Just for fun - some McGill "top 5s"

Why not? With just one week left of classes, I thought I would come up with a couple of top 5 lists about my entire undergraduate experience at McGill.

Top 5 Courses

5. FRSL 207, 211, 321, 431: French, all 4 years! This has been the only consistent part of my time and McGill and, although I've had three different profs, I really enjoyed all of my time in French- after all, I came to McGill with virtually no ability to speak French and now I can definitely get by in the language.

4. ENGL 315: Shakespeare, Fall '06. This was a long time ago, full of pretentious English students, and a complete elective for me (grade didn't count). In fact, this was the only course I took after first year that was a complete, irrelevant, just for fun elective. And it was lots of fun! Even if the prof was wacked out, I enjoyed his lectures and I enjoyed getting to read lots of Shakespeare.... I'm not sure when I would have otherwise.

3. ANTH 401: Comparative Anthropology, Fall '08. This was a semester course I took last semester with my then-thesis supervisor. At about 15 students, it was the smallest class I took at McGill. And there were so many characters in the class, that it was hard not to be entertaining. The readings were interesting (there was this one anthropologist who wrote about nomadic entertainers in Pakistan, and as part of his research he laid crunched up in a crib for 8 hours staring at what a baby would see.... and he made a sketch of this!), as were the discussions. Then of course the prof would have his anti-postmodernist tirades every once in a while.

2. ANTH 307: Andean Prehistory, Winter '08. I normally I'm not a big fan of archeology, but this class was fantastic. South America had always been a mysterious place for me, but it's ancient civilisations were even more mysterious. I simply did not know anything about them, and taking this course opened my eyes to so many interesting mysteries obscured by history. Although the class was an awkward size (about 30-40), the prof was fantastic and kept her lectures stimulating and organised.

1. ANTH 422: Contemporary Latin American Society and Culture, Winter' 09. This was a fantastic course! I was a litttle sketched out at first becuase it was once a week for three hours.... but the three hours flew by. This was a mostly student-led seminar, so interesting discussions always ensued. The readings and other course material were fantasically well-selected.... and the prof is even having the whole class over her house for a seminar party!


Top 5 Most Disapointing Courses

5. ANTH 358: The Process of Anthropological Research, Winter '09 (ongoing). I had very high expectations for this course.... I thought to myself, finally, something concrete! To be fair, this hasn't been terrible. The prof is young and inexperienced, but she tries very hard. But the lectures are dreadfully boring and often way too abstract to be relevant. The sad thing is that I don'T feel as though this class has made me any more prepared to go into the field.

4. ANTH 337: Meditteranean Society & Culture, Fall '07. With such a promising title, I guess I really had my hopes up. This wasn't a useless course- indeed, the prof making us do group presentations at the end was an interesting way to tie up the course. And the readings were generally quite well-selected. But my god were the lectures boring. Well except the guest lecture by my future honours thesis supervisor: "How many of you have tried sheep cheese before? No one? Good! Because I have some for all of us!".

3. ANTH 355: Theories of Culture and Society, Winter '09 (ongoing). Well, to be fair, I wasn't expecting much from this course, so I'm not sure how "disappointing" it was/is. But I felt I had to put this one there because it's SUCH a dreadful course. Readings are wayy to excessive, they are in a textbook with a font size of 2, and they are excerpted from their original sources - so you don't have any idea of the context. The text book we use actually edits out the concrete examples that the writers use to illustrate their overly jargonised and abstract points. The lectures similarly are so abstract that you actually have no clue what the prof is talking about. Not to mention, the prof left for 3 weeks to meander about in Africa and spent half the class before the midterm talking about his "travel" stories (which were SO boring), before handing us the most psychotic review sheet ever: we had to prepare for 25 IDs and 20 essays in less than 2 days!!!

2. ANTH 338: Native Peoples of North America, Fall '08. This class was a fiasco. The instructor was incredibly boring and disorganised. The textbook was atrocious- each reading seemed like it was written by 3rd graders and said the same thing, "White people are bad and with their alcohol destroyed the lives of the poor natives". The exams were erratic and tested the most irrelevant meticulous details.

1. ANTH 492: Honour's Thesis. Well... of course, this had to be the biggest disappointment.

Top 5 Fixtures of the McGill landscape

When I'm in grad school and beyond, what things -other than courses- will remain in my memory when I think about McGill? What thins will I most associate with the McGill landscape?

5. Never-ending construction

4. Chaos at the bookstore in the first week of the semester / in Shatner on Activity Night

3. Long winters

2. Samosa Sales

1. Red tape (bureacracy!)


Well, those are the lists I came up. If anyone else has another suggestion for a McGill top 5, let me know. :-)