Back at uni. How great.

False hope

I have started my second year at Wroclaw University of Technology. It made me think that I am being delusional and naive too often. Or too empathetic.

I feel like I am giving others too many chances. I believe that everyone tries to do the right thing and that they will make up for everything bad that they did.

Kind of a random beginning of this post, but I naively hoped that something would change this year. I started this year full of hope that uni governors gathered up and revolutionized education. It did not happen. My disappointment is immeasurable.

Identifying the problem

So, what's wrong? Why would we need changes in education?

Okay, there are countless problems. And they are quite obvious. My biggest complaint is that nobody cares about understanding. Maybe I am stupid. Just maybe. But maybe when at least 80% of students don't understand what the heck is going on in the class, there's something wrong with the way they're being taught.

Either professors are horrible teachers or something else is not right. I honestly don't understand at least half of my classes. Thus, It's a waste of time. I go back home and I just have to learn it on my own.

One time a teacher gave us a fairly easy task that we haven't done before and I just couldn't do it. I don't think independently during the class. I realized that I just follow orders. Nobody gave me the tools to deal with the unknown. Teacher haven't solved this type of exercise => I cannot do it either. What a disaster.

One could say: "Then just think during your classes, duh", and they would be right. But I would become an exception, rather than a norm. Problem lies in the environment that doesn't encourage thinking. The whole system is based on looking at the teacher solving the task and then solving similar tasks ourselves. Nothing more.

Lectures Presentations

And the lectures! Oh, the lectures! What a disgrace to call these presentations a lecture. They always remind me of a quote from Jordan Peterson from his book "12 rules for life":

A good lecturer is thus talking with and not at or even to his or her listeners. To manage this, the lecturer needs to be closely attending to the audience's every move, gesture and sound. Perversely, this cannot be done by watching the audience, as such. A good lecturer speaks directly to and watches the response of single, identifiable people, instead of doing something cliched, such as "presenting a talk" to an audience. Everything about that phrase is wrong. You don't present. You talk. There is no such thing as "a talk", unless it's canned, and it shouldn't be. There is also no "audience". There are individuals, who need to be included in the conversation. A well-practised and competent public speaker addresses a single, identifiable person, watches that individual nod, shake his head, frown, or look confused, and responds appropriately and directly to those gestures and expressions. Then, after a few phrases, rounding out the same idea, he switches to another audience member, and does the same thing. In this manner, he infers and reacts to the attitude of the entire group (insofar as such a thing exists).

I really do appreciate your time Sir, but I can read these slides on my own, thanks a lot :)

An alternative

Recently, I got my first job in the IT field in a respectable American corporation. A private company. A nice thing about private companies is that they have competitors. So they have to be at least somehow efficient and competitive to not go out of business. Usually.

And so let's take a look at how they train their new staff. For example interns like me.

From my experience, the main idea in their approach is that they force you to think. Still can't do your task? Think. More. Ask someone. Google it.

Honestly, an incredible way of freeing the potential in people. Just a great environment to thrive. They give you all the tools you could possibly need, they provide you with support (when you ask for it) and then they're like: idk, do something.

They are miles ahead in raising the new generation. Since, obviously, it has a great impact in the way they approach problems. For the rest of their lives, probably.

In my job, I will never hear: "Hello class, today I will teach you how to use a microscope in our lab. First step is powering it on. [...] Make sure that your object stays in focus. [...] We'll have a test from this material next week." Like whaaaaaat are we even supposed to get from that, when we're treated like our time is worthless? And still, this would be one of your most practical lectures ever.

In my job they would say: "You have a task here, which requires you to use a microscope. Here is the microscope. You can figure it out on your own, you can read the instruction, you can ask your buddies that already know how to use it, you can look it up on the internet, whatever. Good luck. Let me know when you're done." And theeen, they won't give you a deadline for it. It's not like there is no deadline, you can always get fired, hehe. But you can take your time.

That's what bothers me: The scale. Education that simply prepares you for life and for hardships that come with it, is only available for the "chosen" few. It's not like it's pure luck; The interviewing process was tough. But everyone deserves a decent education. A chance.

It's not like I'm stupid. Okay, I might be. But I legitimately attend classes and I still don't know what is happening. And I get decent grades. Am I a cheater? What is happening? How can I possibly attend classes, get decent grades and still not know what is happening?!

Alright. We have electric field intensity. What is it? Why do we need it, why did people come up with such a term? Oh, it describes the force applied on every coulomb that happens to be in this specific place in an electric field? *quick glance at a formula* Oh, of course, it makes sense. And do not move on without everyone understanding what we're learning and why (Then we have an issue with smartest students being slowed down by others, but that's a whole different topic).

As opposed to: "This is the formula for electric field intensity. Here is the formula for the Coulomb's force. Here are our charges and this is the distance between them. Solve the task."

Because, hell yeah, I can solve the task easily. I know some math. I can memorize the formulas, plug these numbers in and get a good grade at the end. But I didn't deserve that good grade. The teacher didn't deserve his salary. And scientific titles already lost their significance a while ago.

Authorities

Hah! Now I remembered my random thought from a while ago, while attending a swimming class. The thought was: It's annoying how everyone forces me to do what the teacher tells me to do, just because they are teachers. I don't like the idea. It's like culturally we are taught to respect elderly people, just because they are elderly.

Oh that's a controversial one, I can argue.

I'm not talking about caring for them, like letting them take your seat in a bus and stuff like that. Everyone has different needs, strengths and weaknesses and we should help each other. But...

