Archive for Todd Pettigrew
Todd Pettigrew, PhD, is Associate Professor English at Cape Breton University. He blogs for Maclean's OnCampus on university issues. Follow him on Facebook (Pettigrew On Campus) and on Twitter (@toddpettigrew).
Five things to do this summer (besides nothing)
Prof. Pettigrew offers some suggestions
Photo by justinrussell on Flickr
If you have finished a year or two of university, it’s tempting to sprint into your summer months with abandon, not giving school work another thought until Labour Day. But what if you still considered yourself a student in between semesters? Surprisingly, there’s a lot to learn even when the sun is shining. Here are five things to consider for those lazy hazy days.
1. Take a course. Obviously, not everyone can afford the time and money required for a summer course, but if you can swing it, it’s a lot more pleasant than it sounds. For one thing, summer courses are condensed, so you get through the material quickly and it’s easier to remember everything when the final exam comes around. Also, if you ask really nicely, your prof may hold class outside.
Continue reading Five things to do this summer (besides nothing)
It’s convocation. Pass me a pillow.
Prof. Pettigrew on those boring graduation speeches
Photo by m00by on Flickr
This weekend is convocation weekend at my august institution. Loving ceremony as I do, I tend to look forward to it. We wear our robes, there’s a bag-piper, people are happy. It’s a good day.
But I always dread the speeches. Not because I don’t enjoy a good speech. I do. It’s just that the speeches are almost never good. In fact, they often suck. And usually for the same reason. Strange as it sounds, the reason is this: people don’t try to say something interesting.
Shirt storm brewing in Nova Scotia
Let the kid wear his offensive Jesus shirt: Pettigrew
Photo by Roby Ferrari on Flickr
This week, Nova Scotia student William Swinimer was suspended from his high school in the town of Chester Basin for wearing a t-shirt that read, “Life is WASTED without Jesus.” While school officials say the shirt is inappropriate, Swinimer says he is merely standing up for his religious beliefs and exercising free expression.
School board superintendent Nancy Pynch-Worthylake says the board is going to hire an expert to mediate the dispute.
Since I am already in Nova Scotia and am always right about everything, let me save the good people of Canada’s Ocean Playground some money by explaining what that exquisitely-named functionary should do.
Let the kid wear his shirt.
Why you’ll never be an alumni
Prof. Pettigrew makes the case for proper usage
Photo by Will Folson on Flickr
Every English professor, professional writer, or, let’s face it, speaker of English has at least one pet peeve when it comes to how people use the language. For some it’s “nuclear” pronounced “nuke-u-ler.” For others it’s “I could care less” when what you really mean is “I couldn’t care less.”
For me, it’s someone referring to himself or herself as “an alumni.” A Google search for “he is an alumni” gets nearly three million hits, “she is an alumni” almost a million more. But I maintain they’re all wrong. Why? Because alumni is plural. You, an individual, can’t be alumni any more than you can be a students.
Muslim’s big bra photo spurs oversized outrage
Some people in B.C. have their panties in a twist
I would guess that the vast majority of Canadian Muslims, thoughtful, tolerant, law-abiding citizens, must really hate it when their fellow Muslims go crazy over the barest of perceived slights.
If my guess is right, there must be a lot of sighing going after news broke yesterday that a brou-ha-ha had erupted at Thompson Rivers University over a photo of a woman wearing a niqab and abaya (garments sometimes worn by some Muslim women that cover almost the entire body) while looking at a bra.
Click here to see the original photo.
Continue reading Muslim’s big bra photo spurs oversized outrage
5 ways your prof knows you’re failing
An experienced eye can tell when a student is in trouble
Photo by rileyroxx on Flickr
I didn’t set out to make a study of student exam-room behaviour, but by my estimation, I’ve invigilated well over a hundred exams in my career and, after a while, you start to notice things.
One thing I realized lately is that I’ve been getting good at telling who’s failing the exam even as they’re writing it. I don’t use this as a basis for evaluation, of course, but, as I say, you can’t help developing a sense.
Should profs give points for showing up?
