Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Bullshit

Today I get to watch some psychotic liberal documentary for a class, and I get to write a paper on it for my PolySci class. This should be fun actually, my teacher is a raving liberal, but I still like her enough to TA PLSC 250 for her next quarter. Anyone reading this taking 250 next quarter, beware! Muahahaha! Ah, I'm not that bad, I've taught before and assuming nobody has pain-in-the-ass-itis (other than me) we should get along fine. Plus, shes a ranting liberal who blames all America's problems on Richard Nixon!

An open message from my prof on blackboard today so eloquently explains why I have yet to see my midterm grade over a week after my classmates got it. I talked to him about it last Friday, and was told to send him an e-mail, so I did. This morning, I find:

My email went over its limit over the weekend, so I'm not sure if yours got through.

I deleted them all, to be fair, so if you still have a timely problem, get it to me.

Every person who has emailed me a problem game any time this quarter, or brought it into my office, with 1-2 weekdays for me to look at it, has received a solution from me. In addition, all problems that came in on Friday were solved. However, I often cannot respond to "crunch time" problems, so you should think about working ahead if you need help.

I really appreciate all the hard work you're doing this quarter, and will do all I can to help.

Geoff

Oh yes, this is just wonderful! I think I can sleep a little easier knowing that whatever future job I may find myself in, neither competence nor rational thought will be a requisite.

As for a little flashback, which I said I would do, here's the story of the history group.

On the first day of History 104, we were told that we could do one of two things, a paper or a group project. Either one of these was worth 40% of our grade. Each group would be assigned a topic, and every Thursday starting three weeks from the start of the class would have a different group presenting. Week one's topic was Leisure, which sounded like fun, so I decided to go ahead and volunteer (The only completely volunteer group) for the third week suicide group.

Now anyone who knows me knows how fabulously I get along with other people, and this was a prime example of it. We all managed to stay away from each others throats and with the exception of one person (Who, while being annoying as hell every other waking moment, managed to turn around in the last week and get more work done than any of us) managed to get a bunch of work done.

The presentation went really well, and when I went to the prof to get my grade, I got an 86%. That seemed a little harsh, but still within reason. Then I found out that some of the people working on my project had been told by the prof that everyone got a 92%. What. The. Hell.

So I go to talk to the prof, and he says "Yes, everyone got a 92%. Except you." Now we had peer reviews going in this thing and there is nothing more I hate than being judged by my piers in a manner that effects my grade. It turns out people had found me annoying and hard to deal with (Fair enough, I am perfectly capable of annoying the shit out of myself) but that was 6% and, therefore, a full fucking letter grade (Two, if you count + and -) away from everyone else.

Now keep in mind that our instructions very clearly said "Don't divide into groups and then go do your own little thing," which most people had done the second we had got out of the class on that fist day. The guy who was working on the portion of the project I was doing decided to do the intro and outro (Which made sense), so I was left to do one third of our project on my own. I did it, then I helped other people with their research, I even got a goddamn interview with a radio host for our radio portion (Which was cut so the fatass rap fan could go on about how awesome Howard-fucking-Stern was).

To summarize, I was a pain in the ass, but I also was the only pain in the ass both working on my own and helping other people. In short, I was the only person following the profs instructions. Fun times.

Back to the conversation with my prof, I was doing my standard "For fucks sake, Its not like I was picking my nose for the last three weeks" which all came to an abrupt end when the prof said "Are you questioning my grades?" I thought about this for a second and said "As a matter of fact, yes, I am." Realistically, he's probably had to say that many times before, and everyone probably went on the defensive immediately and said "Oh no sir, not me!" and then went on to explain how they were questioning his grade very carefully. Why fuck around, I was questioning his grades.

After about a minute he explained how it was never a good idea to say that to a professor, while at the same time changing my grade to a 90% (Same letter grade as the others in the group) and I walked away happy. er.

There you go, I'm just updating on the highlights, which means rants for a while, but that will all end soon. Hopefully I'll be out of these classes before anyone alerts the prof as to what the hell I'm writing.

-Mindspy

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