Masters

My opinion about my masters project has changed pretty drastically over time. I remember when I started the program, I was incredibly indifferent to it, if not negatively inclined. I was not terribly interested in research. I mostly just wanted to stay in Berkeley (which meant getting a masters along with the teaching credential), and I liked the pay increase that I would get from having a few extra letters behind my name.

As the program began and I had to start formulating my research ideas, I started to dislike the whole idea of a masters. I wasn't publishing my research. No one would ever read it again. I had no idea how to begin, and I was pretty disheartened by the people who tried to start, realized how untenable their ideas were, and had to start over. The whole thing seemed pretty pointless. The research was pretty meaningless and low quality since it was our first attempt at research for most of us.

It was frustrating overall, especially since I really didn't know what I was doing. There are some tasks where even though they're hard, you've done them before. You know exactly what kind of hard to expect and you know you can do it. Cramming for a test, for example. It's not easy and it's usually a lot of work, but I know how to do it. I know which parts will be most important to study for and I can work efficiently. When faced with an entirely new task like research where I don't have someone holding my hand and telling me what to do, it can be pretty intimidating. So my second semester, I found myself procrastinating and avoiding the research that I didn't know how to begin. Any procrastinator knows how horrible that feels, so needless to say, I was feeling pretty negatively towards my research at that time.

Third semester, things were pretty bad all around. I was finally working on my masters, but I barely had time to breathe. It was just one assignment after another and it wore me down. I didn't really have time to think about it that much. I was just getting it done. Then when the semester ended, I was so burnt out that I didn't even look at the thing for months. I wasn't intimidated or anything anymore, but I was sick of it.

This last semester has been the real change for me though. I have been so grateful that I ended up doing this project. When I sat down and forced myself to actually do some analysis on all the data I had gathered, it was so interesting! In a way, it was kind of like a puzzle. I had some video data and a few surveys and I had to figure out exactly what was going on. Where did I go wrong? Where did I go right? What were the interactions between the students? There was one part I was particularly pleased about- I had a student who had never participated in class before participate twice during my lesson. I assumed it was because of the change of topic to something he was more familiar with (he did noticeably bring in outside knowledge to the problem that wasn't presented in any of my set up). The did play a role, but upon looking more closely at the video, I saw that the real impetus for him to speak came from one of the top students in the class who was in the same group as him. She was very arrogant and very confused that day. Her pride was hurt because she couldn't solve the problem and it probably made her even more difficult to deal with than usual. Whenever she expressed to me that she was confused, he jumped in with something knowledgeable to say, I believe with the intent of not only making himself look good, but also making her look bad. I completely missed that the first few times I looked at the video, and I definitely missed it the day of the lesson.

There were all sorts of little puzzles like that to unravel, all of which I found pretty informative for my teaching. One major aspect of my teaching that I found has to change is my tendency to make speeches. Occasionally a speech will be useful to students, but most of the time they just zone out. I learned the most in college where pretty much every class I took was one extended speech from the professor. I didn't realize that that sort of learning isn't useful or productive for everyone. In fact, it's useful for almost no one. It's only going to be helpful to that minority of the class that can actually focus and pay attention while you drone on. It's going to be hard for me to change, but now that I'm aware of it, I feel like I have a chance to really improve my teaching.

I feel bad for the people who didn't do their own research. That was almost me. If Randi hadn't held my hand and guided me through the whole process, that's what I would have done, especially in the frame of mind that I was in at the start of the third semester. I would have approached some professor, asked for some data, and gotten to work analyzing it. It would have meant very little to me. I might have taken some random point from it about some esoteric teaching principle, but that's it. It wouldn't have been practical and I would have forgotten it probably. As it is now, I'm incredibly pleased with my final product. It's really something good. And it chronicles my older teaching and some of my goals for where to go in the future. It's a really nice document. And I did have a lot of help getting through the really onerous parts (I didn't really do a lit review, or any statistical analyses, both of which would have been doable, but time consuming and annoying), so maybe I'm biased in its favor, but it was kind of a delight to write and think about. It became one huge, well edited reflection, and clearly, reflections are things that I like to write.