Enjablog

As much as I hate to say this, I’m giving serious consideration to dropping the one class I’m taking this semester. I’ve never had a class start 2 weeks late, have the lectures inaudible, and an exam that the professor intended to contain material not taught in course materials. “That should be the most challenging problem. You have to figure it out.” Thanks, dude.

Aside from the fact that I’m clearly not learning anything, I find this whole experience frustrating and demoralizing. I have until Monday to decide whether to drop without grade penalty, but I’m not sure what that means for tuition (if it doesn’t get refunded, I will certainly demand my money back for this waste of my life). This also means I will have to potentially wait until 2011 to take this course, further pushing off my roller derby career.

I guess I’ll see how I did on this exam. 1am and I’m not sure if I even understood the questions. I have 10 answers though, which I’m going to take as a good sign. If I understand this material so little that I don’t even know I’m answering the wrong questions, I think it’s definitely time for me to drop.

Received the first exam for class yesterday. Doesn’t look promising so far… The intro says:

There are ten answers; each is worth ten points

Pretty straightforward, right?

But then I looked the exam over and the problems are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7.

Did you catch that? I didn’t the first time.

The problems are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7.

That’s 6 problems, numbered incorrectly 1 through 7. I’m very concerned about the 10 answers I need to submit next week…

Zomg… Recitation was audible tonight! Only 6 weeks into the semester and we can finally hear the lectures (hopefully).

I’ve spent the past 3 days complaining to anyone with email. I don’t know that that actually did anything, but I did help teach the TA about technology, i.e. turn off the built-in mic and speakers when using a headset.

This is the TA who has told us not to ask him questions about the course material, homework, or schedule. He is only here to help make sure the professor can offer the course online. Great, so clearly you’re doing worse at that than I am in this class… ;)

The drama that is school…

So I logged into my student account last week to check that I was registered for my class next semester. I was not… and I had a hold on my account which prevented me from registering.

It turns out I’m supposed to fill out an Academic Report every spring. So I have to do that before I can register. Ok, cool. Took ~5 mins, I send to my adviser, then he sends to the person in charge of these forms for the department.

But then it turns out my adviser isn’t officially my adviser. I can’t have him submit that until I have my Plan of Study. And I can’t submit my plan of study until I choose my adviser and 3 committee members. And I can’t choose adviser and committee members until I choose a thesis topic, so I know that the professors I choose are the right ones to support my thesis work.

So. To take a 3-credit class next semester, I need to pick a thesis topic. And soon.

Woo! This just in:

It counts for credit and toward your degree. Apparently project courses don’t have grades. For everyone!

So… I think this is good for me! *phew*

Still a little confused as to why my prof didn’t know this ahead of time, but maybe it’s a new policy.

Now, I just need to figure out how to get reimbursed at work for a grade of “E”.

Response from my prof: “I thought you just took it for fun?”

I think I’m going to cry. Why would anyone just take this for FUN??

So, uh.

I just went to check my semester grades and I have a few issues. It turns out the design course I was enrolled in was an equivalent credit course. I haven’t quite clarified what that means, but so far it looks like I don’t get a grade in this class, nor does it count as credits toward my degree. Not good.

On the other hand, it turns out that we got failing to mediocre grades on at least 6 assignments. So… maybe I don’t want this grade counted.

I really don’t know what to do about this … assuming there was anything I could possibly do about it at this point anyway.

And I know the whole “there’s no I in team,” etc. etc.. But I can’t be expected to do 3 people’s work, nor would I expect that of my classmates. This was intended to be a 6-person group, but having more than one dud kind of detracts from the quality. Especially when the rest of the group is working on areas that take their full attention already. Admittedly, the easy sections shouldn’t have slipped past us in as poor quality as they were. But for goodness sakes.

I’m pissed. About the grade, about the credits, about the people… I can’t believe I put myself in a position where my educational future was dependent on these people. I’m not coming off of probation. And my other class suffered for this, continuing to help me not be off of probation.

Sigh.

I want my semester back.

Two good nights of sleep later… I’m feeling a little more generous toward my classmates. But it’s also peer review day.

How honest should I be?

I am so done.

Some more gems from our design report:

“Next, all the modules were brought into Model Center via the analysis server, put in the order which you will want to integrate and linked to the input file and each other where applicable. ”

“What all of this means is we are taking the broad perspective where all the possibilities are looked at, and that the large design space is narrowed down to a set of non dominated designs, and from those non dominated designs a small subset is chosen to go forward with into Concept Development.”

“Min Op Damage Worse Damage Cases” [a figure title]

“The below tables and figures” [a "sentence"]

And then there was the 1-paragraph section I received at 4am today (3 days late):

“The OMOR for this design is .305, and while the desired OMOR is 0, this is not bad at all.”

