Entry I wrote yesterday and forgot to post
Now that I have admitted to myself my intense dislike for our scene, it's difficult to work on it casually. I must get to a place where it no longer bothers me, and then I'll be able to write.
Yesterday was a day of magnificent suckitude. In Life After Death, our professor gave us a two-page pop quiz, because people have not been volunteering enough, and others just do not take any notes at all. I don't think I did badly on it, but I think I got the questions on Lucretius wrong, because I had forgotten to read him.
After that, we were free to go, so I had lots of free time before the academic research. This was for my Human Behavior and Environmental Selection class, which is usually conducted online, but it was mandatory for us to come in one day this week and spend approximately two hours in the computer lab. Everyone was uncertain of the task at hand, but it turns out it was more of the same that we have doing at home for the course. Go through a series of tutorials and then take a quiz.
The computer lab in the Education building is small and cold with ancient computers. The keyboards clacked loudly as people inputted answers. We were told at the beginning of the exercise that, while everyone would be going through the same subject matter, we would be using one of three versions of the tutorial, randomly chosen: complete blanks for the answers, letter clues, or the third option (can't remember what it was). Of course, I was lucky enough to end up with the first option.
It was DIFFICULT. For several reasons:
1. Very distracting. Too much noise, between keyboards and thumps.
2. No letter clues. Some of the material had not been covered yet in our course, so I had no idea what the words were.
3. I swear the answers kept switching around!
I was very angry! I wasn't alone, either, judging by the intermittent thumps of hands upon the desks.
I haven't a clue how I did, as our grade will not be given until the end of the semester, and we will only receive points for the task if we received a score of 50 or above on the final quiz.
However, looking back on it while talking to Wes, I wonder if it was an experiment. Keeping in mind that our TA [Teacher's Assistant], who oversaw this assignment, is a graduate student, writing his dissertation on human behavior type things, it makes sense. OUr other academic research is next month, and we can do that from home, he told us. So it's probably a comparison study. Plus, our class has been guinea pigs for this course. These tutorials and such are being tested out by our professor.
Anyway, Wes said that if it is an experiment, that it's kind of unethical. However, it's not, so long as there is a debriefing at some point, even if it's at the end of the semester.
In other news, I answered an ad in the school paper for a tutor. There's a woman looking for someone to tutor her two boys, grades 6 & 9, for two nights a week. She's paying twenty dollars an hour, so I feel it didn't hurt to try. I don't have much in the way of formal experience, so I was only able to give her one reference in that regard, one of my mother's former coworkers; I helped her son with his college entrance essays. However, I also gave her three other references - my aunt; Steve, my boss at Allstate; and Barbara, my boss at CB, to give her "an indication of my work ethic and capabilities." So hopefully, she'll call me, because if she gave me a change, I know I would do well. I did tutor Algebra once, long ago; I just need to remember it. Heh.
I skipped Theatre today. I didn't feel like going to school early and sitting for two hours before having to ensconce myself in a cramped theatre and listen to some guest blowhard blather on about the arts for 50 minutes. Attendence only gets taken in the front row, and we're going in alphabetical order, and we're on the latter half of the alphabet; and we had a pop quiz last week, so it's highly improbably we had one today, as the class was short, we had a speaker coming in, and we will have ten quizzes in total the entire semester, which is 15 weeks. Too bad I didn't sleep late.
Yesterday was a day of magnificent suckitude. In Life After Death, our professor gave us a two-page pop quiz, because people have not been volunteering enough, and others just do not take any notes at all. I don't think I did badly on it, but I think I got the questions on Lucretius wrong, because I had forgotten to read him.
After that, we were free to go, so I had lots of free time before the academic research. This was for my Human Behavior and Environmental Selection class, which is usually conducted online, but it was mandatory for us to come in one day this week and spend approximately two hours in the computer lab. Everyone was uncertain of the task at hand, but it turns out it was more of the same that we have doing at home for the course. Go through a series of tutorials and then take a quiz.
The computer lab in the Education building is small and cold with ancient computers. The keyboards clacked loudly as people inputted answers. We were told at the beginning of the exercise that, while everyone would be going through the same subject matter, we would be using one of three versions of the tutorial, randomly chosen: complete blanks for the answers, letter clues, or the third option (can't remember what it was). Of course, I was lucky enough to end up with the first option.
It was DIFFICULT. For several reasons:
1. Very distracting. Too much noise, between keyboards and thumps.
2. No letter clues. Some of the material had not been covered yet in our course, so I had no idea what the words were.
3. I swear the answers kept switching around!
I was very angry! I wasn't alone, either, judging by the intermittent thumps of hands upon the desks.
I haven't a clue how I did, as our grade will not be given until the end of the semester, and we will only receive points for the task if we received a score of 50 or above on the final quiz.
However, looking back on it while talking to Wes, I wonder if it was an experiment. Keeping in mind that our TA [Teacher's Assistant], who oversaw this assignment, is a graduate student, writing his dissertation on human behavior type things, it makes sense. OUr other academic research is next month, and we can do that from home, he told us. So it's probably a comparison study. Plus, our class has been guinea pigs for this course. These tutorials and such are being tested out by our professor.
Anyway, Wes said that if it is an experiment, that it's kind of unethical. However, it's not, so long as there is a debriefing at some point, even if it's at the end of the semester.
In other news, I answered an ad in the school paper for a tutor. There's a woman looking for someone to tutor her two boys, grades 6 & 9, for two nights a week. She's paying twenty dollars an hour, so I feel it didn't hurt to try. I don't have much in the way of formal experience, so I was only able to give her one reference in that regard, one of my mother's former coworkers; I helped her son with his college entrance essays. However, I also gave her three other references - my aunt; Steve, my boss at Allstate; and Barbara, my boss at CB, to give her "an indication of my work ethic and capabilities." So hopefully, she'll call me, because if she gave me a change, I know I would do well. I did tutor Algebra once, long ago; I just need to remember it. Heh.
I skipped Theatre today. I didn't feel like going to school early and sitting for two hours before having to ensconce myself in a cramped theatre and listen to some guest blowhard blather on about the arts for 50 minutes. Attendence only gets taken in the front row, and we're going in alphabetical order, and we're on the latter half of the alphabet; and we had a pop quiz last week, so it's highly improbably we had one today, as the class was short, we had a speaker coming in, and we will have ten quizzes in total the entire semester, which is 15 weeks. Too bad I didn't sleep late.