{"id":14262,"date":"2012-10-23T11:15:32","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T15:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=14262"},"modified":"2012-10-31T14:43:30","modified_gmt":"2012-10-31T18:43:30","slug":"raise-your-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2012\/10\/23\/raise-your-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"Raise your hand!"},"content":{"rendered":"<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i1138.photobucket.com\/albums\/n525\/playthekeys\/GIFS\/tumblr_ldhgslFDi11qckkah.gif\">\r\n\r\nCan you remember back to the first week of classes? You know, back when everyone had something to say in class\u2026eager to impress Profs with their extensive\u00a0vocabulary\u00a0and subject knowledge.\r\n\r\nIf like me, you do remember these students, you too might be wondering what happened to these eager students?\r\n\r\nI have a hypothesis. These student's confidence was shaken by Profs with their often too blunt responses to a student\u2019s attempt to contribute to an in class discussion.\r\n\r\nI think this is a serious problem, if you happen to be thin skinned. I am not and I tend to not really care if what I say in class happens to be totally incorrect. Well, I care that I\u2019m wrong, but it makes me want to find out why I\u2019m wrong. It\u00a0doesn't\u00a0make me rue the day that I ever raised my hand in class.\r\n\r\nI realize that everyone is different. Some people find the \u201chard love\u201d approach of so many Profs at U of T difficult to reconcile. I have this opinion:\u00a0I paid tuition to sit in class so I will raise my hand and contribute as much as I feel comfortable and if I\u2019m wrong then my\u00a0Prof can explain to me why I\u2019m wrong if not in class then during their office hours. I\u2019m paying to learn and being completely wrong and making big embarrassing in class mistakes is just part of what learning means to me. (see instructional video below)\r\n\r\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ei_A9QM6UcE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\r\n\r\nThis attitude has allowed me to let snarky remarks from Profs slide right off my back. Being in the humanities I have some classes that participation counts for up to 25% of the overall term mark. With the stakes this high you have to be able to recover from an in-class embarrassment and move on.\r\n\r\nIf you can push yourself to get back into the game in class then when all those papers are due you won\u2019t feel so pressured to get an A+ because you\u2019ll know that you have at least a good chunk of \u00a030% of you overall mark covered with participation.\r\n\r\nThis is a great mental exercise too! Every time you feel nervous or unsure whether you should raise your hand in class, just think of it as a percentage towards your overall mark. \u00a0Obviously you want to attempt to contribute something meaningful to the discussion, but your response doesn\u2019t have to be an eloquent diatribe of the subject matter. It could be a clarifying question, and add on to the last comment made, or a connection made to another topic you\u2019ve already covered in class.\r\n\r\nI broke out of my shell a few years ago and started raising my hand all the time. Sometimes I get the \u201clet\u2019s hear from someone else comment\u201d. \u00a0I might seem overly eager to my fellow classmates, but this is the thing. They aren\u2019t marking me, the Prof is. I\u2019m far more concerned with what my Prof thinks about me than what the stranger sitting behind me thinks.\r\n\r\n-Lori","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\n<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nCan you remember back to the first week of classes? You know, back when everyone had something to say in class\u2026eager to impress Profs with their extensive\u00a0vocabulary\u00a0and subject knowledge. If like me, you do remember these students, you too might&hellip;\n<\/div><div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2012\/10\/23\/raise-your-hand\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Raise your hand!&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div><div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2012\/10\/23\/raise-your-hand\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Raise your hand!&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,6480,68],"tags":[9426,9422,9425,9424,9427,9423],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14262"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14262"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14509,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14262\/revisions\/14509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}