Tide
As of late, a grim and forsaken cloud of uncertainty has made a nice home for itself around the horizon that is my life. Thankfully, with the finalization of my marks for this semester, it has since receded. Now, through a poorly understood process of wind currents and gravity, it is becoming a cloud of fluffy happiness and unborn puppies.
Admittedly, I had waited with a vague anticipation over the finalized marks for my prior semester. It's not so much that I was worried about drastic failure, but moreso that the possibility of such a thing tends to weigh a bit on me. Moreover, the process in which my marks were unveiled was kind of an annoying one, as the classes I was most confident about my success in had their marks released first, with each subsequent release being a class I was less and less sure about. So, while the first mark was met with "oh, yeah, that's pretty good, sounds about right" a week after closing of class, the final mark was met three weeks later, with a "well, it's about fucking time" and "that's better than I thought I did" attitude. Oddly, I did a lot better in the courses I have found some difficulty with prior. Specifically, the exams I thought I did well on turned out less stellar, while the exams I thought I did ridiculously poorly on ended up also breaking the seventy percent mark.
I went into the semester kind of jaded with the way Brock conducts a bit of its business, and I come out feeling about the same. I think just about every student knows that certain rooms are unacceptable for final exams to be held in, but professors choose (or accept, I'm not really clear on the process) to use these rooms, anyway. It seems kind of ignorant, and a little offensive, but I suppose good judgment isn't really in all of their job descriptions.
At the same time, this summer semester has brought me into contact with a quality of instructors I had previously thought the stuff of television and modern-day media. Whereas my prior finance courses were taught with lackluster enthusiasm and more than a tinge of an "I'm old, and kind of want to die, so this class doesn't mean that much to me" attitude, the new-and-improved finance instructor approaches the material with a zest and talent for the subject that I found encouraging and appealing in many ways. Whereas I barely passed the first class last semester with the initial professor, my results in this course were significantly improved, and more importantly my personal feelings towards the actual value of taking the course are significantly higher as well. That said, it's likely Brock will always carry some portion of lazy, uninformed, or useless staff members. But it's still kind of encouraging to think a few of the group feel an actual responsibility and dedication towards their vocation, instead of treating it like a job at Wal-Mart, or a means to advance their career.
Moving from the spring to the summer semester, I'm now taking an earth sciences course, as well as a management/business ethics course. Both are proving to be somewhat interesting. It's been a few years now since I've had a science class, and it's definitely feeling good to dip my toes back into the theoretical application and challenge of ideas that a course of that type provides, after being so deeply entrenched in the casual acceptance of unproven and vaguely logical rules that the typical accounting and business courses pour down my throat. Although studying rocks wouldn't have been my first choice of scientific pursuit, it is a fairly good blend of basic knowledge and more interesting theory, so I can't really complain. I'd like to see more focus on meteors than I would on the atomic mass of hydrogen (something arguably covered in high school), but that's really just a personal preference.
In any event, I'm only a year or two away from getting a degree, now. And I'm still fairly happy with the overall outcome and method of my program, and of Brock in general. I guess there's something positive to be said for that.
Admittedly, I had waited with a vague anticipation over the finalized marks for my prior semester. It's not so much that I was worried about drastic failure, but moreso that the possibility of such a thing tends to weigh a bit on me. Moreover, the process in which my marks were unveiled was kind of an annoying one, as the classes I was most confident about my success in had their marks released first, with each subsequent release being a class I was less and less sure about. So, while the first mark was met with "oh, yeah, that's pretty good, sounds about right" a week after closing of class, the final mark was met three weeks later, with a "well, it's about fucking time" and "that's better than I thought I did" attitude. Oddly, I did a lot better in the courses I have found some difficulty with prior. Specifically, the exams I thought I did well on turned out less stellar, while the exams I thought I did ridiculously poorly on ended up also breaking the seventy percent mark.
I went into the semester kind of jaded with the way Brock conducts a bit of its business, and I come out feeling about the same. I think just about every student knows that certain rooms are unacceptable for final exams to be held in, but professors choose (or accept, I'm not really clear on the process) to use these rooms, anyway. It seems kind of ignorant, and a little offensive, but I suppose good judgment isn't really in all of their job descriptions.
At the same time, this summer semester has brought me into contact with a quality of instructors I had previously thought the stuff of television and modern-day media. Whereas my prior finance courses were taught with lackluster enthusiasm and more than a tinge of an "I'm old, and kind of want to die, so this class doesn't mean that much to me" attitude, the new-and-improved finance instructor approaches the material with a zest and talent for the subject that I found encouraging and appealing in many ways. Whereas I barely passed the first class last semester with the initial professor, my results in this course were significantly improved, and more importantly my personal feelings towards the actual value of taking the course are significantly higher as well. That said, it's likely Brock will always carry some portion of lazy, uninformed, or useless staff members. But it's still kind of encouraging to think a few of the group feel an actual responsibility and dedication towards their vocation, instead of treating it like a job at Wal-Mart, or a means to advance their career.
Moving from the spring to the summer semester, I'm now taking an earth sciences course, as well as a management/business ethics course. Both are proving to be somewhat interesting. It's been a few years now since I've had a science class, and it's definitely feeling good to dip my toes back into the theoretical application and challenge of ideas that a course of that type provides, after being so deeply entrenched in the casual acceptance of unproven and vaguely logical rules that the typical accounting and business courses pour down my throat. Although studying rocks wouldn't have been my first choice of scientific pursuit, it is a fairly good blend of basic knowledge and more interesting theory, so I can't really complain. I'd like to see more focus on meteors than I would on the atomic mass of hydrogen (something arguably covered in high school), but that's really just a personal preference.
In any event, I'm only a year or two away from getting a degree, now. And I'm still fairly happy with the overall outcome and method of my program, and of Brock in general. I guess there's something positive to be said for that.