So, what is a typical graduate seminar like?

[drownsoda]

I'm starting my first courses as an MA student this fall, and am just curious what seminars are typically like. 

From what I've read, they are mostly discussion based, and hinge on questions/musings/ideas/theories that are posed by the students, which are then talked about as a group on the topic at hand. If this is correct, and is what graduate seminars are essentially like, I'm kind of surprised because that was basically the format of ALL of my upper-level undergraduate English courses. When I was reading about the standard differences between lectures and seminars online, I found myself thinking back to when I was studying to earn my BA, and couldn't think of a single class I took that WASN'T like a seminar. Maybe this is just standard for humanities courses, perhaps?

Full-on lecture was rare in my undergrad classes, and the bulk of our class time was devoted to discussion— it was really common for each student to be required to submit a thought/make a post on the week's reading online, which the professor(s) would review and then select salient points of discussion for when class time came. Since many of these classes had around 20-30 students, we were often divided into groups, but discussion was essentially par for the course, and about 75% of our class time was devoted to it. Occasionally we would have to do presentations at the end of the semester, and obviously papers were frequent as well.

Anyway, if the standard graduate seminar is actually like what I've read it is like, it really doesn't sound all that different from what I experienced in undergraduate classes (aside from having higher demand from the professors and being a more intimate group). For anyone who has more experience and has taken seminars, does this ring true, or were your seminars wildly different from your undergraduate "lecture" courses?

Edited August 16, 2015 by drownsoda

[ProfLorax]

Good question! I'd say most of my grad seminars were structured similarly to my undergrad seminars: discussion based sessions on that week's readings and course concepts. Here are some subtle but important differences:

• Both in my MA and PhD programs, classes met once a week for three hours. This means we had more substantial discussions, diving pretty deeply into each reading. Some professors also assigned small group work to fill out the time as well.
• The sections are smaller, which means there is more pressure to talk in class.
• Many, if not most, students have a laptop ready to go.
• Many seminars require a presentation component. This can range from students presenting mini-conference papers or even leading the class for an hour or two. 
• Students are often treated as experts in their subfields. For example, I am often asked, "what does a disability studies reading of this text look like?" by my professors or classmates.
• Some people will try to be the smartest person in the room. Don't be that person. (Sorry I'm slipping into advice here.) Be the hardest worker or the most engaged or some other superlative if you must. But the folks trying to be the smartest person in the room (name dropping theorists irrelevant to the conversation as if everyone knows their entire bibliographies, speaking thesaurus-ese, interrupting others), are often the worst. 

[1Q84]

 

Some people will try to be the smartest person in the room. Don't be that person. (Sorry I'm slipping into advice here.) Be the hardest worker or the most engaged or some other superlative if you must. But the folks trying to be the smartest person in the room (name dropping theorists irrelevant to the conversation as if everyone knows their entire bibliographies, speaking thesaurus-ese, interrupting others), are often the worst. 

All invaluable information from ProfLorax as per usual but this one really stuck out to me. 

To get my armchair psychologizing on, I've noticed that being "Mr. or Mrs. Smart Jerk" in class can often be a reactionary move to counter any feelings of imposter syndrome. Understandable but also quite annoying.

In my MA program, I often found the person who was humble about what they knew and didn't know in class tended to be a) liked the most by colleagues and the professor and b.) did best overall in the class because they were open to new ideas and weren't so busy trying to prove their extravagant intelligence. Obviously this humbleness was backed up by hard work and competence. (When it wasn't, those folks tended to drift into the "I'm so dumb so I'm not going to try" self-flagellating route...) 

Anyway, drownsoda (sorry, were you the one before with the Courtney Love avatar? I totally feel like I recognize your username but not sure. If so, you probably know well what I'm going to say next since you were a regular contributor around here during discussions about this topic, I believe.) I think you may soon find out that academia can sometimes be a battle to the death of egos. The sooner you recognize and neutralize in yourself any instinct to join the fray, the better.

[drownsoda]

All invaluable information from ProfLorax as per usual but this one really stuck out to me. 

