My Level Review
You know how you guys absolutely love to read my academic writing? How you love to read fifteen pages about Derrida, nineteen pages about language philosophy, seven pages about Feminism, ten pages about signifiers and signifieds, three pages about philosophy of metaphors, and all that junk? And you know how you’re always bugging me to see four different versions of the same short story, each one written at least a month after the previous one, ’cause you always wanted to see the process of writing? Well, today is your lucky day.
Because here they all are, in one beautifully laid-out PDF document, for your downloading pleasure.
I had to put it together for my level review, which is probably one of the coolest things ever to hit the undergraduate circuit in years. As most of you know, the thrust of my education at Green Mountain College is participating in something called the progressive program. The prog-prog (rhymes with frog-brogue) is the manifestation of an educational philosophy that started with the John Dewey, who took it that “education is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.” As it makes itself felt at GMC, this philosophy allows for the student to guide his or her own education. While there are certain criteria that each student must fulfill to graduate, there are no specific course requirements. The program trusts the student to know what is best and to do what is right. It really is an amazing way to go through college.
A large part of the program is self-evaluation. At the end of each semester, I’m supposed to write a page or so on each class, evaluating the work I’ve done in light of the goals I hoped to achieve at the beginning of the semester (the goals are included in the semester study plan, which all students write up within the first two weeks of the semester). Every three semester, the students go through their level reviews (a level is the equivalent of a semester).
In the first one, the level 3 review, the student looks back on her entire educational career, including high school, and tries to discover the type of student she is, her strengths and weaknesses.
In the second one, the level 6 review, the student evaluates her progress over the past three semesters, but more importantly, she looks forward to her final semester, during which she’ll have to do a senior project, a 12-credit paper and presentation that will represent the culmination of everything she has done in college. The level 6 review is where the student demonstrates what she wants to do and why she is capable of doing it.
Though this is my seventh semester at GMC, this is my level 6 review. I didn’t get to do it last year because I was in Alaska. It’s not that big of a deal because I knew what my senior project was going to be and I set up my classes this semester in order to prepare for it. On the other hand, if the level review committee (which is the group of professors and students who determine whether I’ve met the relevant criteria) decide that I’m missing something, such as, I don’t know, quantitative-reasoning skills, then I don’t really have the chance to use the semester between my sixth and final one to make up for it.
The upshot is that I might have to do an extra semester of my undergrad in order to graduate. Of course, this is only if my review committee decides that I’m missing a skill, but still, the possibility adds a little bit of stress to the rest of my week.
I actually do the level review on Friday morning. That’s when I’ll sit down, present my work, defend my progress, and hear what my committee has to say. The presentation for my level 3 was intense. Well, it was relaxed, a bunch of friendly faces sitting around and doing their best to help me, but the nature of the situation, the self-reflection, the revealing of weaknesses and strengths, all of it is rather intimate. The intimacy is intense.
Though I’m a little stressed about the review, I’m still looking forward to it. It’s why I went to school in the first place. Wish me luck!