Class Roundup: Chinese Society

Traditional Chinese Society ended yesterday, with my first final during finals week(s) and my fourth final overall. Being my first one during finals it was officiated in an authoritarian manner that I’m only used to for standardized tests. The professor had the exams on our desks when we came in then read verbatim off of an instruction sheet provided to him by the university. I know that it was provided to him because he laughed when he read aloud that you are allowed to have calculators out (since the only number we dealt with was the number of souls that a person has).

Out our class of twelve, I was given seat number twelve. For the large classroom, we were all squished onto the left side rather than spread out over the room, as would have been sensible from an administrator’s standpoint.

After we were read out loud the directions, the professor, who already had us down by name, seeing that he taught all the tutorials and the class was really small, had to verify all of our identities by means of our student identification cards.

I didn’t think the final examination was too hard. To study, I did all the readings again and went over our class discussions of the topics—both those online and those in the classroom. He specifically said not to stress specific details—so I didn’t.

We were given seven questions based on various topics that we covered in class and we had two hours to answer two of those questions in an extended in-class essay format. And I feel I answered those two questions well and completely, despite the fact that I was the first to finish. (I usually finish somewhere in the middle, though the fact that I finished first may be because I was the only native English speaker in the class.) We’ll see how I did.

Other assessments for this class included the weekly journal, online discussions, and project.

The weekly journal entries only had to be two hundred words long each, and I usually went past that. Many of my classmates, realizing that you can’t really say much in two hundred words went well over four times that. This blog has already added up to over one hundred thousand words, so I’ll attest to the fact that you can’t say much in two hundred words. We were to write on the topic of traditional Chinese society that we were covering that week. Whereas other classmates treated the entries as anthropological research assignments, I did less of that and instead had personal reflections on the topics. Often, I would through in the line or two about how I feel we’re exoticizing the subject too much, but I’ve talked about that a lot already.

The online discussions I contributed to more often than not. Some people had contributions several times a week. It was also apparent that some people had not contributed once to the discussions. I always tried to interact with other students on these online discussions rather than only summarizing articles as was prevalent at the beginning of the semester.

I can’t remember if I talked about the term project, but it consisted of a two thousand-word (field) research paper accompanied by a presentation to be made during tutorial. On the syllabus, it said that it was due week seven. To that effect, I got it done before the week seven tutorial, ready to present. I was the only one in the tutorial that had anything to show, not that the professor was expecting it. That week he decided to schedule in everybody’s presentations, and when it came to me, I asked if I could do it that day, since it was already done. He (reluctantly) said yes and I got it over with—meaning that I unintentionally lectured for forty minutes.

My topic was on the (Christian) religious beliefs of HKU students. My sample size was small, as he only required about ten interviews. Overall, my results fell in line with Hong Kong SAR statistics. I noted that I didn’t encounter as many self-described Christians as I imagined. My professor made the note (that I didn’t see) that the number of self-described Buddhists was higher at HKU than in Hong Kong SAR statistics. I felt that my report was well-researched and well-written.

On a different note about the same class, I’m planning on petitioning to have this course qualify for my minor in the Study of Religion for my degree back at UCSD. The undergraduate advisor told me I couldn’t because nothing in the syllabus mentioned directly “religion,” so I had to rebut by saying that religion in the modern, scholarly sense ultimately refers to one’s overall view on the world and what things are significant and how those things are significant. In addition, there is a class called “Chinese Society” at UCSD that has the same course description as the course I was about to take, and it happens to fulfill the requirement without petition. She then forwarded my request for preapproval to the director or the program, who decided that I did have a case and that I did receive preapproval. So hopefully everything falls in line.