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Preparing to be Wrong in College
Nov. 24th, 2009 08:46 amI've been feeling really proud of the presentation I gave in History class last week about the Roswell incident. I got my graded paper back yesterday and was happy to see I'd gotten a 97% on it. I had 3 points deducted because the prof felt I didn't adequately establish bias. He's right. I should have added a paragraph describing why I thought the authors were so biased. He also left a comment at the end that said he especially enjoyed my summation paragraph because I "didn't mince [my] words."
Yesterday, I was reading an article at feministing.com titled Pondering Being Prepared to be Wrong. The quote she used in her article was, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original," (Sir Ken Robinson) which I'd never heard before, but really liked. And it made me think about my history paper...
I left the last sentence of that paragraph in because 1.) I felt it was a strong statement of opinion and this was, after all, an opinion piece. 2.) When you write an opinion, you have to be prepared to be wrong. Or at least be prepared for people to disagree with you. 3.) I genuinely felt that way and I was prepared to defend my opinion if it was challenged. *
Last night a classmate of mine got up to give her presentation. I'm going to paraphrase her presentation, but this is very, very close to exactly what she said.
"I read 'The Case Against Barack Obama.' The author didn't think he should be president. He used quotes from Obama. That's it. The end."
I was a little shocked. The professor asked a couple questions trying to get her to talk a little bit about the book. Things like, "What was the author's thesis?" and "What sources did he use?"
I asked a question, "Did the author convince you?"
She said, "I don't want to start a debate. I already thought he shouldn't be president, so..."
Another classmate asked if the author had brought up Obama's birth certificate. She just said, "No."
I was mostly disappointed because I'd heard a lot of people's reasons for thinking Obama isn't qualified to be President, but I hadn't heard any that held any water and I was interested in hearing some. Also, lately I've been enjoying a good debate. I'm a little disappointed that she wasn't up for defending her own opinion.
Was she afraid to be wrong? Or did she just not read her book?
I'm beginning to see where Kent State got it's motto: Kent read. Kent write. Kent State.
* Just as a refresher, the last paragraph of my paper was this:
"I found this book to be very poorly written. The authors seemed unable to organize the information into any coherent form. The book is filled with typos and their endnotes occasionally do not match the superscripted numbers in the text. The end result is a muddled mess of conspiracy theories that most readers would find difficult to slog through. This book not only fails to prove the authors’ thesis, it adds nothing to the existing body of work on the subject, and may actually detract from it. What this book needed was a good editor to cut the superfluous garbage from the finished product. But, then, there wouldn’t have been any book left to sell."
Yesterday, I was reading an article at feministing.com titled Pondering Being Prepared to be Wrong. The quote she used in her article was, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original," (Sir Ken Robinson) which I'd never heard before, but really liked. And it made me think about my history paper...
I left the last sentence of that paragraph in because 1.) I felt it was a strong statement of opinion and this was, after all, an opinion piece. 2.) When you write an opinion, you have to be prepared to be wrong. Or at least be prepared for people to disagree with you. 3.) I genuinely felt that way and I was prepared to defend my opinion if it was challenged. *
Last night a classmate of mine got up to give her presentation. I'm going to paraphrase her presentation, but this is very, very close to exactly what she said.
"I read 'The Case Against Barack Obama.' The author didn't think he should be president. He used quotes from Obama. That's it. The end."
I was a little shocked. The professor asked a couple questions trying to get her to talk a little bit about the book. Things like, "What was the author's thesis?" and "What sources did he use?"
I asked a question, "Did the author convince you?"
She said, "I don't want to start a debate. I already thought he shouldn't be president, so..."
Another classmate asked if the author had brought up Obama's birth certificate. She just said, "No."
I was mostly disappointed because I'd heard a lot of people's reasons for thinking Obama isn't qualified to be President, but I hadn't heard any that held any water and I was interested in hearing some. Also, lately I've been enjoying a good debate. I'm a little disappointed that she wasn't up for defending her own opinion.
Was she afraid to be wrong? Or did she just not read her book?
I'm beginning to see where Kent State got it's motto: Kent read. Kent write. Kent State.
* Just as a refresher, the last paragraph of my paper was this:
"I found this book to be very poorly written. The authors seemed unable to organize the information into any coherent form. The book is filled with typos and their endnotes occasionally do not match the superscripted numbers in the text. The end result is a muddled mess of conspiracy theories that most readers would find difficult to slog through. This book not only fails to prove the authors’ thesis, it adds nothing to the existing body of work on the subject, and may actually detract from it. What this book needed was a good editor to cut the superfluous garbage from the finished product. But, then, there wouldn’t have been any book left to sell."