My Undergrad in Textbooks (1st year to half of my 3rd year)

Greetings you who happened to stumble upon my blog post. It's almost official. I'm done my undergrad. The reason I say almost as I still have that pending status next to my application form. Anyway it took me 5 years, yes 5 years, to get here and if anyone hasn't picked it up, I switched from a bachelor of science to a bachelor of arts degree hence the amount of time spent there.

My first year I took the 3 core science courses (chemistry, physics, biology), calculus, and English in the fall semester and in the winter I traded biology for French.

English textbook, French text-
book, Russian textbook

The majority of my first year textbooks were sold as when I took courses the next year there were better books that came along. I also remember buying the majority of them new as the textbooks that were used that year were new editions or new course texts and in order to follow along my way of thinking was I should get the new books. One book I didn't really have to get was my first year English textbook for the fall semester as the instructor for that course only used like 2 or 3 short stories and poems out of there while the rest was from some other books he had. I pretty much kept this book for the stories and poems in case I feel like I want to read some of them one day.

My second year since I fulfilled my English requirement I decided to fill that slot with Russian. I did continue on with chemistry and French, redid a math course, and for a little while did some more physics (I eventually dropped the physics course). That year I bought two of my textbooks used from the student union run used book sale (even for used books they were not cheap as there was a commission added to the asking price of the seller plus tax) and one thing I noticed about science textbooks is the more advance the course the thicker and heavier the books become. I think I remember trying to sell my French textbook but I don't think anyone bought it (maybe there wasn't an instructor that used the book at the time I was selling it). It does have nice colourful pictures and if I want to review/expand my French I guess I could always go back to it. As for the Russian textbook, I kept that until a new textbook was required for the second half of the second year level Russian course. I remember my instructor (which I had for every Russian course I took except the film one) calling this book "crapola" at one point and saying that the book is meant for those who have some rudimentary knowledge of Russian along the lines of "enough to communicate with your Russian-speaking relative." This was also the year I took my first steps into linguistics. The course I took (introduction to phonetics and phonology) did not come with a textbook but instead a course notes package.

Linguistics textbook (on the English
language), Latin textbook, Irish-English
dictionary

My third year at university was when I switched over to linguistics. I didn't take very many linguistics courses that year since I was sort of starting anew (technically the Irish language course was offered by the department of linguistics of overall I took 3 linguistics courses, 1 Russian and 1 classics). Since arts degrees required a minor (a subject of secondary concentration) I chose Russian as I did very well in the 1st year level courses. I could've made Russian my major but linguistics seems to have more career options so I went along with that. Textbooks that were used/reused were for my Russian and two of my linguistics courses. The red textbook pictured was kind of interesting not in the terms of content but that it had pages missing. They weren't torn out but something went wrong during the printing of this particular textbook. The Latin textbook was bought new and is also a keeper because I enjoyed learning it and maybe one day might want to re-educate myself. Also the textbook has some interesting fun facts and mentions Monty Python at one point. The Irish course I only took it in the Fall semester as in the winter I'd wanted to keep the same Latin instructor and I wasn't all too interested in learning Irish (yet I ended up doing well in the course). The textbook I had for the instructor that year was just a dictionary as she provided the worksheets.

And since I've babbled too long on here, I'll post the rest of my undergrad through textbooks in another post.

Learning Devices

Yesterday this appeared on my Facebook feed and it's about the University of Ottawa considering a proposal which is a ban on electronic devices in the classroom such as laptops and smartphones and other related devices. This comes from a professor saying that it's distracting.

I have brought my laptop to class many times and from the classes I've been to I don't think any of the profs were bothered by it. Maybe some of them are but not as vocal as the prof mentioned in the news report.

Some find laptops help them learn. The advantage to having a laptop is it saves paper. If the instructor posts notes online there's no need to print them (and for some no need to attend the lecture but you should go once in a while if you're that kind of student). The laptop is also useful in taking notes.

For the phones (whether they're the newest iphones or the basic phones) they're useful if let's say someone is waiting for the doctor to call with some good or bad news, or some other emergency. There are two instances in which I remember accessing the internet through a smartphone (1 instance was technically an ipod touch) was useful in class. The most recent one was someone reading out a list of people who had to do something during the instructor's office hours when he couldn't remember who he has scheduled during that time. The other instance was someone looking up the definition of a word on his ipod touch.

But are they a distraction? They can be, but it's not something that should be banned.

From a teacher perspective they want to make sure the students are actually learning something, even though we are adults and are responsible for doing whatever assignments and showing up to class. Depending on the acoustics of the room there may be some instructors that dislike the sound of keyboards click-clacking. And yes, instructors may be able to tell when you're texting or not

From a student perspective, I have brought my laptop to class many times and I do go on Facebook and other websites. I have brought my laptop to work on other assignments for other classes. I have also seen other students with laptops in class and I remember seeing someone watch anime. If you can watch the video the comes with the article, one student mentions seeing someone watching porn on their laptop as wells as someone shoe shopping. Call these distractions yes but in my opinion students get bored. There are days when you're in class and the instructor just drags on so might as well see what your friends are doing on Facebook, watch something on YouTube, or read the latest gossip posted by a blogger.

I think there should be a compromising solution to this rather than an outright ban. If a certain instructor doesn't want technology in the classroom that's up to the instructor but it shouldn't be campus wide. It's understandable on test and exam days but on regular lesson days it shouldn't be a problem. Even if there is no net service in the classroom there are other ways to distract oneself with the laptop.