A new student came up to me after yesterday’s Novels of Don DeLillo seminar.
“Can I join your class? I got thrown out of Painting because I can’t paint.”
A new student came up to me after yesterday’s Novels of Don DeLillo seminar.
“Can I join your class? I got thrown out of Painting because I can’t paint.”
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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
September 19th, 2009 at 10:23AM
I sometimes tell students "Lie to me!" That one I liked, though.
September 19th, 2009 at 10:31AM
I loved it, Michael. It made my day.
September 19th, 2009 at 11:01AM
Hate to spoil the humor, which is rich, but the student might actually be telling the truth. I’ve had students excluded from Introductory Photography at my Famous Eastern University because they didn’t take photography courses in high school and attend photography camp in the summer. So along with the professionalization of youth athletics comes a professionalization of a lot of things to the point where a student who hasn’t had some training already is impossibly behind in an "introductory" college course at some schools.
September 19th, 2009 at 3:08PM
Polish Peter: I understand what you are saying. However, the situation is a shortcoming of our system. Intros should be intros. Perhaps your more developed students should be in another photography class. When a student shows interest in a subject or area, they might be on the brink of finding a passion.
September 20th, 2009 at 7:36AM
Exactly, Polish Peter. Our art department for years advertised "Intro" courses in drawing, design, and other areas as part of the general education curriculum, but students had to present a portfolio for evaluation before being allowed to take the class. The course descriptions did not indicate any prerequisites at all. If a department wants an introductory class restricted to majors, fine, but don’t advertise it to the general population or put it in the general education curriculum. The current chair had the good sense at least to pull them from general education.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:45AM
I’m hoping you won’t have to throw them out of your course because they can’t read.