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previous ~ ~ ~ next (Started yesterday) Let's see, lots of stuff. Something mundane first. I'm probably going to be switching away from D-land because I'm tired of no response to help requests and a general attitude of indifference toward customers. So I'm looking at other places, one of which is Diary X, which is where Chiara is. I took their tour and came to the conclusion that anyone who obliquely references Douglas Adams, just has to be one hoopy frood. I'm also checking out My Space.com because I've got family over there, but so far I'm not terribly impressed with them. I'll have more of an update as we go along. If there's anyone out there who has a free place to host a blog that they enjoy, let me know. I've tried Blogger before, and, while I like some features, I'm not fond of the lack of control over templates, etc. (Plus, I, um, kinda sorta forgot both my logon and password so I can't even access my old blogs that I started, heh...) P.S. Sorry, Aunt Mary for getting you started here... In other news, last quarter, I made the mistake of trying to defy Murphy (no, seriously, read the link, it's cool) by saying something to the effect of, "Regardless of who I get for Chemistry this quarter, they can't be as bad as Calgher." Stupid girl! So of course, my chem teacher really was worse than Calgher this quarter. And I vow to never, ever, ever say that again! Ever! It turns out that our chem instructor writes books on how to teach Chemistry, and, had you been in this class, you would understand how horribly ironic that is. What she should be writing is books on how NOT to teach a Chemistry class. One of my classmates said that she felt like we were guinea pigs in an experiment she was doing, and for me, that nailed down exactly what I felt. I don't feel she particularly cared whether we passed or not; I think she was doing research and, this quarter, she wanted to see what impact having almost no hope of passing the class had on various students. Basically, the only people who didn't drop the class were people who didn't have a choice, people who have to take this Chem class this quarter because of timing and transfer to 4-year universities. And me, because God said no. Don't you dare laugh. I prayed about it, a lot, and came mighty close to dropping the class, but the more I prayed about it, the more He said no... and I've long since learned that arguing with God is a fruitless enterprise. That's a different story that I may get into later. Anyway... I was talking about all of this with my fantastic Bio teacher and she told me about this experiment with drowning rats (bottom of the first paragraph). Basically, there were two groups of rats placed in containers where they were going to drown. One group of rats had hope of rescue (that link says they'd previously been rescued, another said they thought they could get out, it's a little unclear) and the other did not. And the group that had some hope of rescue held out for significantly longer than the other group (again this is somewhat unclear because one link says hours for the previously rescued group, minutes for the non-rescued group, while a different one says hours for the non-rescued group and days for the previously rescued group). The point is... aside from the fact that this is truly a horrific experiment... the point is that either way? Those rats were going to drown. And that is completely what I felt like... one way or another these little rats are going to drown, only every once in a while, the evil Chem teacher would lift us up out of the water, just long enough for us to hope, and then drop us back in. Obviously, you think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. I honestly felt like we were some grand experiment of hers, and talking with people who took her class last quarter and the one before, it's like the woman had a personality transplant. She's being evaluated for tenure (Gah! Please, no!!!) and so gets evaluated by the students every quarter for the first year. So we had the pleasure of filling out the evaluation forms about 3 weeks ago. No one was happy with her and the main thing I heard everyone say is (well, aside from saying that they rated her very poorly on pretty much everything) that her exams don't reflect the lecture content. And since pretty much everyone made similar comments, I'm reasonably sure the dean of the department had a talk with her. Theoretically, the results of surveys like that aren't released until the end of the school year when grades are already handed in, but if there was an overwhelming trend, they may have spoken to her about it before finals, you know, maybe to make a difference? Well, it made a difference all right, but a VERY BAD ONE! We hadn't gotten our lab exams back yet, at that point, and two days after the evals, she told us we couldn't have them back because she had to go over them again and that our points would be going down. The lab write-ups we got back after that? They're worth a total of 15 points, and I have only once gotten a 15 the entire quarter, and that only because she didn't look much at the conclusion only the calculations. My normal was 12, or, if I was lucky, a 13 (ha ha, yes, cheesy pun intended). After the evals? I got back a 10, another classmate got a 9, and pretty much everyone did poorly on that. Seems mighty suspicious to me that, all of a sudden, she's incredibly angry at us and is dropping points off our scores right and left if she didn't hear something back about those evals... Anyway, I'm done with her, one way or another. Even if I didn't pass the class (and I think I did pass...), I won't be taking it with her, and, hey! I've got lab write-ups pretty much all done if I do need to retake it. And if no one else is teaching this class, I'll go to a different community college or wait a year or two until someone else teaches it. Someone's bound to, someday... I'm just so relieved to be out of her class, I can't even tell you! And in more entertaining news, my cat likes raisin bran. Well, more particularly, she likes the bran flakes. Yeah, I'm shaking my head over that one, too. I'd set the bowl aside to go get the milk, and while I'm doing that, she jumps up on the counter (which I don't allow, but Anthony, unfortunately, does) and just starts chomping down, like this is the best thing she's ever tasted. I was laughing so hard, I didn't actually stop her. She just decided she'd had enough and then jumped down. It was hysterically funny... I wish I had a picture to go with that, but I seem to have... ah... misplaced my connection cord to download pictures from my camera. So you're out of luck, folks. Just trust me, it was very funny looking. How many days until finals? 0! Today was my last day of finals. Which is why I've been absent so long. What was one good thing that happened today? I think I passed my Chem final. Miscellaney: I'm job hunting. So if anyone knows of any good things locally, let me know! Tell me what you think. Go see her. Now. ~ ~ ~ Moved Most recent: The REAL surprise party - Monday, Jul. 11, 2005 Still not here - Wednesday, Jul. 06, 2005 Moved - Thursday, Jun. 30, 2005 I survived - Thursday, Jun. 23, 2005 Go see her. Now. - Thursday, Jun. 02, 2005 |
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