“1 student recently came to me during a break in one of my Project Management classes to tell me that he found the subject ‘boring’. At least the student was honest – his body language throughout class suggested that he would rather be anywhere else than at my lecture …” (more)
[Careful With That Axe, Eugene, 6 March]
“Madam – Carol Hunt (Sunday Independent, August 19, 2012) trots out the perennial argument that the Leaving Cert is a tedious, deadening torture chamber of rote learning and repetition that prepares people for ‘feck all’ …” (more)
[John Thompson, Independent, 26 August]
“When I am asked to review a grant proposal by a program director at NSF (doesn’t matter which program), I almost always say yes. There have been a few cases that I can remember when I was sent a proposal quite far out of my field of expertise …” (more)
[FemaleScienceProfessor, 19 March]
“University is where students discover the excitement of learning and the ability to cope with boredom. While being bored at school derives from a monotonous timetable of subjects and activities, at university it’s about tackling just one or two subjects day after day, for at least three years. In fact, the higher you move up the educational ladder, the higher your boredom threshold has to become. Sign up for a master’s and you’ll spend a year on just one aspect of your undergraduate degree; take a PhD and it’ll be about four years on an aspect of a topic of the subject of your degree. This is not to deny that university offers many thrilling opportunities. But it does emphasise autonomous learning, which means you have to make your own fun …” (more)
[Harriet Swain, Guardian, 2 June]
“A university (not in Ireland) that periodically conducts surveys of students in their first year of study to find out what they were most concerned about, has found regularly that it is not money, grades or post-university employment, but boredom. Students coming from the rather actively managed environment at school, and used to being entertained there and at home, can sometimes worry that when these props are removed this is what they will encounter. And for them, the prospect of boredom can be terrifying. This is not the boredom of the spoilt child who has watched every DVD for the third time, but the boredom of the person who cannot make a connection with the world they are in; and the consequence is not irritability or a tantrum, but depression …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog,15 May]
