EDPSY 010

My Tuesday/Thursday 8am-9:15am class this semester was Educational Psychology 010. I forget what the actual title of the course it but the description was something along the lines of child development in relation to education and pedagogy with emphasis on individual differences, which sounded pretty sweet to me as a possible future math teacher.

It was the classroom in the southeast corner of Willard on the first floor. The teacher was J Foor, a 29-year-old doctoral student in the department who had grown up in the State College area and gone to Penn State for undergrad as well. He often told us about how the admission standards for PSU are tougher now than they were when he got in and that he didn't think he could get in these days; I don't know if it was in his best interest for him to tell us that.

He mentioned that he had early-onset arthritis a few times. Every time he did it made me feel really bad for him because it seemed totally unfair. Later he mentioned that it was really only in his hands, which made me feel not quite so terrible, but then I thought about how for me that would mean inability to play piano, which would basically ruin my life, and it made me feel bad for him again. I wonder if he would like to play piano or guitar.

[[Did I ever mention that the most terrifying semi-probably fear that I have is losing perfect use of my hands in any interpretation of "perfect use"? I don't know if I could live. When I was in 8th grade, Bobby Dingle and I would try to get through lunch without using our thumbs sometimes just to see if we could do it. Opening a milk carton without your thumbs is a nightmare. We sat with Kyle M and Dave B and Danny B that year. It was before Joey split the table and ruined everything good at lunch. Kyle and I would compete to see who could make Bobby spit out his drink laughing the most times throughout the year; at one point I was winning but I don't know who won at the end. We would save the good jokes for after a nice big sip.]]

He did seem to be very happy with his family. He talked about his wife fairly often and his kid in probably every lecture I went to and he would always smile a little bit when he told us the stories. He was a very low-key guy, so even a little smile from him showed you that he was actually quite happy to be thinking of a given topic.

In retrospect I feel like I kind of let the guy down and I feel somewhat guilty about that. In the first couple lectures I sat in the front and right of the room, probably second row and second seat in, close to where he would stand when giving lectures (PowerPoint, like most lecturers used; class of about 60). I didn't want to answer every question because I didn't want to be That Kid but when he was really hurting for someone to raise their hand or shout out an answer, I would do it. After the first or second test, I kind of lost faith in the class. I knew that I could get by with minimal effort and so I just stopped trying. I started to sit in the back left of the class, as far away from him as possible, and would find other things to do like math or a paper or homework or thinking or anything. The only reason I would ever go was because we had attendance assignments, basically. Once I finished the 9 of them we were required to do over the semester, I didn't go to class anymore - so basically I didn't go to class in April. In March, I left class the second the assignment was handed in. I never raised my hand or answered questions, and often neither did anybody else. I think a lot of people could have answered the questions so I guess it was all of us, but I feel bad knowing that I could have participated but chose not to.

He wrote on the blackboard one time. He was demonstrating the use of networks of neurons and categorization as a learning strategy over rote memorization.

Salls was in my class. We talked about hockey, how useless the book was, and his crazy sleep schedule. He sat behind me when I moved to the back left corner of the class, and one girl I think named Rachel usually sat in front of me. One time she turned around and asked me if you could get walk-in appointments at Ritenour, the campus medical center. I guess she thought I looked like a sophomore or junior and not someone who had transferred weeks earlier. I had been there once at that point for the flu and it seemed to me that you could walk-in if you had your student ID, so I told her yes. I never confirmed; I'm not sure if I ever said anything to her again actually. I wonder if I was wrong?

There was a guy who wore long white t-shirts in the class who was a Kinesiology major that Salls knew who spoke a lot during class discussions. There was a guy who looked like a street-vet version of Morgan Spurlock who I saw in the gym the couple times that I went. Most of our class was white. I think we had one Indian girl and one black girl.

I checked the gradebook online one time for the classroom activities we had to do. I don't believe anyone who turned one in ever got anything less than 100.

We had to make a 'brochure' about child development at one point in the class. I lost 20% because I somehow did it on the wrong chapter. The wording was a tiny bit ambiguous but I suppose I should have asked. I didn't care. It looked new-agey and clean and I liked it.

The only other grades we got were tests. He gave us outlines of what was on the test about a week before. On the last test, after having not gone to class for a month, I looked at the outline and found the relevant sections in the book and the chapter outlines and just read that. I think I studied for about two hours maximum. I don't like to talk about grades but I guess I could say it would convince you the class time was useless.

In one of the first days of class, the professor was talking about different personality types and how people can be introverted or extroverted. Someone raised their hand and asked "Sorry, but what exactly are you referring to when you say 'introverted' or 'extroverted?' " I remember thinking the response wasn't sufficiently clarifying, but I suppose that question threw him a bit.

[[I reread this post after I hit the publish button and realized that I didn't mention once the material that we were supposed to learn in this course. I think that means I'm supposed to leave it like this though]]

Peace out.