Author: Matt Filipski

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.

Over the past few classes, we have been revising Geneseo’s academic probation letter, keeping in mind the findings presented the in article The Power of Realistic Expectations by Ian Chipman and Rob Urstein. We have been searching for ways to craft the letter so as to strike a balance between convening the seriousness of academic probation, and reassuring the student placed on probation that he or she is not a lost cause. It seems that as a class, the consensus is that the most effective way to stress the latter is to provide suggestions of resources that the student can take advantage of, and to reaffirm the college’s commitment to the student’s success.  Once we split up into groups to actually begin rewriting the letter, my group were able to make a new letter that I believe did indeed find a good balance. Now, I understand that we will be presenting Dr. Easton a revised letter for her to consider. That made me wonder, however, what exactly is the process by which the academic probation letter is changed? Does it have to be approved solely by Dr. Easton, as her name is on the letter? Or is there a committee that reviews it? The answer could have implications for the letter, as what Dr. Easton thinks should be changed about the letter may not be the same as what someone else or a group believes should be changed. Another question that I had developed was: in the past, had there been any student input into the content of the letter? If not, then I would have to say that the project we are working on in class is an important step in the foundation of real academic partnerships at Geneseo.

I believe that Bloodchild by Octavia Butler could have benefited from being longer. It seems to me that Butler began to craft a complex and incredibly different world, but with the story only being 25 pages or so, this world was unable to be fully developed. If Bloodchild was longer, Butler could have expanded on the relationship between the Terran and the Tlic. We could have known what existed outside the Preserve and other aspects of Terran-Tlic relations that we are currently left guessing about. Additionally, the increased length would have allow Butler to discuss more of the “pregnant man” aspect of Bloodchild. In her afterword, Butler describes this story to be, to some degree, a story about what would happen if a man became pregnant. After reading the story, I noticed the effects of a man becoming pregnant were not really discussed, at least from a social perspective. If the story was longer, perhaps Butler would have written about the social consequences among the Terrans of men being pregnant- how would Terran social order be different now that both genders could bear children?