A Quote by Alice McDermott
At the beginning of every semester, I ask my graduate students whether there is something I should read that will help me understand their work.
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I teach one semester a year, and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester, a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s, people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.
I teach a 14-week semester, and one of the things I do when I have to teach literature is, for the first half hour of the class, I have the students write the beginning of a new story every week. At the end of the semester, even if they have learned nothing about literature, at least they'll have 14 beginnings that they can take with them.
My attitude toward graduate students was different, I must say. I used graduate students as colleagues: I gave them the best problems to work on, and I encouraged them.
What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.
Read your work out loud. Don't give me that look. Read your work aloud. Don't argue. Don't fight. It will help. I promise. I promise. I guarantee it. If you find it didn't help you, lemme know. I will let you Taser me in the face. And by "me," I mean, some other guy who will be my stand-in. Probably some real estate agent or tollbooth attendant.
Work is exciting when it's challenging. It should be something that makes me afraid initially and prompts me to ask myself whether I'll be able to do it or not.
To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.
If something's true you should be able discuss it or ask whether it's true. It helps me as a comedian. But it doesn't necessarily help my personal life.
Every man on the planet should do some physical work: he should help in the bread-labor of mankind. He should also do some of the intellectual work: he should help in the thought-labor of mankind. In a word, every thinker should work, and every worker should think.
We want our students to graduate from high school, but we want them to graduate with a plan, whether it's college or career.
The obsessive focus on a college degree has served neither taxpayers nor students well. Only 35 percent of students starting a four-year degree program will graduate within four years, and less than 60 percent will graduate within six years. Students who haven't graduated within six years probably never will.
Students read for tests and because their parents ask them to, but I think it's very important to tell children that you can read for fun, too, and to understand human spirit. It builds empathy.
This is something caregivers have to understand: You have to ask for help. You have to realize that you deserve to ask for help. Because you need to keep on working on your own life.
It really pains me greatly to hear from graduate students that graduate education is a lower priority here.
Today, the Americans have developed a new culture in science based on the slavery of graduate students. Now, graduate students of American institutions are afraid... He's got to perform. The post-doc is an indentured labourer.
I'm just encouraging students to read. It's something you can do daily. It's something you can do whether you're sitting at home reading a newspaper or ordering something online. It's endless.
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