Scholarly rant # 2.
Expect mildly plausible parables to compel your intellect to expel digestive juices out your nasal cavities.
Well, this semester ended with a bang. Apparently I passed all the courses I thought I wouldn’t. And the course that I was kinda sure I’d get at least a passing grade… I uh… well… snap… flunked it with a capital F. It’s amazing… I think I’ve taken this class three times now… I know it in and out. I am fairly certain I could write half a book on it… but so help me, I fail the tests miserably. Maybe if the tests didn’t have to be written by computer geeks (no offense… I’m a computer geek too… it seems we write out stuff okay, but when it comes to asking questions, it’s like the ostensible purpose is buried under a league of jargon and juxtaposed adjective/adverb clauses that make you feel like you’re trying to paddle a monkey with a toothpick in a grease house. And it doesn’t help that they don’t want you to answer the ostensive purpose in plain english, but rather purport the answer in a similar manner… like mimicking someone who doesn’t know ebonics with the same ebonics that you don’t understand, even if you do understand it, and all the time you’re really talking about British English. I swear, these tests make me want to punt a kitten out a window *anger anger, frustration frustration*).
example question:
Which direction is up if you were lying on your back parallel to the Atlantic coast of the US, given that your feet point towards the nearest point along equator.
My answer:
North.
WRONG!
Correct answer:
Since the US is in north america, and north america is designated as north to the equator, chances are that your feet will point toward cuba and thusly your head would point north. Because people generally assume up to be along a vector that is perpendicular to ones eye-level and also pointed away from one’s feet, the direction of up can be associated with the cardinal direction of north.
Of course, 9 times out of ten, when I try to write this stuff out, I make a mistake somewhere near the third time I have to repeat myself, and so while 90% of the time, I repeat the same thing over again for them, there’s this 10% that I misspell something or mislead or state something flatly. Having done that, then it follows that the ten percent eats up about 60 to 70 percent of my credit on an exam. In the end, have a series of answers that are somewhat understandable, and the professors tell me I’m correct, but I wasn’t specifically correct, and so the credit is null.
I love it.
*shrug*
Oh well.
To be honest, I’ve never felt better. If I can’t produce the answers people want within a time limit, then I gauge myself as okay. In fact, I want to live the rest of my life having my own voice. The last thing I need is repeating myself, or my colleagues, in order to help them develop lazy ears that need repetition and generally promote the inbreeding disaster that normally plagues graduate level thinking (the idea that people shouldn’t get all their education in one place, because any university will always have one way of thinking). And besides, tardiness is my style when it comes to academia (yes, that was a corny double-entendre)…(although using the word ‘retard’ in any sense immediately renders this blog politically incorrect and offensive, I’m sure). I think I’ve made many people cry with how silly and blatantly optimistic my writing and programming is.
I guess being a realist is necessary for good engineering. Hahahah, then I’m going to be the worst engineer ever under those terms.
*bows and exits the room*