summer semester

I'm so glad it's almost over. About another two weeks at most, acually.

The stereotypical image of the college student burning the midnight oil...I've done it. (I should mention here that my wife is also taking classes, so when she comes home from work, she gets on the comp; consequently, as I tend the kids during the day, I usually do my work after she's gone to bed. Which I don't mind. Usually.) Had a report for environmental biology due Friday before midnight. Sent it through about 11pm.

Check my schedule. Ah, write a chapter summary for sociology. I haven't read it yet. (Unlike my other instructors, he wants HIS work sent in by noon on due days. So I run his work through the night before, staying up a little late in the process. Which isn't a problem for me. Usually.) Start reading it. It's boring stuff and takes me time to get through it. By 1:30am I haven't finished it and decide to go ahead with the summary.

Eventually, I don't even properly finish the summary and send it in. Shut down the comp and go to bed. Time on deck: 4am.

Much of Saturday, of course, was slept away.

Good luck, crazy, and, like you said... it's almost over.

You know we're all pulling for you man.

Show them what a member of the Kiss Army is capable of!

Good luck with that crazy. My sincere best wishes.

Many thanks, all. And LOL@Rich!

I'll need the luck 'cause when this one's over (sometime in the first few days of August), I jump right back into it for the fall semester.

ugh ugh ugh.

ok, enough of my whining about supposed higher education.

What's the general opinion about required/recommended reading lists for college English/Literature courses? Did you read any of the stuff? If you started reading it, did you actually finish it?

Be careful with that. Some professors like to be sneaky and assign material and never cover it, but will test on it.

Myself, I always got by with the boring stuff by paying attention in class. My teacher would always lay out all the stuff they thought was "significant" about the works they were assigning.

All I remember about my entire undergrad was that I had to read Mary Shelley's freaking Frankenstein four times. That's once for every year. I know absolutely everything about this book, and I didn't like it the first time I read it.

My thoughts on course reading? Teachers should get together and sort out their books in a group, so this kind of thing doesn't happen.

My other thoughts? If it weren't for course readings, I would never have read Obason, Green grass Running Water, or Barney's Version, and those have become favourite books. When profs take a chance on a book that you wouldn't otherwise read (oh, and Beloved) the students usually win. Usually.

Sidenote: the wife had a job interview yesterday; came home and said she got it. So in addition to her full-time job, she will be teaching a computer class (the same comp class I'm taking now) once a week at the community college I'm attending.
End sidenote.

Make sure you pass, then, cause you just *know* she wouldn't take any gruff from you if you have to take it over again...

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Seriously, I wish her luck in the new job.

Funny thing here: that summary I stayed up until 4am doing and didn't properly finish? I figured since I had scored well on most of my other recent summaries I could take a small hit in points with this one. So I was expecting 7 or 8 out of 10 points. I opened his e-mail just now....

10 out of 10 points.

And, somehow, a whole 20(!) points on a summary I did a couple nights ago (up til 2am that time).

I guess I shouldn't complain or question it all, but I don't understand it.

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You're better at this stuff than you think you are. Sometimes you just need to give them the information. Too many people get caught up in verbalizing, they forget that the point is sometimes just to relay information, not to obfusificate.

*leans in close*

*in Chris Tucker voice*

"What th' hell did you just say?"

LOL [img]smile.gif[/img]

Nah, I don't think I'm so smart. I think I'm just able to retain a lot of stuff, especially if it's something I'm interested in (music appreciation class, for example).

I've no idea how smart you are, but you do exhibit an extraordinary amount of wisdom.

Aw shucks... [img]redface.gif[/img]

Anyway...OH HAPPY DAY!!!!
Got an e-mail from my Intro to Computers instructor. Due to time constraints, there WILL NOT be a final exam or final project. I just have to turn in an assignment this weekend and then that's it, class dismissed, thank you and good night.

So glad too, I just know the exam would've killed me.

Best exam story I ever heard took place at a Christian college.

