YOU DON’T WRITE IN LIBRARY BOOKS! Or the librarianwill pull your arms out of your sockets … for starters …
If you commit the serious sin of defacing common property, then doesn’t your librarian quick-check the book on return, and make you pay for a new one if it’s unusuable?
I think the point was that if you only used library books, you could not write in them. Ergo, Spoons bought their own books, the better to scribble in. But I cannot tell you how many Ph.D.s I know who think it’s okay to dog-ear or pencil in library books as long as you don’t use ink. Makes me stabby, it does.
I thought we were talking about university students, not elementary school children unable to concentrate.(Sarcasm off)
Really, though, if you want to doodle/scribble, use your notebook. And for homework, you have a homework book, don’t you? I own a lot of books, and I don’t scribble in them, esp. if they have exercises. If I want to do the problem again in 2 years for practice, then I get out a new piece of paper; scribbling inside would mean I could do every exercise only once.
American students are frequently taught that underlining and / or highlighting is an effective way to study. I disagree, but it is a very common practice here and encouraged by professors and tutors, not just textbook vendors. And no, “homework book” doesn’t really make sense in this context. We have workbooks (exercises only, designed to be written in), and various notebooks such as composition books, but “homework book” is not an expression I’ve ever heard.
Incidentally, I couldn’t tell you were being sarcastic. A lot of my colleagues do treat the students as if they were elementary school students liable to be distracted by any shiny object, and pander to them accordingly. The students, of course, eat this up. But it’s late in the semester and thus a bad time to expect me to be charitable towards the study habits of American students.
I saw this in Malcom in the Middle once: Reese (the dumb brother) was sitting at the kitchen table, highlighting stuff in his history book … each and every sentence. He flipped back a few pages, sighed and said “I don’t understand how this is supposed to help me learn.”
Well, we use in school - I don’t know if in University, though - booklets called Hefte, one for each subject to write down what the teacher tells us, and one where we write the homework down. The teacher collects the homework booklets, corrects them and gives them back (or we correct them together in class, depending on circumstances.)
Only in the upper grade - what we call Kollegstufe, and some people tell me is euqivalent to US college - did I switch to ring binders, so we could insert and move single pages (one of the reasons our teachers in the lower grades discouraged ring binders in favour of booklets was that they feared that we would loose single pages).
Of course, by that time, we’re old enough to do our homework even if the teacher doesn’t collect it, for our own good.
That’s hard for me to understand. We are still talking about university, not college (which seems to have very low standards of its students, from what I gather), right? Where students learn independent work and such?
Maybe I’m idealistic because I don’t teach the students directly. Sometimes, I’m negativly surprised at how little the new students know about proper research, an essential in proper scientific work. But then I see how hard the conscientious students work…
You know, when I think about this, I can’t understand this, because here, in primary and secondary school, all students get their books at the start of the year from the school itself, and thus are told sternly not to write, scribble or otherwise damage the books. The teachers know this and therefore pay attention to scribblers. They certainly don’t encourage students to scribble in books! They do teach you to write your own notes, or how to use index cards for vocabulary etc. Those you can highlight all you want; and formulating what you want to remember yourself is already a first step in learning the thing correctly. Simply underlining what somebody else phrased is less effective. Or do the teachers expect the students to repeat word-by-word defintions from the textbook?
Okay our biology teacher in AP biology started each field with defining terms that we would need, and we had to learn the definitions. But then we had to use the definitions in our own words to explain the concepts in the tests.
At the end of the year, the books are returned and checked, and if the book is damaged, you have to pay it.
Periodically, the school buys new textbook editions, and then the last year can keep the old editions. Nice.
Huh? How long does your semester go? Do you mean a trimester? Because here (Germany) Summer semester at University just started on April First as every year (well, actually it started two weeks later after Easter, when lectures begin).
Our semesters (15-week courses) go from very late January until mid-May at this school, though it varies. We have two semesters per year and an optional summer term — the other semester is late August through mid-December. The schools with three regular terms plus optional summer terms are on the “quarter” system (10-week courses).
And yes, I am talking about university-level education. I am in California, and I think that you would be appalled at the low level of skills tolerated among our university students. I think we’re hijacking this thread but feel free to contact me offline or start another one if you want more details.
