There is this university-level committee I am on, and every meeting is a trip to the Twilight Zone because the meetings are where I get to meet Bizarro Xykademiqz—someone who superficially seems like they would be similar to me, but are actually the exact opposite. Seriously now, there’s a person (a woman, in case it matters) on this committee with whom I disagree 100% on everything. It’s so weird. There hasn’t been a single thing we’ve seen eye-to-eye on. Not one! We are both opinionated people, which is why this issue comes up, but it’s still a little shocking. The other folks are spread out in between while this person and I hold two opposing views. It’s very strange for both of us to be in academia (granted, in very, VERY different disciplines) yet have virtually nothing in common, at least when it comes to viewing the work of this particular committee. (I might also be having tiny panic attacks at the thought of having to interact with this person outside of the committee.)
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This year, I’ve started advising undergrads in an interdisciplinary program. Recently, a student came to me with a course plan that is so unbelievably packed and so high-level, that I was shocked and was a bit at a loss as to what to advise. I didn’t want to tell the student outright that their load was too great, because some people are quite capable and the student does have a 4.0 GPA so far. What surprised me was the fact that they are dead-set on getting into graduate school, which is fine, but they don’t really know what subfield they are interested in and aren’t even trying to figure out what they want. They just seem to want to somehow tunnel through undergrad courses and get to graduate courses as quickly as possible (the course plan is chock full of graduate courses), but it’s not because they are interested in the topics. Rather, it’s as if they’re being chased by demons (read: likely parental expectations, internalized or not) and the only way to escape the demons is by enrolling in upper-level grad courses as soon as possible and take as many of them as possible. I told the student that maybe they should take a breath and enjoy their undergraduate experience, focus on making friends, maybe take some more courses for breadth, but the student seemed laser-focused on this breakneck pace that will have them complete grad-level coursework before they earn their bachelor’s degree. I did tell them that, too. I honestly didn’t know why they wanted my advice. I don’t know this student well, and maybe they’re a savant so this workload is nothing for them, but again it doesn’t seem like it. They appear to be moving fast for moving fast sakes and aren’t driven by curiosity or specific interest. Several times, they asked if they could skip this course to get to that course; I asked why, but they never had an explanation. It felt like curricular whack-a-mole, with the student focused on getting to hit all these high-level courses, without giving themselves the time to process the material. If I’d known the kid better, I would’ve been more insistent that they stop and smell the flowers or, if not flowers, then perhaps beer and sweat at some campus party. There’s such a thing as taking your undergraduate studies a little too seriously.
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How’s the spring semester going for you, blogosphere?
xykademiqz 
I’ve definitely interacted with some of that student’s phenotype… sometimes it works out (skipping courses to get into harder courses lets the student work on stuff that’s challenging). But the other thing I always like to emphasize is that if they’re interested in grad school, 90% of grad school is *not* coursework… so if they’re choosing doing graduate coursework over doing undergrad research, they’re not helping themselves…
“Chased by demons [parents]”–that poor student. The thing is, even if they’re super smart and driven, there’s some kind of, I don’t know, depth or perspective that goes along with being even a bit older in grad school (e.g., not 20 or 21). I have had undergrads in my split UG/Grad classes before, and there’s just a difference.
@undine I too have seen a difference between undergrads and grads in the same course, but I don’t think the difference is one of age (they were only one year apart). I think that the difference is selection—in the field I was in, only about the top 20% of students chose to go to grad school, and our department only took about a quarter of the applicants, so the grad students corresponded to roughly the top 5% of undergrads.
“How’s the spring semester going for you, blogosphere?”
Since retiring, I no longer teach, but I’ve been taking a couple of courses at the local community college. The intro-to-improv class is not much work: 2 hours and 40 minutes of class and about an hour of homework a week—more like a 1-unit course than a 3-unit one. I find doing improv a bit challenging, but the workload is light.
The theater-design course, on the other hand is taking me more like 20 hours a week (so more like a 4-unit course than a 3-unit one). I lack the hand-eye coordination to draw or sculpt things, so I’ve been reduced to using other skills to make my maquette for stage design: 3D-printing for objects and printing out stuff on my ink-jet printer. Some of it has been stuff I found on the web (like out-of-copyright paintings) and some of it has been my own designs (like the parameterized door models I made with OpenSCAD).
I’m also in a few short plays with the local “old folks entertain old folks” group (that’s not its name, just a description). We’ll be performing in retirement communities and public libraries starting March 20.
And I just got cast in the spring production by the drama club at the community college (no big feat—all 31 people who auditioned were cast as something), but I got a moderately substantial part, though not one of the leads, since I can’t sing and dance.
That’s like every medical student I work with these days. They don’t even pretend to care about the subject as long as they will get their name on lots of abstracts and manuscripts which (they assume) will get them the residency of their choice. I’ve decided I don’t care as long as they work hard for me and get a lot done.