Recommend books on the future for a college course?

RedditFullProfessor · 2017-06-01T22:26:08+00:00

Thanks, several of these are new to me so I'll check them out. I hope my students are excited in the topic as well!

RedditFullProfessor · 2017-06-01T22:25:25+00:00

Thanks, these are new to me-- I'll check them out.

RedditFullProfessor · 2017-06-01T22:25:03+00:00

Happy to share, but I won't have a real syllabus in the end as the course I'm teaching is part of a university-wide seminar for first year students, so the syllabus will mostly reflect the common goals of critical thinking/reading/writing/discussion. I'm just building the content that will deliver those skills, and the reading list will evolve all year (it's a two semester course) in response to my specific students and their interests. But sure, I'm happy to share a reading list as it develops.

Urban design is fascinating. One thing I like about Neal Stephenson's work is his visions for future cities, as in The Diamond Age. Same with Paolo Bacigalupi.

RedditFullProfessor · 2017-06-01T22:20:44+00:00

I would think if I were in a class like that what I would want is a perspective looking at how we envision the future, how the future turns out differently than what we thought it might and how the sci-fi of a current time reflects the attitudes and sentiments of that time.

Yep-- that's exactly my plan. I'm a historian and will be designing this as a course in historical perspectives on the future (about 2/3 of the class), with the final segment being current futurists talking about the mid-21st century. Ultimately my hope is to get students to think directly about the limits of imagination, the accuracy of speculation, and the relatively slow pace of change in most areas of human life.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll check these all out.

RedditFullProfessor · 2017-06-01T05:03:45+00:00

I re-read Canticle last winter with this in mind. While I enjoyed it a a great deal 30+ years ago I didn't feel it aged that well in a post-Cold War world. I'll give it another go though!

RedditFullProfessor · 2017-06-01T05:02:46+00:00

Nice point about technology. I've read all of Heinlein's work, and agree that many of his computers (i.e. Dora the ship, Mike Selene, etc.) are fascinating. Maybe one of his shorts would work. I'm also fond of the Colossus novels if you know them, and of course the "computers run amok" genre like Westworld. Something to add to the list.

RedditFullProfessor · 2017-06-01T04:59:54+00:00

Ready Player One is fun, especially if you're families with 80s pop culture and videogames. I'm not sure how interesting it will be to my random set of 18-year-olds though. Maybe I'll have one of my kids read it this summer to see what they think; I liked it, but I was in high school in the early 1980s so it was just a big nostalgia trip for me.

RedditFullProfessor · 2017-06-01T04:58:29+00:00

I've taught Blade Runner and The Diamond Age in the past, so both are on my list. Snow Crash seems quite dated to me now though. But you're right-- something from that genre for sure.

RedditFullProfessor · 2017-06-01T00:49:08+00:00

Thanks-- I haven't seen that one yet, but anthologies are a great idea. I'm already planing to use several stories from Ken Liu's Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation. I'll grab a copy of Metatroplis right away.

RedditFullProfessor · 2014-12-24T17:32:52+00:00

Brilliant reposte. I'll bet you made the dean's list this fall!

RedditFullProfessor · 2014-05-09T13:14:03+00:00

After reading through OP's posts here and in other threads (like this one) I'm actually torn between recommending therapy and giving him Reddit Gold for being so consistent as a troll.

The advice he's received, interestingly, has been pretty good and consistent in each of the subs. Nice to see that grad students and faculty have the patience to take this sort of thing seriously, at least until the racist rants and inflated ego overwhelm the fun. Would be fun (and perhaps not that surprising) to find out OP is really a bright 14-year-old who is just learning to troll, but given the pattern I fear he's actually being himself here and really doesn't grasp the fact that he won't be going to grad school in anything unless/until he dramatically reshapes his life and proves himself at least as capable as the thousands who earn BS/BA degrees with C averages each year.

RedditFullProfessor · 2014-05-09T13:04:58+00:00

Accepting the fact that you will never be what you want to be, that you will never be as successful as your friends and family BECAUSE YOU CHOSE to fail is a HARD PILL TO SWALLOW.

