Standards/Rigor

I certainly must have written about this before, but I was reminded of it three times in the past week with discussions/e-mails.

OK, to set the record straight, I was most surely not a Dean's List student in college, far from it.  I wasn't the most diligent student at Amherst.  But, I did graduate, in four years (as was the norm back then, I think), with about a B- grade point average.

But, again, I did graduate.  I tell people about the prodigious amounts of work--reading and writing, writing and reading-and thinking that were required.  No, I didn't do all of it, much to my regret now, but I have tried to catch up thanks to the inspiration of many of my professors.  How many times were comments on my papers something like, "No sloppy thinking allowed?"  Well more than once, I know.

In fact, that was one thing, among many, I appreciated from my professors--their comments on my papers. They were, of course, intended to be critical.  After all, that's the job of a professor, isn't it, to critically evaluate students' work/ideas?  And I compare that to my experiences with my several graduate degrees--my graduate experiences pale in all respects, except perhaps, my efforts.  And I think those efforts were hatched at Amherst.

I often think when I explain what was required of students at Amherst people think I am embellishing or maybe even lying.  I don't know why anyone would think I'd do that, but from the looks I get......  I am not at all kidding when I say my first history course had twelve books required for it.  And there were also a number of reprinted pages, sometimes chapters of 30 and 40 pages, that had to be read.  Yes, many classes had a 3-5 page paper due each Monday.  In high school, wasn't 3-5 pages a term paper?  Every Monday?

I remember, more than once, coming home from an away ball game on Sat, early evening, getting off the bus and then trudging to Chapin Hall (it looked just like a Howard Johnson's!) to study for a couple of hours in the always-open classrooms before heading back to the fraternity.  (Saturday night, fraternity??????)  I didn't do this every week, but enough so that I remember it.

I remember having to write two almost thesis-long papers for my history comprehensive exam.  (Don't pass the comprehensive, don't graduate--even if all the courses have been passed!)  I spend a couple of hard-working months on those.  Of course, then I had to defend the papers along with a list of books in my major field and my minor field in front of three professors.  I was grilled for more than 2 1/2 hours (making me very late for a very important date!).  Oh, these papers and the defense were extra-curricular; that is, they were done outside of classes, in addition to classwork at that time.  I recall the one masters dissertation I did, all worked up was I over its defense.  I remembered the harrowing experience at Amherst (although Professors Ratte and Czap were cordial and seemed satisfied I knew my stuff) and dreaded the graduate defense.  Was it a joke?  Did the three professors sit down, smile, and then say, "It's obvious you know more about this topic than we do.  What do you want to talk about?"  Huh?  I initially and briefly thought this was a joke, but it wasn't.  My adviser asked if I wanted to go with them for a drink to celebrate my coming degree.  (It wasn't such a big deal to me--my third one.)  My second son had just been born a month or so before and I hadn't seen him a whole lot.  So, I asked if I could just go home and be with him.  That was my "defense."

All of that is true.  Most folks who know me and know of Amherst realize its academic/scholarly reputation. But I don't think most really grasp the rigor that was required.  I do know that I was taken aback at how easy graduate school was, almost like returning to high school.  I had one professor at Eastern Michigan who obviously didn't think I had written a paper I had written.  He called me into his office to discuss it and possible plagiarism.  Within minutes he asked about where I had done my undergraduate work and I told him.  He was from NYU and well-versed with Amherst.  He sat up straight, I remember, and said, "Oh" and the was the end of any talk of my paper.  That same professor, later, in a class I couldn't attend regularly because I was coaching high school football telling me, "You don't have to come every week.  Just come when you can."  I'd call him every week and tell him I couldn't make class.  He had no problem with that.  I had another professor, in the spring when I was coaching baseball, who told me a similar thing.  I explained my attendance predicament and how I really hadn't done any of the reading.  She was puzzled, asking, "You're doing fine in class.  How are you keeping up?"  I told her I essentially had this class before.  She thought I had taken it and then dropped it.  No, I told her, I had this stuff in my introductory history course as an undergrad.  Dubiously she asked, "Where was that?"  I told her Amherst and she essentially told me, "Oh, you don't have to come anymore."

I always got a chuckle out of people who laughed at George W. Bush for having a little bit better than a C average at Yale.  I don't know exactly how Yale's grading system was, but if it was anything like what I suspect it was, then nobody should be laughing at Bush's C average.  As I noted above, I had a B- average. There are Cs and then there are Cs.

Again, I may not have appreciated all of the work and requirements at the time, but every day I now thank my lucky stars for my college experiences.  (Which is a good reason not to rely on student evaluations of courses, professors, even colleges.)