I was an undergraduate in engineering at Purdue (I grew up in West Lafayette, so this was overdetermined). A huge part of my education was working a very large number of problem sets in a rather large number of technical courses every semester, with several big tests every semester in every one of the courses, so that by the end of the four years it seemed to me that I hadn't had any time to reflect on what I was doing. From what little I knew about European education, it sounded great because apparently mostly you were thinking rather than just doing.
Just after college I spent a year as a Fulbright fifth-year physics student at the University of Padova (or to use the ugly English spelling and pronunciation, Padua). It was the opposite extreme. You didn't really have to go to class, there was little or no homework, and for a course there was one test at the end of the semester. This seemed pretty disfunctional too, because my fellow students tended to do nothing for a semester, then cram at the last minute. Seems like there could/should be something in between these two extremes.... I did have some good teachers in rather small courses at Purdue. Peter Lykoudis taught the fluid dynamics course (with Prandtl's textbook) and handed out quotations from Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet". He also introduced me for the first time to the notion of making micro-macro connections, something that has been very important in my career. I got a job as a student assistant in a particle physics lab and acquired a mentor, Pete Palfrey, then a young professor, who at several critical moments in my life suggested what I should do next, and I mustered the good sense to follow his advice, which turned out extremely well in every case. When I was a senior I took his excellent "modern physics" course using the excellent textbook by Robert Leighton, with whom I later got to teach at Caltech. It was Palfrey's influence that led to me switching from engineering to physics. I also had at least one truly dreadful teacher, a professor who taught intermediate electromagnetism from a dreadful textbook and actually literally read the textbook to us in class! Summary of my undergraduate education: 1) I had some large lectures in intro courses, which were okay. 2) Lykoudis and Palfrey had a big impact, inside and outside of courses. Working problem sets was the dominant educational experience. 3) I didn't get much stimulation from other students. Graduate school was a very different experience..... Bruce
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
