School

[Naka_]

Comment:
GRATS!!! What school??

RMIT!

sick stuff, can you tell us about the process (smiling)

Thanks! I made a one-piece pattern out of some plastic trays and spread wheatgrass seeds over a layer of tulle. It's a really basic hydroponic drip system so no soil, feels a bit slimy on though. The root structure knits right into the tulle, it's neat.
The next iteration is probably going to have a stronger base layer as this one started to rip and fall apart at the end of the shoot, it's quite heavy. Lemme know if you have any more questions (smiling)

[grayghost]

FINISHED ALL OF MY EXAMS
now i get a one month break and get to go home!!! im so excited i love this time of the year even tho there's no snow rn but whatever IM DONEEEEE
note to future me: less all nighters

[Cowboy]

60% of my 6 weeks grade for English has yet to be released. There is one day left in the 6 weeks. My exemption status, due tomorrow, is riding on two essay grades that may have been great may have been terrible. It's beyond annoying.

[hig]

just took a calc 3 final that was borderline impossible. grade distribution came out: a 38% is a C, a 60% is an A. what is everyone's opinion on classes that curve like this (i.e. extremely difficult tests with very generous curves)? at my university it seems every chemistry class is structured this way, but it turns out that departmental calc finals are the same way lol. personally not a fan of an aggressive curve and essentially setting everyone up to fail.

[rjbman]

It's actually better because then you can truly see the distribution. If 40% of students are in the 90s then there's very little ability to distinguish the truly excellent from the good students.

[shinny]

This is going to sound like a bizarre advertisement but Uniqlo down vests are really nice for taking exams. A full jacket usually makes me too cozy/relaxed or sometimes gets too warm for comfort, and also many of my jackets have (magnificent) voluminous sleeves that sometimes get in the way of the exam paper, especially when using the tiny desks my school buildings have.

A down vest gives me mobility + clarity, keeps my arms cool enough that I'll stay more alert, but also keeps my torso warm to combat the aggressive air-conditioning that is so common for some reason when taking tests. I don't know if this is entirely a personal feeling but it was helpful on my math exam today and I would recommend trying it!

[INNIT]

woop need to brag for a minute:

had one of my hardest semesters ever taking nothing but senior level flaxy theory classes

took a class on deconstruction where the final essay was basically "deconstruct something" which for an undergrad is very very intimidating

wrote a paper deconstructing bon jovi's bad medicine (low hanging fruit but fuck it), won me huge praise. feeling good. have maintained a 4.0 for the past 5 semesters. things are looking up!

[Ques]

just finished the first week of my new program. we have class 5-6 hours a day and then another 5-6 hours of homework/prep for the next day each night. we also get kicked out if we get caught speaking english. i don't think i've ever had to do anything this mentally taxing before in my life, but it's really incredibly seeing how fast i can make progress in this kind of environment. today we had an oral examination over everything we covered this week, and i managed to discuss china's demographic problems, traditions of elderly care, how economic development has lead to changes in lifestyle and tradition, and the the ongoing structural change of the chinese household. IN CHINESE!! i've also only getting less than 6 hours of sleep a night and i'm drinking 5+ cups of coffee a day and i've had at least that many mini-emotional breakdowns already, but hey, progress comes at a cost, right

[thecanadiancook]

Also TA'ing this term. I hope my students think I am cool. The first lab we ate snacks and drank soda / grape Kool-aid. Next lab we eat pasta and rice.

I got my evaluations back from TA'ing and turns out the students did think I was cool. My median score for overall acceptability was 4.8 (/5). Choice comments include:

"thecanadiancook did an excellent job teaching the lab component of this course. I always looked forward to this lab because I knew it would be fun and educational atthe same time. I mean, who wouldn't want to cook and learn about food? He has a depth of knowledge about the course content, but doesn't bore students when explaining it. He has excellent speaking and teaching skills, and I could see him one day teaching the lecture!"

"He was excellent and so friendly and approachable! He explains things well and builds good rapport with his students. Give the man a raise! Enjoyed your lab, thecanadiancook! You made Mondays fun!"

[weqe]

applied to Reed just becuz. Wrote the essay about aestheticism lol. Feel like all the schools I applied to I did on a complete whim, mostly bc I had a free application there.