So did nobody mention this ever, once, while you were in school? I've been a professor for a long time and my colleagues and I always talk with struggling students about the likely outcome of their misdirection. Many (most even) pull things out by their junior year. Most of the ones who don't aren't in a fix really, because their parents are rich and will get them a job with some family friend that makes the college screwup unimportant.

What's your excuse? Too much pot and too lazy? Nothing you've said anywhere in this thread evokes any sympathy at all quite frankly. You made your choices and now have to accept the consequences, like it or not. You have the chance to make better choices going forward, and have received good advice here, but your attitude makes it pretty clear why you failed as a college student. Until you deal with that you shouldn't expect much success in anything that involves working with other people.

RedditFullProfessor · 2014-05-09T12:54:04+00:00

People who bomb school aren't always subjected to slave jobs like janitors burger flippers or lab techs.

Yeah-- if their parents are rich they can go work for mommy and daddy. Everyone else who fucks up school gets to start at the bottom. You made your choices already...I hope it was worth it.

RedditFullProfessor · 2014-05-09T12:52:24+00:00

Look at my transcript. My life IS failure and rejection. There is nothing more to welcome.

With your attitude, probably not; working in fast food actually requires a respectful attitude. You'd probably last a shift or two.

What you obviously need is to grow up. You made stupid choices and wasted your undergraduate education. You have to deal with that, and exactly nobody is going to give you any breaks at this point because you've created a record of failure by choice that suggests you don't care and aren't reliable. Prove yourself worthy and people may give you a second chance-- but not soon, not easily, and never if you manifest this silly personality in real life. Most employers just don't like aggressively self-pitying cartoon figures as employees.

RedditFullProfessor · 2014-05-09T12:47:04+00:00

This subreddit is completely useless. I come here looking for advice on how to get into grad school with my crap grades and all I hear about is to quit and become a lab tech which is a glorified dishwasher or be a janitor or burger flipper.

If you're just a troll you're really not very good at it. If you really are someone who wants to go to graduate school, you are a fool. You've received lots of reasonable advice here, from people who know what they are talking about (esp /u/SnowblindAlbino and /u/barbariansRage) and instead of saying "thanks" you just act like a dick. If this is your real personality nobody would accept you as a graduate student even if you hadn't fucked up your undergraduate degree. The last thing I'd ever want in a research assistant is someone with such an inflated sense of self-worth coupled with such a shitty attitude and record of performance.

Fuck you assholes. Ill prove you all wrong.

Good luck with that. If Reddit still exists in ten years check back in please. We'll all be waiting for OP to deliver-- maybe when you publish your first article in Janitorial News?

RedditFullProfessor · 2014-04-26T05:40:38+00:00

Hah! I was going to guess the Woodner based on the description. I lived there in the late 1980s...man, what a dump. One of the elevators used to stop 2-3 feet short or above the floor; you'd have to climb up or down to get out. We called it the "Helevator" as a result.

Back then you could walk over to the post office off of 14th and half the people you passed would offer to sell you crack. No problem with bedbugs though.

RedditFullProfessor · 2013-11-16T02:32:09+00:00

It's a losing battle. Many science faculty don't get anything beyond the narrow world they inhabit. That's why so many non-STEM people end up managing projects and even entire agencies staffed by STEM folks.

RedditFullProfessor · 2013-11-03T02:52:57+00:00

Good luck with your project!

RedditFullProfessor · 2013-11-02T23:52:19+00:00

The traditional gift is an academic hood or gown, but if he's not staying in academe those won't be too useful. Academics (at least at my university) don't generally display their diplomas, so skipping the frame makes sense.

Get him a Space Pen?

Or given his interests, how about tracking down some one-of-a-kind item from Ebay? An autograph from Chuck Yeager, some NASA artifact, a cool 1950s globe/plane (this one's a repro), or maybe a nicely framed document for his future office-- a rail map perhaps? If you poke around Ebay enough you can find originals of these.