The class started out the year in a typical way - you read the entire textbook, we cover chapters in class, you have a final exam, etc.

The day before the final, the prof gets up and writes out a summary on the exam topics. Included in this summary are about seven chapters the class has not covered. Students question the prof about this nightmarish development, and he says, very correctly, that they were told they'd have to read the entire textbook and it isn't really his concern if they haven't.

So they next day, early morning, one of the students sits down in her assigned seat and turns her paper over at the signal. She sees her name has already been filled in with red ink. She scans the paper, and sees that all of the questions have answers filled in with red ink. She glances around the classroom and sees the other students looking up and around, bewildered, with red ink scrawled across their papers. She flips to the last page and sees written, in her prof's writing -

"100% final mark. You have just experienced Grace."

(the prof used the exam time to open up a discussion about the nature of grace, which is granted without merit on people who really, really need it and don't at all deserve it)

Best second hand story I have:

Friend of a friend was in a philosophy class. We'll call him Phil for no apparent reason.

Final exam roles around, and Phil is just sick as a dog. Major flu symptoms. He manages to drag himself to the exam anyway.

Teacher gets up in front of the class, takes a chair, places the chair on the desk, and says "write me an essay proving to me that this chair exists."

Phil is not amused. Phil is already having a bad day. Phil decides, "screw it." Phil writes "What chair?" on the exam paper, hands it in, and goes home to be miserable and cranky.

For this, Phil gets an "A"

Sometimes, it's best just to take the direct approach...

"Is Hell Endothermic or Exothermic?"

A true story. A thermodynamics professor had written a take home exam for his graduate students. It had one question:
"Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with a proof."

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. One student, however wrote the following:
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First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass.

If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for souls entering hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since, there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant.

So, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose (i.e.,Hell is exothermic).

Of course, if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, than the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over(i.e.,Hell is endothermic).

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given by Ms.Therese Banyan during my freshman year, "That it will be a cold night in hell before I go out with you," and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having a relationship with her, the second case cannot be true. Therefore, hell is exothermic.

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The "student" got the only A.

Now, see, as amusing as those stories are, it makes me question the necessity and/or value of a college education. I'd have been mad as hell if I'd written an essay about a chair's reality, got a B or C, then found out the sick boy who gave a smart-ass answer got an A. Likewise the prof doing the exam for the class. What the heck is that?

I'm sure I sound like I'm contradicting myself, but come on....I'm not looking for favors from the prof, and come exam time I'm of the mind that I'm gonna pass or suck.

i love that Hell one. it makes me laugh every time i read it.

and crazy, i'm beginning to realize that a university/college education isn't worth shit in the real world. bah.

university teaches you how to think.
college/community college teaches you how to do.

i'm starting to wish i'd done the latter.

I said you were smart, and able to cut through bullshit and say what you mean.

See what I mean?

Well, I went to a business school, and I'm working in a job in my major.

I'm also incredibly lucky.

But the piece of paper helps in the job world. It really does. It won't work miracles, but it will open doors.

And as my nearly sainted mother always says, nothing you learn will ever be wasted... NOTHING.

oooo... Jace, could you send me some blue prints?

You need the old type of pens that were spring loaded and had the button to retract the pen tip. Basically you disassemble the pen and use the spring and button part. By jamming stuff down there you can launch it by pushing the button and releasing the spring. Sometimes the spring gets launched as well.

Low velocity, so no one got hurt. Used to break up the monotony of a long-winded history lecture though. :)

Dang. Wrong kind of pens. Hmmm...

That piece of paper does help open doors. And the more doors open, the more chances to get what you want.

That said from someone who hasn't finished her degree. I thank God I have the good job I have because I know I'd have a hard time finding a decent job right now because I don't have that piece of paper and the economy still sucks.

I don't know. Learning how to make projectile launchers out of pen caps seems...

Think of it as fertilizer. Some times you have to shovel shit to make the flowers bloom...

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