WHY are we being taught to respect people just because. All my life I just mindlessly adjusted to my reality. It's finally changing. I want to question my authorities. I want to get my butt kicked by my martial arts teacher, so I want to become at least like him. And so I know why I follow this guy. It's a metaphor, if it's not obvious. I broke my spine 2 years ago. I'd die, If I tried martial arts. Although I'd like to. I'd like to try. Not die. Unless...?

Going back to my thought during a swimming class: "It's annoying how everyone forces me to do what the teacher tells me to do, just because they are teachers". What sparked this thought was a realization that I have never seen my swimming teacher swim. It's like: does she even know anything about swimming? Why would I listen to her? Anyone can stand at the shore and tell others to swim 4 pool lengths on our backs.

And of course her swimming skills are excellent. Of course she knows a lot about swimming. If that's what you thought, you missed my point. Or it's my fault for my chaotic style of writing and delivering my thoughts. However, my goal is not to unmask fake teachers that got their position by mistake. My goal is to change our approach to teaching. Foster independent thinking among the younger generation. So they go through life and think critically about who they follow. So they have some sense of identity. So they are simply great, interesting people that made their choices for a reason, that chose their path based on their beliefs. Not just because life happened to them.

Well, this post is getting quite long. I have so many thoughts to share, can't help it. I'll try to somehow wrap it up. ("try" is the keyword here. I didn't make it)

Enough of complaining

It's bad. It's really bad, I'm not gonna lie. But it would be immature of me to just complain. Life is a problem solving game, so let's think strategically. What now? What do I do?

I love learning. It's extremely satisfying. It gives my life some meaning. I also hate my university and I am unable to acquire much knowledge from my teachers there.

There has to be a way to make this situation less painful. I have already joined a students’ club to participate in more practical tasks. I found work, in which I can thrive while learning a lot. It’s something, but it’s not enough. I want my life to be even more enjoyable. I utterly hate spending a lot of time on my classes and still feeling that I'm wasting my time. Think, think, think.

I will certainly make a separate, profound blog post about what I’m going to do with it. I just need to think more, write down my thoughts, experiment and talk it through with someone. For now, I can shortly sketch out my initial ideas and prerequisites.

What wouldn't work?

A decent idea that I had was to spend as little time on university as possible. Cannot be bothered, just pass the classes and move on. It sounded promising, but it wouldn’t work. For various reasons, but most importantly there are classes that I actually care about. They are just not being taught well, to put it lightly.

So it's not an option. And at least we're somewhere. I definitely know what I'm not going to do. That means that I have to study, but maybe just the subjects that are worth studying for?

It's nothing revolutionary, but it's important to know what causes what.

Now my problem is clearer. Because studying for only the subjects I care about was what I did so far. And something's still wrong. Studying for my classes is unpleasant and I still don't understand my subjects. Who cares about the grades :|

Studying methods to try out

It seems that I'm not studying optimally. I want to try something new. There are a few ideas on my mind.

Study partners

For the past 10 months I've been studying with my friends on Discord. But we studied separately, we were just each other's company. It helped me enormously, but I need to aim higher now. There is a limit to what it can give me. I don't need motivation anymore, I need someone to hear me out when I'm trying to explain how I understand different topics. I want to teach someone and I want someone to teach me. I want someone to listen to me and tell me that what I'm saying makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for multiple reasons. Here are the reasons. Here are my thoughts.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my friend, who just started learning programming and asked me for help a few times. That's when I realized how great that technique really is, how pleasant and effective. One time she asked me: "Why shouldn't I use global variables?" And I didn't have a ready answer. I had to make some effort, connect a bunch of neurons together to figure out a decent, intuitive answer. I just wouldn't come up with that question myself, but it certainly deepened my understanding.

The downside of this approach is that I'd have to either force my current friends to study what I study (mostly not doable) or find new friends that are willing to spend some time with me and study... Regularly. That's hard, people are not overly consistent.

Master the subject myself and then teach others

Another approach is studying profoundly by myself. A lot. And then write a blog post about it or even teach my friends. Teaching others is an extremely good way of learning, as I mentioned earlier, but also this is much more doable. Because I don't have to rely on anyone to study with me, I just need someone to listen to me at the end.

My doubt here is that it would take way too much time for me to feel prepared. Which is fine, understanding requires time. It just wouldn't be so easy to pull off with everything that I'm required to learn. But I will definitely try it out.

Intensive learning periods

The name could be better, but it'll do for now. The idea itself is strongly related to the previous one, but the concept is a little different. It takes the idea of themed years, that was introduced to me by CGP Grey, to a next level.

My overly-order-seeking brain came up with themed months. Then weeks. Even days. I love the idea of living intensively. I want to work really hard on a challenging task and then have an intensive rest. As opposed to not being challenged at uni, just exhausted from all these hours of sitting there, and then playing games to relieve some stress, but not actually resting.

Imagine doing a week of electromagnetism. Just like that. A week of 3D modeling. A week of designing circuit boards. A week of chess, idk.

So I want to have these intensive periods, where I work on one project exclusively for a few days. So it's definitely not doable while I work and have classes, but I want to try it out. With friends. Or alone. For 2 days. Or a week. It doesn't matter. And then I can also teach others. Or just flex with what I've learned.

To be continued

I really don't know. I'll try my ideas, I'll experiment with my learning methods. There is no other option, I gotta figure it out with as little time as I have.

Let me tell you, I have a long history of fighting our education system. Having tried an individual learning system I just cannot accept being forced to attend these sad classes. At this point, improving teaching is one of my long-term life goals. I will do it somehow. I'll become a master at creating study groups, an environment where people do the best with their potential. Or I will become a fantastic teacher myself. Or both. Or something else.

I just hope I'm not alone in this. I'm not.