The bars and coffee shops near the University tend to remain busy during the semester. When I first started attending UNM, I wondered why the businesses around Central Avenue seemed so busy.
It seemed to me as if hanging out in those shops was a tremendous waste of time, and a distraction from homework. I couldn’t imagine managing to get anything done.
This should tell the reader what kind of nerd I am. My Friday nights are often a matter of reading and video games. I’ve surrendered to my nerd tendencies, and am laying the long odds on an employer appreciating that kind of full-on nerdiness.
Now that I’m taking graduate math and science courses, I’m starting to see the utility of spending time in coffee shops and bars, engaged in something like a study group/support group hybrid. I suppose the reason for my change of heart has a great deal to do with the volume of material I’m supposed to learn, and the room for interpretation which is entailed in learning it.
Learning statistics for large data sets entails more than just regurgitating definitions on a test. I now have to figure out what it all means, which spirals into what I think I’m doing with my life and career, edging into questions about who I think I am.
Learning does tend to challenge our beliefs about ourselves and the world, and if there’s anything that will cause a certain amount of existential doubt, it’s trying to figure out what the hell a data set would mean to the people reviewing your dissertation.
After all, you have to convince someone to fund your research, and more people to sign off on your degree.
Sometimes, when faced with brain-melting stress and an impossible workload, what you really need is the company of other students in the same class who are having the same problems. You need someone who understands what the hell you’re complaining about, and can turn to you and say those magic words: ‘That hurts my brain, too.’
While the conversation may not be directly cathartic, there’s still a great deal of comfort to be had in facing the challenge of education together. It’s comforting to know that you aren’t alone.
I wish, as an undergraduate, that I had taken advantage of being in the same class with people I thought were smart and interesting, and sitting down, over a cup of coffee (or a beer, for those of legal age), and talking about what I did, or did not, understand out of the homework or a lecture.
I’ve found, as a graduate student, that talking about the material sometimes gives me those ‘ah-ha’ moments which allow me to better understand what I’ve been asked to understand.
It’s easy, at least for me, to get obsessed with finishing an assignment just so, or to try to work ahead in my homework. Knowing that I have set aside time to go meet someone to talk about course work allows me to put down my work and relax a little.
As we head into the next month of the semester, it’s worth making a little time, if you have it, to sit down and talk about the classes you’re in with other students. Sit down in the library, look at your notes and tell everyone else there studying with you what you think it means. Ask them if they understood the notes differently. Talk about the class. Are there things that are working for you? Are there things that are not working? Can someone explain the ideas in the course you don’t understand? Can you explain to someone who doesn’t understand?
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It’s proverbially true that explaining something helps you be more confident in what you know, and can help you figure out where you didn’t understand something as well as you might have thought.
I’m teaching again this semester. I hope my students have been able to talk to each other, and that they sometimes talk about the material from my class when they’re just hanging around. If they can talk about it, explain it and think about it, they’ll get so much more from my class.
