This story is a bit different from my usual. It’s a revised and slightly edited transcript of my comments to my first year anthropology students after the teaching team and I returned their grades on their midterm exams. I share this since, as a campus resident, much of what this community is about and defined by are students, learning and related intellectual endeavours.
For close to three decades I have taught large enrolment introductory classes. I am obviously not alone in this as UBC is a massive institution with thousands of students taking upsized classes. I enjoy the opportunity, especially the excitement of teaching new to university students in the first term of their study. It’s also a potentially soul crushing experience for students. For some this will be their first time away from the parental home - in some case experienced as liberation, in others as alienating and lonely. Mid-terms are the first point of external assessment that arrives in their new university lives. What follows is a version of a talk I give most every time I teach first year anthropology after the mid term exam has been marked.
One of my protocols is I review every exam that was an A+ and every exam that was a fail. I also marked one fifth of all the midterm exams that were submitted. I find it really important that I'm actually reading and marking and assessing along with the teaching assistant staff to get a sense of where you are as a class in the learning process.
It is important to note exams are not measure of you as a person. They're a measure of something you did on a particular day in a particular fashion, in a particular way. They don't give you an indication of who you are, what you are, or what you're necessarily capable of. Sometimes exams don't even measure knowledge.
I was one of those folks who read all the course material, read beyond the course material, but didn’t always pay attention to what was said in class about exams and assignments. As I result I often found myself not living up to the examination markers’ standards for success on the exam. I feel fortunate, however, to have been grounded in a conception of self that was independent of the grade I received on an exam. This is important to emphasize: grades are not a measure of who we are, just what we did on a particular day.
Keep in mind there is also a discrepancy between what you might know and how you do on an exam. Sometimes you can do very, very well in exams and actually not know (or retain) the course material. Other times you can do very poorly in exams and know the course material quite well. So that's part of it.
For any person who received lower than a 50% grade, I'll set up a schedule that you can come and meet with me. We'll talk about the course material. I'll do an assessment at that point. If it seems to me that you made an effort to try to figure out and understand the material, I will move your grade to a pass.
I will not, however revaluate any other exams in the same manner. Of course, you have a right to request an exam to be reviewed both informally and formally.
In general, I am pleased with what people have done and I appreciate the effort that you put into it. I also know that sometimes people feel disappointed, and they'll say things like ‘I've never worked harder in my life on doing such and such.’ Or they might say, ‘I put in a lot of time and effort in doing something,’ et cetera. You may well meet a classmate who says, ‘oh, I just looked at the notes, my notes the night before and I seem to do okay.’ Then they got some astronomically outrageous high mark. Someone else may have spent weeks pouring over the readings and lecture slides and finds they barely passed.
There's a concept from Karl Marx called Socially Necessary Labor Time. Marx said look at a number of firms all producing a commodity, all investing different amounts of labor into producing their commodity. Some firms put a lot of labor into the commodity -that costs a high value- and those companies failed. Some invest very little labor into the project. Those firms create a crappy product and they fail. Somewhere in the middle is a kind of point when you apply just the right amount of labor for just the right amount of quality commodity output and here one finds success
That’s the kind of calculations associated with socially necessary labor time. When you balance between all your different courses you're taking, your extracurricular activities, your familial responsibilities and just life in general, you have to figure out how much labor time do I put in? What quality or type of labor power do I put in to get the outcome that I want or that I'm able to achieve? That's a difficult thing to sort and doesn't always work out for people. To find that balance you have to think about ‘studying smart,’ focussing attention strategically.
There are always some people among us who can read, listen, and observe and retain all that information with one pass. I know a few people like that. But for the rest of us, the question is to read the appropriate amount to learn what you need (or want) to learn. To read in a particular or a guided fashion, to read with purpose, to read for comprehension.
One approach is to read the introduction and conclusion of a chapter, read the topic sentences of each paragraph, read particular things that stand out, catch your attention, or were mentioned in a lecture or class discussion. I'm sure you all know some variant of this model.
One of my relatives has dyslexia, which is a learning disability. Basically they had to read every word in the sentence and sometimes would forget the beginning by the time they arrived at the end. One has to develop tactics to overcome this kind of situation. I am a spot reader, which is a kind of advantage. I see patterns on the page. I read words in groups. I'm not actually reading every word unless I stop myself and slow down to read every word.
There are different ways of reading. My relative had to develop ways to recognize how to bunch up material and to see patterns that helped in reading. I need to slow down and look for details. Each of us needs to be self-critically aware of how we learn and then attempt to modify our behaviour to facilitate that. In a university we each have to take on the responsibility to make this happen. It will at times be hard, be frustrating, and perhaps even insurmountable.
Sometimes we just can't hit the targets we are looking for. But that's okay. You have to find the capacity to say to yourself ‘It's okay.’ Irrespective of what you might be hearing in your inner mind or your parents or your siblings or friends about what you need to do. Sometimes it’s just not possible. And. That’s. Okay.
I tried for a decade to hit a Boston Marathon qualifying time (BQT) for my age group – about three hours and thirty minutes. Best I did was 3hrs 55mins. Despite everything the BQT remained out of reach. I had to redefine my goals and accept that running for the rest of my life was better than getting the BQT in my 50s.
Part of the thing here is about how you define, redefine and come to understand what constitutes success to you and then move forward from that perspective. My advice would be “Don't let somebody else's standard for success disrupt your sense of self or chance to learn.”
I think this is a wonderfully supportive act for your students. They're very fortunate to receive this message. For many, it could be profound if they're in a place to really hear it.