Pettigrew weighs in
Photo by Menno van der Horst on Flickr
With final exams on the way and final grades right behind them, students across the country are wondering where they stand. How much was that mid-term worth? Can I still hand it that essay?
Oh, and what about my attendance grade?
Anyone who’s taught a university course has struggled with the question of attendance grades. The arguments against giving marks for simply showing up are clear. University students are supposed to be adults, and it’s up to them to decide whether they want to be in class or not. Besides, grades should reflect the actual work done in the course: just being there doesn’t mean you’ve learned anything. And giving an attendance grade means taking attendance in each class, and that is boring and time consuming.
The art of asking good questions
Prof. Pettigrew explains his “no… yes… ummm?” method
Photo by vancouverfilmschool on Flickr
This week my Detective Fiction class was looking at Jeff Lindsay’s Darkly Dreaming Dexter, a novel about a Miami forensics analyst who is secretly a serial killer, but who only targets other killers (and yes, the inspiration for the Dexter TV show).
Trying to get my class to think through the complex moral questions that the novel raises, I asked them, “To appreciate this novel, you have to support capital punishment, don’t you?”
One of my best students jumped right in. “No” she said firmly, then instantly changed her mind: “Yes.” Then reconsidered again: “Ummm…”
And I knew I had asked the perfect question.
The case for more nutty professors
Why humour should count on course evaluations. Really.
Eddie Murphy, The Nutty Professor (1996)
When my august institution was creating its new course evaluation form, I was asked to provide input, and I dutifully suggested a number of questions that I thought should be on such a form.
One of my ideas, a question asking whether the professor was funny, was rejected outright on the grounds that not all professors are funny, so it wouldn’t be fair to include that criterion.
To my mind, the response begged the question, though. Some professors may lack foresight— does that mean you can’t ask if the course seemed to have been planned well?
Dalhousie strike could get ugly
If profs walk on Saturday, it may be worse than usual
Dalhousie photo by Robert Alfers on Flickr
It seems there is always some faculty association somewhere in Canada that is either on strike or heading towards one. Just last year, Brandon faculty came through a long and painful strike. Nearly every university has been there at one point or another.
So the news that there may be a faculty strike at Nova Scotia’s largest university on or after Saturday is not particularly surprising.
But some strikes are worse than others, and, while no one can predict the outcome with any certainty, if there is a strike at Dalhousie, it might be worse than most. Here’s why.
This is not the first time. Dalhousie faculty have been on strike four times since 1988—that’s a lot, even by university standards. Strikes are divisive and faculty members’ memories are long. That means there is likely not a reserve of good will between faculty and administration and when things come to a head, cooler heads may not prevail.
If only all elections were like student elections
Pettigrew: The apathy only adds to the excitement
A political poster from CBU
It’s easy to get down on university student elections. They almost seem designed to encourage apathy. After all, the winners typically hold office for only a year, too short a time to make much meaningful change before the next administration takes over.
And even when student leaders are in office, they are generally powerless to effect the changes students really want—particularly lower tuitions which are firmly controlled by senior administration, boards of governors, and provincial governments.
Add to this the fact that most university voters are only going to be around for a short time—not long enough to get much benefit out of any changes that are made—and you have a perfect storm of voter apathy.
Canadian voters in general lament that voter turnout is down near 60 per cent. That number seems huge compared to most student elections like the 11 per cent that’s apparently common at The University of Manitoba.
But low turnout shouldn’t lead us to dismiss student elections altogether, because the very things that make them less than exciting for student voters make them fun for outside observers like me.
Continue reading If only all elections were like student elections
Why students should care about spelling
Its not 4 the reasonz u thynk
Photo by Alex of Gothenburg on Flickr
Does it matter whether university students can spell or not?
Anne Trubek of Oberlin College argues in a Wired article entitled Its tyme to let luce! that standard spellings are obsolete.
Oh, they were fine when we all stumbled through our lives under the oppressive burden of paper and ink, but adding an apostrophe on an iPhone takes an extra couple of keystrokes, and really, why spend the time?