Got into case western tho which is nice! Only got like 50% scholarship which is not so nice :( Waiting on the schools I actually kinda care about is kinda stressful but I haven't been able to get emotionally invested in the application process at all, its weird

[purkinje]

Is anyone here pursuing a degree in sociology? Has anyone graduated with a degree in sociology and found a job that they enjoy and is related to their degree? I'm currently two years into a bachelors of nursing with the intent to get my certified nurse anesthetist degree afterwards but I'm interning at a hospital doing patient care at the moment and I'm second-guessing my decision, to a degree.

On one side it's very lucrative with CRNA starting salary upwards of $100k and moving towards the 200k range mid-career, and it's a straightforward means of helping people and contributing back to society which is fulfilling. On the other, nursing is intensive work often in 12 hour shifts and can leave a person drained physically and emotionally, and it doesn't seem to really allow for personal growth in the way a degree/career in the social sciences does. I think I'd be happier going into sociology or at least pursuing a minor or second major in the field, though job prospects are much slimmer and the pay is significantly lower on average. Doing sociological research or working in policy seems like a much more profound way to make a positive difference than on a personal level as a clinician and I struggle with that.

I'm feeling a bit adrift as to what I want to do with my life and nervous that if I choose to switch majors I'd have just wasted two years of schooling and quite a bit of money. It's easy to dish out advice to take time off from school and travel or 'find yourself' and that kind of thing but I find it really hard to take steps to derail something that's already in motion, especially since my grades have been pretty good and my future would be relatively planned out unless I go ahead and change it.

[brlmski]

applied to Reed just becuz. Wrote the essay about aestheticism lol. Feel like all the schools I applied to I did on a complete whim, mostly bc I had a free application there.

Got into case western though which is nice! Only got like 50% scholarship which is not so nice :( Waiting on the schools I actually kinda care about is kinda stressful but I haven't been able to get emotionally invested in the application process at all, its weird

i went to case. with the way administration has been going i'd pass unless they have a top program in what you specifically want to study.

[sparkyoriental]

For those that are no longer in school - how do you keep learning? Either for work or personal development.

I feel like there's so much that I want to learn more about, but I'm just lacking the motivation to get started.

[bels]

Night classes, online courses, there's lots of classes you can take. The problem is having anything worthwhile because you'll forget most courses you do unless you have to use them for your job. Which you won't. Because if you needed them for your job you'd learn at work.

I advise you if you're going to learn something, learn something you can learn/practice continuously for >1 year. IE: pick a language which has classes for beginners, intermediates and pros and book holidays to countries which speak this language. Or get tennis lessons which run year round. Or yoga. Or make something that will take a while (make sure you're the kind of person who finishes projects)

Don't just do a 10 week course on Functional Programming because it'll just be a brutal 10 weeks and then 4 weeks later it'll be worthless because what can you actually make using functional programming.

[wax]

For those that are no longer in school - how do you keep learning? Either for work or personal development.

I feel like there's so much that I want to learn more about, but I'm just lacking the motivation to get started.

There are lots of ways, but self-directed learning and study I've found tend to be both the most rewarding and most effective, if only because you are learning about what you want to learn about. The actual method you go about researching something depends on the topic.

For instance, at some point a few years ago I decided I wanted to know more about how PCs worked, so I watched a bunch of youtube videos which explained everything. For more academic stuff I default to using google scholar and downloading (mostly) free journal articles. I've learned a lot about various economic schools of thought and modelling techniques that way. If you want to spend money, obviously there are going to be plenty of books around as well. Or just go to the library. My sister works in HR and just borrows out books about networking, interpersonal relationships, all that stuff.

The offices I've worked at have all run seminars or courses at some stage. these are way way more intensive than anything you have to do at school (we did an entire stats course in three days, for example). In some cases your boss may send you out to do a short, intensive course somewhere else. These generally suck, or are pretty challenging, but you have the benefit of being paid to be there, plus a framework for how you will need to use the info in your work.

Almost all the stuff I actually use in my day to day work, though? it's just stuff I learned on the job, and had to do a bunch of times, and now it's burned into my brain.

