In the latter part of yesterday’s class I was reading Jessica’s blog post Our Progress, and was immediately reminded of something that Dr. McCoy has said a few times in recent weeks: “My goal is to become irrelevant by the end of the semester”. The first time she said this, I do remember thinking, initially, that her statement was quite an odd thing to say, especially coming from a professor. Of course, when she elaborated on what exactly she meant, I realized it made perfect sense. It was her goal that by the end of the semester, we would no longer require her assistance to complete the various writing projects assigned to us. I believe that Dr. McCoy has been successful in achieving her goal, as we have done a good amount of work without her holding our hand along the way. As Jessica pointed out, Dr. McCoy left on a business trip to England and we still held a productive class, and more recently she has been leaving the room to encourage us to work solely within our groups.
I pondered how this idea of our professor preparing us to work without her fit into the framework of an academic partnership. The conclusion I came to was that Dr. McCoy has crafted a partnership that differs from most others students enter into. Generally, an academic partnership, especially in a freshman-level course, consists of the professor imparting knowledge to the students, and the students listen and are tested on the material. Dr. McCoy, on the other hand, has created a different type of partnership, one in which she instructs her students in the strategies they need to complete the assignments without her constant involvement. The former partnership is often beneficial for the classes in which it is employed, but for Dr. McCoy’s course, the partnership present is probably the best way to get the most out of what INTD 105 has to offer.