What’s the reason behind university requirements, especially upper-division writing requirements? There is an answer: to ensure that graduates have the ability to express themselves in a written format. But why would everyone need to take the same upper-division writing class when most of us can already express ourselves the way we need to within our respective fields?
Here are my thoughts:
- English majors: you get to discuss with people from other majors and learn new terminology or concepts, and gain a deeper understanding on how the common English readers think.
-Psychology majors: you get to analyze people who are not analyzing you back and slowly discover are your conclusions correct.
-Economy/Engineering/Math majors: you get to actually do some real writing and not just plug and chuck formulas and data.
Of course, these reasons have no solid proof behind it, and I don’t think the university will officially state these reasons as the real reasons behind the upper-division writing requirements. Perhaps it is easier for them to state that passing the upper-division writing requirement shows that you are sufficient in writing and won’t embarrass the university in the real world as you will be representing the school as a graduate. Or it can be easier for us to accept a reason such as the university just want your money, so enroll in the class and pay up; and if you fail, enroll again and pay again. Whatever the real reason is, I am sure that we will all find out in the future and think back about this class and answer the question: what was the real reason for taking UWP101 at UCD?
3 comments:
You really think that you'll find out "in the future" what the "real reason" of this class is?!? Won't it really just be a mystery locked in history???
What do you mean by "deeper understanding"? Why do we invoke a structure of verticality to describe thought? Think about this critically.
Where does this "the real world" concept come from? Why isn't the world you are living in *right now* 'real'? Doesn't it feel pretty 'real' to you? It does to me.
I think the reason why we all have to take this class is to freely express our ideas in a small classroom. This is a upper-division class where people of all majors need to take this class in order to graduate. Since almost all of us must have taken upper-division courses of their studies before taking this class, most students must have some knowledge of their disciplines. Therefore, when we talk about a topic, we all contribute our thoughts, which is based on our disciplines, to the class. To clarify this example, when we talk about consumption, students who are studying psychology told us that we over-consume people of our inability to differentiate want and need. However, as a economics major, I think over-consumption is a good thing people it stimulates the global economy and bring wealth to other third world countries. In conclusion, I think this class is like a model of what we will see in the future as we meet people of all backgrounds.
I would firstly like to say I enjoy this class.
Being a computer science major I think we take this class, so that the school can make a few extra dollars off of us. In her response Carol said we get to discuss our ideas in a small classroom and other things which is why we have to take this class. I disagree because most UWP classes are not formatted the way our class is.
The real world comment makes me think of a backpack I used to own. It said "School prepares us for the real world. I want the fake world." It actually drew a lot of comments when I walked around school.
I think we just have to accept the fact that sometimes we take classes but do not really know why until years from now little things we learned in class helps us seem smart.
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