More on e-learning/teaching

Desperate Demon points out that e-mail is a useful way to interact with staff without embarrassment. I can see the point - people seem to view e-media as a site for personal statements they wouldn't make face-to-face, but I'm not sure this is a good thing. Instead, I think it's a depressing comment on how we all relate to each other in the flesh - we're substituting symbolic exchange for simulation to avoid embarrassment - is this an English thing? We all use language as a way to distance people, so perhaps it's a logical extension to use e-mail in the same way. For others, of course, the solitary nature of typing to a screen feels intimate, leading to more emotional openness.

Natural Blues also feels alienated by the impersonality of the university system. I'm sorry to say that it comes down to money and culture. If you were at Oxford, or a smaller institution, you'd meet your personal tutor at least once a week to discuss your work between just the two of you. I wish we could do the same…

Another feature of the university system is that we're meant to treat you as independent and strong adults, even though the A-level system doesn't prepare you for the level of solitary and/or self-directed study required. We're meant to point out the potential ways to think about texts or issues and you're meant to go off happily to the library - even though it's hard to navigate your way through thousands of books contradicting each other, and do your own washing/cooking, and work because it's so expensive to be at university, and you're making (and dumping) friends, adopting a new identity, you may have children or terribly complicated lives.

You may have come from a totally structured learning environment to university, and it's hard not to think that turning up to class is your sole activity, when in actual fact this should be the smallest part of studying. At posh places, you have very few lectures and 8 week terms - but they know that most of their time will be spent studying. We can't operate like this - most of you aren't rich enough not to need jobs, you aren't from the same kind of environments, more support is needed. However, the conundrum is that support is expensive and takes a lot of time - two things in short supply. I don't know the answer - any suggestions?

However: do be assured that everything you've felt so far is what everybody else is feeling (I certainly did): lost, stupid, unprepared, directionless and often lazy. That said, things like socialising and sport and joining weird religious or political groups or just bullshitting in the bar are all important activities. Take some risks (intellectually and otherwise) - you never know what talents you'll discover.

BTW: I do at least skim through draft essays etc, but only if you send them well before the due date - 3 hours before submission isn't on!