“The good thing though is that even though the structural failures have the worst consequence risk, their probability of happening is not big, so, overall it doesn’t create that much of a risk.”

I’m glad he has a good handle on what is good and not so bad. But my real question — why did this take him 4 hours to write?

And then there was the guy who edited my sections… First, combining my 5 paragraphs into one. Not by removing repetitive sentences or consolidating text. No, no. He just removed all my line breaks. Then, he made a correction to my appendix title from RAOs [Response Amplitude Operators] to RAO’S. Because that possessive plural really needs to be capitalized too!

If you’re going to be dumb, go do it on your own time. Don’t make me have to re-paste in my own sections because you wanted to look like you were helping.

But, on the bright side, I am SO done.

And I’m done with group projects for school. I guess I’ve been lucky though. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a group before where there was anyone this unhelpful. Because it’s not just the unhelpfulness… it’s the undoing of the work other people have done. Or preventing other people from working on something because you “have it covered.”

Now I just hope that this was enough to pull me off of probation. I’m a little worried…

Do my classmates even know how to read..?

But the design spiral used in Concept Development is not as simple as the ideal design spiral, so instead of simply going from one step to another in a linear fashion; once a configuration is chosen for each of the steps one has to start working on several other steps that will in turn affect several other steps.

So, I’m currently on probation for grad school because of the Aero/Hydro class I decided not to drop. I hadn’t really heard anything about it lately, so I figured it didn’t matter.

Until yesterday. When I received an email from an up-and-comer on the faculty asking me if I had time to meet with him to discuss my immediate plan of action.

Yikes.

I emailed back explaining that I’m a distance learning student, so I would be unable to conveniently meet with him in the short term, but I could definitely discuss over email or phone if that was acceptable to him. I further explained that it was just the one course that was below standard and it was not indicative of the other graduate coursework I had done up to this point, refraining from giving him my endless list of excuses for that class, from the awful TAs to my getting the flu for the first time ever.

He emailed back thanking me for the information and saying that if I was comfortable with my current plan, so is he. As in… he was sincerely concerned about my academic well-being and not just letting me know that he noticed my grades suck and I must not belong here.

I’m not sure why I thought he’d be a jerk about it… He started teaching in the department my last year at VT and, while I didn’t have any classes with him, he always seemed like a nice person. He was particularly helpful when we wanted to do some wind tunnel tests for the sub team.

That, and pretty much all the professors in my department were at least helpful as long as you demonstrated a little effort. Most were even nice!

So, all is well. As long as I earn at least a B+ in my 2 classes this semester, I’ll be set. And with both classes being graded on homework and projects, i.e. effort — with no exams — I think that’s a feasible goal.

“Hey, the file you sent out doesn’t have any changes incorporated to address the comments we received.”
“Oh, you’re right. I think that’s because I forgot to save.”
So… you’re going to fix that when..?

I will not do your work for you just because you’re incompetent. Seriously.

I will, however, continue to point out your inadequacies until I lose patience and am forced to kick you in the face. It won’t be my fault though. You made me do it. You should apologize now.

Just a reminder to Hokies who haven’t yet pledged hours for VT Engage… Today’s a good day to sign up.

Not really sure what else to say about today, so I’ll just leave it at that. Go do something nice for someone.

Man, with all my new-found free time, I’ve been staying up late and goofing off. Which means I’m more tired now than when I was being responsible and studying all the time. Sigh.

Went to see the SNAME student papers tonight. Entertaining, as always. I also discussed my grad plan with a friend of mine and he made a pretty convincing argument for me to do a thesis instead of waiting for classes to be offered over the next 4 years. I could be almost done with classes after next semester. It’s something to consider, at least. I had previously written off doing a thesis because I didn’t think I could … and because it would be too hard or time-consuming. But I think I’m getting better at this time management thing. And I think I could do it.

I even got a chance to chat briefly with my adviser about it. He says a distance learning thesis is a possibility… so we’ll discuss.

I think the technicality I need to face at this point is actually passing my class next semester so I have enough credits to officially be off provisional status and off probation. Right. Getting there.

And this is why I joined the TJ Class of ’98 Facebook group:

e to the x, dx, dy, e to the x dx dy
cosine, secant, tangent sine, 3 point 14159
square root, cube root, log of pi
kick their axis TJ High!

Ah, the memories…

• Revolution Summer psp
  Shadowheart

Dead & Buried buy

Paper Soldiers video AVP: Alien vs. Predator movie Awake dvdrip

• The Creature Walks Among Us
  • Freedom Writers dvd

007 GoldenEye divx