We called homework books blue books and usually only use them for something like an essay that has to be turned in, or a test that required answers that were written out, as opposed to tests that were computer graded and had to have a special form. Or at least that’s what I used them for, but I’m 51 and haven’t attended school in years. In primary and secondary grades, our teachers would sometimes require us to keep our notes in a spiral bound notebook, which has anywhere from 70 pages to hundreds of pages, but mostly they wanted us to use the 70 page single subject notebook. In high school and college*, I usually used either a multi subject spiral bound notebook or a looseleaf binder to keep my notes in.
Whatever happened to narrow rule notebook paper, BTW? I can only find wide rule and college rule these days, and there used to be a third choice, narrow rule, available.
*My family and friends have always used college and university interchangably. Both offer four year degrees and post graduate studies. Junior and community colleges only offer two year degrees, but they are wonderful places to get the first two years of study done, if the credits can be transferred. They are a good deal cheaper than four year colleges.
Since we’re talking about students at universities now, I felt reminded of this thread when I read statements by young Americans staying in Germany at the Spiegelsite (a renowed German weekly magazine):
This is the (translated?) quote from US student Paul, 23, on German universities:
To a german, that sounds … non-adult. Take a student by the hand? Our students would refuse to be treated like children like that! And class-rooms? There are no class-rooms in a university, only lecture halls! It’s for being independent and learning how to act on your own what unversity is all about!
Yes, I admit that the first weeks of doing everything yourself after coming from High School where stuff was fed to you is challenging. But a lot has been done in the last 10, 15 years: we have a special day for first-semesters, where they get info brochures of every kind, we have Tutors = elder students who give the important information to the first semester freshmen (not only where the rooms are, but also all the personal information), we have special groups for the foreigners where tutors show them the city and they can meet other foreigners just as confused by culture-shock as they are (though more could be done in that area to integrate the foreigners into the german groups and help them learn german quicker), etc.
Constanze, can I marry you? And then bring you to talk to my university administration?
School just ended on Friday for me, but during the semester that’s exactly what I did: I found all the textbooks for my classes (albeit older versions, usually) in the library. By the end of the semester, I spent only $13 on books, and I had to spend that much only because the library didn’t have a copy of Don Quixote that had the same translator as the one that was found in the anthology textbook.
Of course, it seemed that there was only one copy of each of these textbooks, so if anyone else on campus besides me had tried this tactic, one of us would have been out of luck.
You seem astonished that universities in the U.S. are not culturally and administratively identical to German universities. And yet, it all seems to work out in the end, generally speaking.
And yes, the textbook racket sucks. Fact is, nobody gets exercised enough to really do anything about it, and as such it will continue to suck. It just doesn’t suck enough for any one person or group of people to take the initiative to change the system in a meaningful way. In my experience, university students (and, indeed, the public at large) are known more for their propensity to complain and vocally sound off about such matters than to actually do much about it. Surely there must be German words for inertia and apathy, and analagous imperfections in the German system.
I find the term “semester,” as used by Americans, to be misleading. “Term” works better. They can run from as short as one month to five months.
In Spanish a semestre is six months. In American English, not at all.
I’ve suggested this before to people. The look of “but… !!! wait why didn’t I think of that?” is priceless.
To be fair, you can’t usually do this in the library or any copy shop that’s paying attention, as staff is supposed to stop you violating copyright on their watch.
One of my classes requires you to have your own copy of the book. He makes you write your name on it in marker in class.
I like highlighting my books and writing notes in the margins. Post-it notes, too. How else do you indicate to yourself what parts are important for your research?
I generally don’t like textbooks. There are some disciplines where you need them, sure, but most could be replaced by actual readings. On the other hand, I actually assigned my students a textbook this semester (as a complement to the lectures and primary source readings). It’s actually a really good one.
Don’t get me started on students being babied at American universities. Seriously.
Back to grading…
The professor wrote the book, right? Or was one of the writers? 
Yep. He wrote the book. He includes a lot of exercises that we do in class. To be fair the book was relatively cheap ($37) and was really just a 3 inch binder with the text in it. It looked like he was trying to cut costs. He says he isn’t profiting from the sale of the book but I don’t buy it. He could easily markup the price $5 or so and we wouldn’t know the difference. He teaches 2 sections of this class, which have 20-30 students in it. That could be a decent chunk of change for someone on a community college professor salary.