In one sense—that we should not be slaves to an arbitrary sense of what is correct—Trubek is right. But that misses a bigger point. I will suggest there is a good reason to care about spelling, and to talk about it even at the university level, though it’s perhaps not the reason one might think.
Why I’m sick of alumni magazines
The requests for money never cease
An appropriate meme from QuiteRly.com
The other day, I got a copy of the Alumni Gazette, the magazine sent to alumni of the University of Western—sorry—Western University. This was no surprise, of course, since they’ve been sending them to me for years. In fact, as an alumnus of three universities, I get these things frequently.
They are always slickly produced—and they always make me a bit queasy.
I open these publications in the vague hope that I’ll see something about someone I went to school with, or hear some news about a favourite professor. It never happens.
Instead, I get a series of breathless articles about people I never knew who are changing the world.
A more charitable version of myself would swell with pride to be associated with such luminaries, but the cynic in me can’t help feeling like the whole thing is a big soft sell for the fundraising division of the university. Because, of course, that’s what it is. Nobody sends you a glossy magazine four times a year out of the goodness of their hearts.
And sure enough, in the middle of the mag is a multi-page spread on “The Campaign for Western” (is Western running for something?), and then another ad featuring smiling students imploring me to “Fund the Future,” and, then, near the end, still another ad urging me to consider giving good old UWO—-sorry—WU, a “planned gift” which means leaving money to the university in my will. Yes, they even want my money after I die.
All of this might be more palatable if I felt like I was getting the real story about a place I called home for four years. But I know enough about universities to know that’s not true. There’s no talk of controversy, let alone scandal. Because, recall, that’s not the point. The point is to get you feeling good about the old Ivey-covered halls. And it’s not just Western. All universities, so far as I know, do the same kind of cheerleading.
See how great we still are? Aren’t you proud to be one of us? Shouldn’t you write a cheque?
The irony of it all is that this reaction is never the one I actually have. Because to be perfectly honest, seeing all those uber-successful people—hob-nobbing with Bono or conquering the film industry—doesn’t make me feel better about the university, it makes me feel worse about myself.
It’s time for the Academmys!
Prof. Pettigrew shares his five best university movies ever
From Accepted
It’s awards season again, and amid all the talk of Grammys and Emmys and Oscars, I began to muse about my favourite academically-themed movies. For your consideration, then, I have compiled my nominees for top university movie.
As always, I freely admit that my choices are entirely subjective, but I did give myself two criteria. For one, they had to deal with university-level education, not other levels of schooling (so goodbye, Mr Chips). For another, they had to deal with university instruction in some way, so no movies that are simply set at a university or college (Revenge of the Nerds) and no movies where the professor doesn’t really do much professoring (Indiana Jones). Here, then, is my list.
Stop calling these students mentally ill
Anxiety and depression need to be reclassified
Photo by Sander van der Wel on Flickr
Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about efforts to improve the services available to students related to their psychological well-being on campuses. University presidents met for a workshop recently, and Queen’s University welcomed a new $1-million chair to study stigma.
Now, I am no mental health professional but I do know a few things about universities and have some experience with anxiety and depression.
If it were up to me, those trying to improve things on Canadian campuses would keep one crucial principle in mind: be careful how you talk about it.
First, let’s call depression and anxiety something other than “mental illness.”
The three secret qualities of top students
Prof. Pettigrew tells what his A+ students have in common
Aristotle, a great scholar. By Tilemahos_E on Flickr.
A blogger at Inside Higher Ed has posed a fascinating question: what is an ideal student?
Strictly speaking, there could not possibly be an ideal student any more than there could be perfect person. But the question is worth thinking about if you care about education.
I wouldn’t want to repeat the answers already on offer, so let me move the question out of the abstract just a bit and ask a similar question: what have my very best students had in common?
To answer this question, I turned to a list I keep affixed to my filing cabinet in my office under a magnet that says “ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS.” It shows all the students who have earned grades of A+ in my courses. Readers of this blog may surmise from my curmudgeonly persona that the list is not huge. In fact, there are sixteen names.
