I have been an instructor at OU’s liberal arts school in Tulsa since September of 2007. I have taught more than 100 students of all ages and backgrounds since then, with the majority of them coming from the Tulsa/Pine Bluff area.
Oklahomans have been coming to the liberal arts school for a very long time. Like I said, I have taught more than 100 students, and most of them come from the Tulsa area.
In 2007, I was part of a team of four from my school that went to a conference in Washington, DC. It was the first time that I had ever traveled outside of the Tulsa area, and my team was the only one from my school that was not from Tulsa. It was a big deal for me because all of the teachers from my school were either from Tulsa or the surrounding areas, and we had one teacher from Oklahoma City.
The conference was called the Congress of Collegiate Scholars and it was the largest conference of its kind in the country. We had about 300 students from all over the country, and more then 400 teachers from all over the country. I think it is interesting that some of the people I met at the conference were from Oklahoma, but most of the people I met were from outside of Oklahoma. I also think that it is interesting that a lot of people I met were from families with a high school education.
The conference started with two main themes: Social Responsibility and Technology. The latter of these was actually one of the more interesting parts of the conference. The people that came from places like California and New York, were more interested in social responsibility than they are in technology. This is actually an issue I have been working on recently, since I am in a small town in Oklahoma, and I have a small high school that is very interested in technology.
I wanted to give my students a chance to show off their technology skills, so I gave them an industry event that included a large stage and a set of speakers. The speakers were the owners of a local tech company that wanted to do a presentation about a new type of cell phone.
In the end, they were impressed with the technology used, but they didn’t like the speaker’s presentation skills. They thought he was a bit too “intimidating”. It was a big disappointment, but maybe next time…
The truth is that tech companies are often very intimidated by the tech majors in their fields. It’s because they see tech majors as smart young people who have all the experience in their fields and are therefore more likely to take their advice. Tech majors often end up looking like they’ve been run over by a truck. It’s a real shame.
Tech majors take their own advice from the people they work with. And they aren’t always wrong. In fact, I would argue that its better to be wrong when you are working with a tech major than to be right with someone who is very much like you.
Tech majors are often like students. They see themselves as being smarter than the people they work with, but they are also like students. Their opinions are based on limited knowledge. Tech majors end up spending too much time studying, looking up useless information, and learning nothing. And that is why you want to work with them. Tech majors end up making you look like an idiot by taking you to task for doing things that someone else is supposed to be doing.