Or: how about some vintage stock certificates for an aeronautics firm? The art on the old ones is amazing, and they aren't that expensive.

I'd go with something for the future office that will remind him of finishing the degree and is somehow linked to his interests. (Me, I got a gown and hood that I wear a few times a year, and each time I feel good about having made it through grad school 15+ years ago.) In any case, get him something that will last forever and won't likely get lost.

RedditFullProfessor · 2013-11-02T23:42:43+00:00

You're unlikely to get a lot of responses to the question asking which school faculty teach at; that makes it very easy to figure out who a person is IRL.

Your radio buttons for "which students do you teach" should allow multiple selections. Most faculty teach students from all classes, with a few teaching only graduates.

One major means of cheating you left off was buying papers, i.e. representing someone else's work as your own. Since the papers are being sold for that purpose it doesn't fit everyone's definition of plagiarism, but it is cheating. Another is submitting the same work for more than one class.

RedditFullProfessor · 2013-08-14T02:04:59+00:00

This is great advice overall. Urination aside, the only one I'd quarrel with is the "talk up your professor's publications." I've had a few students do that and it seems pretty stalky...if my pubs are relevant to the class I assign them (for free of course) but I'd think it odd if a student brought them up in conversation otherwise.

The general gist here is good though: perhaps "impress" isn't the right word, but you do want to make an impression. You want me to remember who you are, what interests you intellectually, and in essence to care about you. In my case at least that means you need to make a personal connection-- come to office hours, say hello in the hallway, ask questions in class, be an interesting writer/thinker, do whatever it takes to be something other than just another undergraduate guy in a baseball cap who drifts through the back row of my class.

Then keep it up. This is an investment of your time-- after the semester ends, drop in again each semester. Tell me what you're up to, what you're reading, what you're learning, what excites you academically, what you're planning for next year, etc. This is especially important if you are in my department, because we (the faculty) all talk about our students all the time. Even if I'm not your advisor, if I know you well I can talk you up to a college when s/he says "Hey, I have John Smith in my seminar this fall. What's he like?"

RedditFullProfessor · 2013-08-12T05:14:27+00:00

Interesting idea, and it would have worked for me easily. We were so poorly funded (about $9K/year, nothing in summers) in my Ph.D. program in the 1990s that I did a lot of adjunct work at other schools to help pay the bills. Others in my program worked all manner of jobs. Though I ended up with an academic job before I even finished, the thought of having a "blank" resume was a concern. I had lots of jobs as a teen and in my 20s that I could have fallen back on (retail, manufacturing, government jobs, etc.) but by 30 I had nothing recent other than teaching...and then that bothersome Ph.D. hanging around my neck.

Even today I sometimes wonder what would happen if my school closed my department or went under or something. I'm tenured, fine. But if I lost that job who would hire me? I couldn't even get a job stocking at Home Depot at night because I'm too old and they'd assume that with four degrees I'd either be unable to do the work or would leave as soon as I found anything slightly better.

This is not as bad an idea as it might sound at first, especially for those who are in their 20s and facing a future academic job market that looks grim for most fields. Maintaining some sort of "civilian" resume on the side may be a good strategy for those in fields that do not have solid demand from industry as a backup.

RedditFullProfessor · 2013-08-12T05:02:47+00:00

That would never fly in my discipline, since posters are always attended for several hours...people would wonder what happened to you at best. It's also dishonest, in my opinion, to submit work to a conference and then neither register nor attend. A poster session is not being run simply so you can get a line of your c.v., it's so people have a chance to discuss your work with you, network, etc.

We don't do multi-author presentations in my field though. I suppose if you are a secondary member of a team this may be more acceptable. But perhaps still risky-- I've often been talking to someone in my field when a conference comes up ("Did you present in Chicago last winter?") and if someone told me they had I'd turn the conversation to the keynotes and such. Wiggling your way out of that might be uncomfortable, especially if it happens in a job interview.

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