From that list I selected the five who seemed most memorable for their abilities and achievements. What did they have in common? Many things, of course, some of which were also suggested in the IHE piece: curiosity, open-mindedness, willingness to be engaged. Intelligence, of course, and a capacity for hard work, obviously. But three other qualities stand out, too:
- 1. Ambition. By this, I don’t mean a desire to be famous or make a lot of money, but rather a willingness to try to do something great in whatever one does. For the best students, an assignment is not merely a requirement to be met, but an opportunity to test and strengthen themselves.
2. Humility. Seemingly the opposite of ambition, humility, in the best students, sits in elegant balance with it. The best students have the confidence to push themselves to be the best they can, but they are humble enough to know that there is always more to learn. Life is short, and learning the art takes a long time.
3. Creativity. Observers sometimes worry that formal education stifles creativity, and, to be sure, academia does come with certain rules and restrictions. Still, like a great musician or painter, a great student figures out that some rules are actually empowering, and that some can be stretched or broken when the occasion demands.
Of course, these students don’t come along every day. My little A+ list shows I’m lucky if they come along every year, and nobody would suggest you have to be a top student to be a good student. But all students should ask themselves whether they could demonstrate more of these qualities. I know I could have used more of number 2 when I was a student.
But then, we didn’t have blogs in those days, and I probably wouldn’t have listened, anyway.
Todd Pettigrew is Associate Professor English at Cape Breton University.
Pettigrew: the military shouldn’t train on campus
The argument against a Canadian Officers Training Corps
Photo by The United States Army
Last week, another prominent Canadian restated the proposal that Canada should bring back The Canadian Officers Training Corps, a campus-based program that was discontinued in 1968, but championed in a recent film by Robert Roy.
Lee Windsor, Deputy Director of the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society at the University of New Brunswick, supports a program whereby undergraduates register as cadets and get military training on campus while pursuing their studies, after which they may or may not choose to sign up in the reserves or the regular forces.
The new proposal has been widely reported, but not widely endorsed. We should keep it that way.
Continue reading Pettigrew: the military shouldn’t train on campus
The Cougars? The Redmen? Oh, how offensive!
The naming of sports teams is now fraught with peril
The Human Beings Mascot from Community on Citytv
One of the best running gags in the TV show Community is that Greendale College’s teams are called “The Human Beings”—an absurdly bland moniker designed to insulate the school from complaints and controversy—the sort of complaints levied periodically against the Cleveland Indians or the Washington Redskins.
The fictional school’s feckless Dean might have a point, though, because naming sports teams, at schools especially, is now fraught with peril.
This danger was underscored last week when Utah’s Corner Canyon High School had to do away with its team name “Cougars.” The term, which, in some circles has come to mean an older woman sexually interested in younger men, was the subject of complaints. Canyon teams will now be “The Chargers.”
Continue reading The Cougars? The Redmen? Oh, how offensive!
Why traditional lectures will thrive
A defense against those who say lectures should be “social”
Photo by poptech on Flickr
There are few long-standing traditions that have as rough a reputation these days as the lecture.
Many commentators on higher education tend to see them as boring, old-fashioned and unsuited to the modern world and the modern student.
Thus American psychology professor Pamela Rutledge in this recent blog entry takes the lecture as typical of the hidebound university because it is “unidirectional and linear,” not social and students don’t get to decide when it’s over.
But despite her arguments, I feel confident that traditional lectures serve a unique purpose. I believe they will serve us well into the future.
How profs talk about you behind your back
Prof. Pettigrew explains what’s in the reference letter
Sealed letter by zappowbang on Flickr
In Robertson Davies’ The Rebel Angels, Simon Darcourt takes up the task of writing letters of reference for his students when he happens to be in a bad mood. Worse, his students have irked him by making requests at the last minute and expecting him to pay for postage. So, in a fit of pique, he savages them: “treacherous, never turn your back on him” he says of one; he describes the mind of another as “flat as Holland—the salt marshes, not the tulip fields.”
When I was a student I was always respectful when asking for letters, lest my profs be offended and take out their anger on me in the same way. Now, as a professor who has written dozens upon dozens of reference letters for scholarships, grad programs—once to help a student get an apartment—I can see how nerve-wracking the process must be for those doing the asking.
