Some very fascinating lessons to be learned in climate science and environmental studies. Examples of reading: Mike Davis’ Victorian Holocausts, Neil Diamond’s Collapse, but mostly endless scientific papers on issues such as drought science, crop yields, ancient Mesopotamian agricultural practices, soil aridificatation and salinization in pre-Colombian South America, etc.
This was an example of a seminar which was very interesting in its academic content and readings, but which sometimes fell short in actual discussion. The seminar was rather loosely directed and we got off-track at times; I don’t mean to make this into a full-blown copy of my evaluation submitted after the class, but I did feel that more could have been gained from the same time if our group had been a little more motivated or focused in our efforts. Still, Professor Weiss had a lot of interesting knowledge to share on theses subjects and I enjoyed exploring the Maya Collapse in greater detail. Perhaps I should attach my final paper? I’m not so proud of it, but it’s indicative of the kind of work that we were doing; e-mail if interested.
EP&E 304: Social Studies of Science and Technology: Prof Lorenzo Simpson
This class was a philosophy of science course which ended up being a one-on-one tutorial between myself and the professor. Interest was initially light due to a mix-up in the course listing and a failure to cross-list the course in other departments, and I was the only person who ended up taking the course after shopping period. A little [more] Heidegger never hurt anyone. I think I would have had more fun in the class if there had been a few more people who had stayed with me, but it was still nice to have a good back-and-forth with the professor, and it certainly did give me a good chance to get to develop that relationship perhaps moreso than usual.
This was an interesting course to me because it was a good way to learn more about the history of technology and technological analysis and the ways philosophy of science has changed over time; it left me with a pretty useful toolkit for discussing these and other issues, and it was good to be exposed to some good problems of philosophy of science. Challenging whether any science can be “pure” or not, what “good science” is, whether technology can have political content, what the impact of social modes are on scientific development, Kuhnian scientific paradigms, etc.
CHNS 110: Introductory Chinese [Mandarin]: Prof [Team of Professors]
Yes, I have succumbed to the trendiness and am taking Chinese. Yale is very serious about its introductory Mandarin, and we learn more than other programs do in a given year. We have daily quizzes on our characters, dialogues, and grammar, along with regular examinations, oral presentations, and work with mandatory tutors once a week. However, this high level of work and structure does make for a good learning experience overall, and although it requires at times a bit of grit, it’s really not too bad: class is just an hour a day M-F, and characters are manageable as long as I take care not to fall behind (something which is not always easy to do).
Why am I taking Chinese? Many Yalies want to take Chinese to leverage Yale’s very close relationship with China to go and make money from the greatest environmental accounting scam in history booming Chinese economy. I am learning Chinese because it is interesting, and I have already learned much about Chinese culture just from its basic grammar structures. Moreover, the China-US bilateral relationship is far and away the most important one in the world for environmental and arguably so for economic reasons. My mission is to make the world a better place for everyone, and if 20% of its inhabitants speak Chinese, I might as well learn. This is a grossly simplified explanation, but does touch on a lot of it. I hope to study abroad sometime soon, and Yale offers super stellar support for study in East Asia through its Light Fellowships program: it is the sort of program which reminds you of the ways in which going to a large research university with billions of dollars can be advantageous.
On classes: Approximately 100 people were taking intro Chinese this fall, and we all met together in a big lecture hall each day… just kidding. We were all split into sections of no more than 10 students, and had a series of different teachers rotate so that we would better get to hear different accents, etc. The teachers were almost uniformly fabulous (sometimes only excellent) and I could not offer a single complaint about that at all. Zhou Laoshi really runs a good intro Chinese program, all things considered.
ECON 117 / EVST 117: Introduction to Microeconomics [Environmental Focus], Prof Sheila Olmstead
This was just a basic intro micro-econ course which I took as a requirement for the Ethics, Politics, Economics major (to which I was sadly not accepted) and also for my own personal edification. Unfortunately, the 9am lectures were often lacking, and while I made it through the course unscathed and was told it was a much happier experience than the -normal- microeconomics (non-enviro focus) there wasn’t really so much to write home about the process. I think that economics can be really interesting in its applied forms, and while it was useful to learn about the basics, I can’t say it was too much fun. It wasn’t difficult, but it wasn’t fun, either. Not too much to say here.
Thanks. But could you flesh this out with more detail about number of students in the course (at least ANTH 473) and workload, especially how many hours per week you spent on this and how much writing was assigned?
Also, could you give a sense of how you end up in these courses and who else is in them, at least with ANTH 473? I would not have expected a sophomore in a 400-level class, but maybe I don’t understand Yale’s course numbering system.
I would also be interested to know which other courses you considered and why you choose these over those.
Also, were those all “professors” in your intro Chinese are language instructors?
Thanks. But could you flesh this out with more detail about number of students in the course (at least ANTH 473) and workload, especially how many hours per week you spent on this and how much writing was assigned?
Also, could you give a sense of how you end up in these courses and who else is in them, at least with ANTH 473? I would not have expected a sophomore in a 400-level class, but maybe I don’t understand Yale’s course numbering system.
I would also be interested to know which other courses you considered and why you choose these over those.
Also, were those all “professors” in your intro Chinese or language instructors?
The Yale course numbering system is not as precise or scientific as you might imagine. There are some high level courses with low level numbers, and generally higher numbers are used more for arbitrary or subject-discipline distinctions, I believe — so different kinds of poli sci (international relations, american government, political theory, that kind of thing) might have different initial numbers — to a point. Something like that. ANTH 473 was a higher level seminar, but nothing extreme. At the same time, many classes will be cross-listed with grad schools and have two numbers which differ — numbers above 500 ARE grad school, but could also be the same class. In other subjects, it is rarer to find sophomores in higher level seminars, but this is mostly a matter of sophomores and freshmen not believing that they could get into xyz classes — many would still be selected if they expressed genuine interest. I have a certain talent for getting into classes that I would like to be in.
In the case of ANTH473, things really ought to have been more structured, but for the first part of the course we would read a book or maybe a hundred pages of science journal articles on speleothems and suchlike, come into class and discuss; writing-wise, that course had a final paper (15-20 pages, or so) and a take-home miderm (I wrote something like 10 pages, but others did less). In this respect the course actually was a lighter load than many other seminars, I think.
The composition of the course was as follows: there were maybe 3-4 grad students, who spent a lot of time away in Syria or wherever on digs, some juniors and seniors (maybe 5 total), and I think one or two other sophomores; several of the upperclassmen were anthropology or archaeology majors, most of the rest of the group came from a varied background.
As for other courses I considered: I can’t really recall at this point, to be honest – other seminars, I believe.
I asked Anna about your last question, and she confirms that they’re all professors, i.e., senior lecturers, since language profs don’t research, that’s the title they’re given. But yeah! No lame TAs or something like that. We have grad students for tutors, in terms of the ones who are assigned to us; if you get additional tutoring just on the side, they tend to be undergraduates. They rotate profs so you get to hear different accents and learn tones etc better — so some are from Taiwan, some are from different parts of China, some are women, etc etc etc. It’s very helpful.