James Hankins, a Harvard historian, has written an astute essay for the Martin Center about the difficulties facing a graduate student who wants to study traditional history. Such a student is one “who dislikes mixing contemporary politics into every historical dish and is out of sympathy with the perfervid evangelism of the modern progressive academy.”
These potential students, whom he calls conservative (but may not be conservative in the usual sense, just eager to study traditional history), are increasingly avoiding the academy. They find themselves out of sync with “social justice” agendas, and sympathetic would-be mentors are increasingly entering retirement.
I highly recommend Hankins’ article. In addition, it gives me a timely opportunity (in journalism, a “news peg”) to share my own experience as a history graduate student at North Carolina State University, from which I will soon receive a master’s degree. Continue reading “How to Be a Graduate Student in 2020”
I have enjoyed nearly all my courses at NC State, but I have sometimes been disappointed with my fellow students. Frequently, they fail to speak up. Maybe they aren’t prepared or, for some reason, they just don’t want to talk. This occurs mostly with undergraduates but graduate students, too, can avoid participation in discussion for long periods of time.
I know it’s frustrating to the professors, some of whom go to great lengths to encourage discussion—requiring students to write short essays for each class or having a student present a five-minute précis of the day’s readings. Sometimes these work and sometimes they don’t. Some instructors also have pop quizzes to persuade the students to be prepared—although no professors of mine have used this tactic. Oh, and then there’s grading attendance and participation. That doesn’t seem to work at all.
I recently came across a guide for college instructors in the Chronicle of Higher Education that sheds some light on this problem.[1] Written by Jay Howard, a sociologist who has studied classroom interaction, “How to Hold a Better Class Discussion” explains that two “classroom norms” protect students from having to speak up.[2]
[Photo: credit: Campus facility (UA023.005), Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, North Carolina.]
Like the child who pointed out that the emperor had no clothes, someone (Lawrence Biemiller) is admitting that the great wave of Modernist buildings on academic campuses—constructed from the 1960s until very recently—has not been a success. We may think of universities as places of ivy-covered brick walls and quaint quads, but the fact is that for decades, universities chose to construct stark “form follows function” buildings admired by architects, but rarely by students.
Here at North Carolina State University, Harrelson Hall, built in 1962, was torn down in 2016. Even the NC State website describes Harrelson as “a circular freak of a building that flummoxed students with its spiral ramps, windowless classrooms and ductwork that whooshed like a subway tunnel.”
Harrelson was over 50 years old when it was taken down, but I frequently walk by a newer construction, the Ricks Hall Addition, built in 2009. It is Modernist—a rectangular box connected on the second floor to the 1922 Ricks Hall, which boasts Ionic columns. The only similarity I can see to the original building is the color of the brick. I see nothing pleasing about it.
The Internet has transformed research. But until I began taking college classes again, I didn’t understand how much an academic library can help me take advantage of it.
If you use Google Scholar, you come upon rich sources of information, but unless you have an avenue through a library, many of them are closed to you. As a student at NC State Library, I can check a box and every listing to which NC State has arranged a relationship will be marked “Find Text at NC State.”
I just found online the complete 1744 “Essay Presented, or a Method Humbly Proposed, to the Consideration of the Honorable the Members of Both Houses of Parliament by an English Woolen Manufacturer…” (a petition for subsidies). I can’t link you to it because of its limited access; nor can I give you access to the multitude of articles I have read from journals such as Past and Present, the Journal of Economic History, the Journal of French Historical Studies, etc. Reaching this treasure trove is not cheap. You have to take at least one course ($2600 at the graduate level) but you are treated like a king.
