Curriculum Tier List1
Having been at college and finishing out the fall semester for my 3rd year, I do ponder a lot about whether it was worth it. Even more so, having already completed my computer science degree in two years, was it “worth” staying and getting a second major in Global Development Studies? After evaluating myself from a mainstream audience, I found that the answer is no. The line of reasoning would be my career earnings, etc. etc., with it hinging upon a monetary argument. That is how much money a person with a Global Development Studies degree commands on the market.
And I don’t necessarily disagree with that thought in the practical sense, but it does bake in some assumptions about education that I wouldn’t advocate myself. The assumption is that you should educate yourself so you can get paid. That assumption is probably why a lot of people derisively use the term “liberal arts” as a caricature of a group of people. You know…, the barista, out-of-touch intellectual, social justice warrior, or hipster. However, the main question I ask is whether the liberal arts world sees the world differently. Though, just as importantly.
“It’s technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that makes our hearts sing.”
Going back to my 2nd major. I want to defend the “Studies” portion in the name. Safe to say, any field that ends with Studies is treated as a heuristic for “useless”, at least economically. And to that, I say true. Economic output, insofar as being able to produce, commodify, and market as some “thing,” is not the goal of such majors. But even then, there is a cultural devaluing of it. I mean, compared to social intuitions around politics majors, they are clearly more favored over the “Studies.”
Why is that? Aren’t we all working with the same socio-political-economical-historical raw materials, right? My answer to this lies again on the point of practicality, in this case, cultural and institutional practicality. Politics/Polisci has a well-defined career path and institutions with which it engages as a discipline. In contrast, what is “Studies” as practice, not just critique? The difference is illuminating of what methodologically needs to change, if not the field, but maybe of me, the student.
“The mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist of eloquence, which is an exterior and momentary mover of feelings and passions, but in active participation in practical life, as constructor [and] organizer, as “permanent persuader”, not just simple orator.”
“Practice what you preach”
You don’t have to wait until “the revolution comes” in order to practice mindfully living.
To build further of this idea and what I see failing in reality, I am reminded of this clip from Waking Life:
The irony without referencing DeBord is already clear here. My interpretation of the scene is one of capitalism and how it becomes so far-reached that students as extensions are only seen as “consumers” of knowledge. And as such, our positionality as a consumer of knowledge, gives us no real stake in actually practicing the ideas or living it out in our lives. “All theory no action”.
I worry about this because it puts into peril the very thing I have been doing all semester in these non-technical courses. All of the intellectual uptake of Diverse Economies, Development, Anarchism, Governance, and etc. etc. will only stay as ideas. This worry extends urgently to the site of the classroom right? The classroom and university are the larger structures we operate within and often support the on-going forms of knowledge acquirement and dissemination. 2 Really, the strongest heuristic I have to demonstrate is: How many ideas do you get outside the institution of school?
The Tier List
Wow, I have somehow made a post about a silly tier list into a reflection on the value/aesthetics of knowledge and how that maps on to discussions of our political and economic life. Am I becoming boring?
Anyhow, here is the fun part where I explain why I put the classes into those tiers and why even those tiers. The direction will be from the lowest to the highest tier.
Irrelevant
It’s blank. I don’t think any class I have taken was wholly irrelevant and divorced from the world.
I Was on My computer
STAT2120: Intro to Statistics. I never went to class. I passed with an A.
Could Have Been Better
Queer Theory and Asian American Studies are not bad; I just took them at the wrong point in time.
Data Ethics was interesting, but I don’t think the class as a whole “cared.”
EGMTs are interesting, but only if you get to choose the one you want. I didn’t, and although it was not the worst, I was just waiting for the class to end most days.
The class on Plato was too early in the morning, and I didn’t apply myself either. Also, taking a 3000s Philosophy class as a first-year was a questionable move for me.
Career Mileage or Great
Of course, all of my CS classes contribute to the knowledge I would need as a computer scientist. And a lot of the elective courses are fun. The two technical ones I am taking this semester are Compilers and Defense against the Dark Arts, which bring together all the knowledge from the core curricula meaningfully.
EGMT 1520: Making Medicines Good was a fun dive into the structures of a public research university and what that means for the students in it. It also talked about the pharmaceutical industry, shady practices, and the future prospects of such.
BME 1501: Advancing Equitable Solutions was an enjoyable elective that considered a simple thing: who does a technology benefit, and who does it not?
EGMT 1510: Are Oldies Goodies? I watched movies and wrote critically about them; what is there not to like?
I Learned as a Person
These courses challenged my personal philosophy and worldview in some way.
Data Visualization and Performing Archives asked me to rethink the importance of the senses, specifically sight and touch. The raw materials of experiencing stimuli are as important as reflection/theorizing.
PHIL 1330: Virtual World and Philosophy was a fun course. A broad introduction to many branches of philosophy while considering questions we have all thought about before, like: Are we in the Matrix?
CS 1110: Intro to Programming was my first dive into programming. I think I’m somewhat good at it, but this course set off my course on understanding computation, writing code, and programming.
CS 3100 and CS 3130 were not life-changing in themselves, but more that I took 5 of these terminal core courses in a semester as a “limit test”. How much technical knowledge and abstractions can I learn in a semester while being able to live life? I learned a lot, but past the limit of what I could handle. Of course, I put them here for a reason other than that, which is they addressed fundamental problems of computations, that is, the theoretical limits and the core low-level constructs.
Global Development Studies. I would have immediately dropped it if I felt like I was not learning anything, but unsurprisingly, I have.
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Scripts to generate your own images here: https://github.com/You-Gao/wordstoimg ↩
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In the class on Tuesday, where our classroom was “deconstructed” in light of Anarchism, I saw and felt in others and myself that there was an apparent anxiety. The dichotomy of student-expert generated quite clear tension. The standing and sitting of teacher and student. The sharp contrast of knowledge and authority was quite sobering. ↩