To get my armchair psychologizing on, I've noticed that being "Mr. or Mrs. Smart Jerk" in class can often be a reactionary move to counter any feelings of imposter syndrome. Understandable but also quite annoying.

In my MA program, I often found the person who was humble about what they knew and didn't know in class tended to be a) liked the most by colleagues and the professor and b.) did best overall in the class because they were open to new ideas and weren't so busy trying to prove their extravagant intelligence. Obviously this humbleness was backed up by hard work and competence. (When it wasn't, those folks tended to drift into the "I'm so dumb so I'm not going to try" self-flagellating route...) 

Anyway, drownsoda (sorry, were you the one before with the Courtney Love avatar? I totally feel like I recognize your username but not sure. If so, you probably know well what I'm going to say next since you were a regular contributor around here during discussions about this topic, I believe.) I think you may soon find out that academia can sometimes be a battle to the death of egos. The sooner you recognize and neutralize in yourself any instinct to join the fray, the better.

Thanks for the input, both of you. It does sound very similar to what my undergraduate courses were like, albeit with some minor differences in terms of expectation.

As for the academic superhero genius syndrome goes, I knew many people like you and ProfLorax are describing when I was an undergraduate, and that attitude has always gotten on my nerves. I had multiple classes with one particular person who acted as if he were Jack Kerouac reincarnated, and while he was intelligent, he was also pompous and obnoxious. He was the kind of person who in discussions always seemed to be judging everyone else's ideas and thoughts, but would never actually directly present that. My intuition told me that he acted like that because he was insecure, and people have different ways of dealing with that, one of which is to overcompensate.

I'm naturally a less brassy person, so I don't know if even imposter syndrome could push me to that point, but I do know what you are referring to because I've known people like this. The department at Fordham seems really tight-knit and the PhD student who toured me around the school told me that their students are really close and like family— it's not a cutthroat environment like NYU or the like— so I hope to feel fairly comfortable in the seminars. I enjoy the intimacy of smaller classes and always have, and feel like I've learned more in them, so this all sounds positive.

Oh, and yes, I did  have a Courtney Love avatar! You're the first person who noticed! That's where my username comes from as well. I'm a diehard Hole fan, which is funny because when I was visiting Fordham, the PhD student asked me what kind of music I liked, and he told me I was the second person he'd met who was considering their program that was a fan of that band (he was as well). It felt like a sign from the heavens!

[Wonton Soup]

It depends a lot on the students, the size of the course, and the professor teaching the course. Sometimes students will be asked ahead of time to lead a week's discussion; sometimes the prof will do a little kickoff; sometimes it will be all about small group activities; sometimes the prof will guide discussion using questions/comments from a message board everyone writes to before the class; and sometimes it's just open, blank discussion. The number of students in a class will influence what a day looks like, as open, unstructured discussions are generally bad for larger classes (where the loudest students can dominate and others can get lost) and small group activities can't be done in a 3 person class. Also, the personality of the students matters more than in undergrad and can influence a course. 

My favorite grad classes in the past are my favorites because of the other students in them. On the other hand, my least favorite grad class was my least favorite because of the professor, for various reasons. 

[dazedandbemused]

My experience in graduate seminars has really been as wide ranging as Wonton Soup describes. I've had a feminist theory class where nothing the professor could do managed to keep the atmosphere from becoming progressively hostile through the semester. I've had classes where the professor is so dynamic that everyone's performance is made better. I've had classes with a professor who is amazing and helpful one-on-one, but will bore you to tears in a group discussion. If I had advice, I'd say expect the same variety of human error as anywhere else. 

I'd say the biggest difference from undergrad is that, as ProfLorax said, the learning process becomes much more egalitarian. Most of my profs talk to us as though we are all professionals exchanging ideas, and I think that spills over to paper writing, where you are again encouraged to think like an academic rather than a student. But also, it's not really as scary as you think it is (I half expected my advisors to have knowledge flowing in their veins, but they're normal people. Some of them wear dad jeans).