Motivation is hard but at the end of the day starting anything is actually reasonably easy once you get down to it. search something in google, refine your search, see where it leads. Sometimes having a goal is good (I want to build X, or write Y) but honestly man it's up to you. Follow the words of our lord n saviour shy lebuff and just do it

[Noah]

Found out today I passed all my midterms so that's cool. I have no idea how I did though.

[bataille]

PSA for Academic Filesharing:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by [MFA and PhD programs], starving hysterical naked...

Information wants to be free. Universities, publishers and libraries (i.e. fascists) want to limit this freedom, first by telling you what to read then by charging you for the privilege. Don't let them. Read what you want, when you want, all the time. (Or just save some beer $$ on your course readings)

http://aaaaarg.fail
http://aaaaarg.fail
http://aaaaarg.fail
http://aaaaarg.fail
http://aaaaarg.fail

[Cowboy]

I love arg so much.

Awesome site, so much good content

Do you know any other places similar? I've got second hand access to just about every pay to use database but wondering if I can get more stuff in an illicit yet accessible manner

[bataille]

I love arg so much.

neat-o site, so much good content

Do you know any other places similar? I've got second hand access to just about every pay to use database but wondering if I can get more stuff in an illicit yet accessible manner

yes and no.

There's dozens of other sites (http://www.bookzz.org being the most prominent and self-reported largest) that have similar databases, but none of them have community discussions or browsable archives. And, while bookzz is more likely to have some general chemistry or calculus textbook, they would probably not have, say, the entire back catalog of October or some lost Foucault interview from 68.

What.cd has a surprisingly great book selection, but their search engine is practically nonfunctional and its a private site anyway.

There's also http://www.scribd.com, which I'd compare to soundcloud. You have to pay something like $5 a month to join, but you get unlimited access to content uploaded by other users. It's against the site's rules to upload content that you don't own, but this isn't really enforced and there's tons of bootleg pdfs a la aaaarg. There's some freaky stuff there, but its probably not worth it unless you're constantly having trouble finding what you want elsewhere.

[odradek]

http://www.ubuweb.com/ is my choice

[Cowboy]

"That test was really easy!"

Failed it turns out

[khayandhi]

one of my teaching reviews said I don't speak English very well. look mate I know I'm in Manc now and the South is a different country but I assure you it's still English we've got down there

[mike868y]

just finished submitting all my apps for grad school. i miss academia.

[popcorn]

On February 1st, I send an email to Columbia about "what I've accomplished" since November 1st. This is the last thing I can append to my application.

I have to find a way to convey my growth into a more full human being in a few paragraphs. Yikes.

[BIGBEE]

finally back in school feels fucking GREAT

quit my job, trying to learn japanese (it's going to kill me)

pray that the instructor of this speech class lets me in....

[mike868y]

just finished submitting all my apps for grad school. i miss academia.

got my first acceptance letter yesterday (smiling)

[Ques]

found out my school's only chinese professor, only linguistics professor, only chinese sociologist, and only chinese art historian are all going to be on sabbatical when i return for my final year. small LAC woes

[harmsalmon]

Having a really hard time reconciling doing what i want to do in school (ie Devising theatre Right now) with things i am made to do (ie Write papers about Johnny Locke) - like i feel like it would be one thing if i were fucking around like just Playing Star wars podracers Or seeing how far I can shove a Keytar up my ass or whatever it is college kids do but like....... i'm making work...... just not the work that gets me grades - and now Related i got 2 week-late papiers a ecrire that are doing some Real Anxiety Damage Rn. I think i'm just a fuking child who is unable to prioritize - but I like to think its because theres some moral or something dissonance with Using my creative energy on "real" things I am proud of as opposed to writing the same paper every kid writes every year for every Seminar........

[ptozzi]

Having a really hard time reconciling doing what i want to do in school (ie Devising theatre Right now) with things i am made to do (ie Write papers about Johnny Locke) - like i feel like it would be one thing if i were fucking around like just Playing Star wars podracers Or seeing how far I can shove a Keytar up my ass or whatever it is college kids do but like....... i'm making work...... just not the work that gets me grades - and now Related i got 2 week-late papiers a ecrire that are doing some Real Anxiety Damage Rn. I think i'm just a fuking child who is unable to prioritize - but I like to think its because theres some moral or something dissonance with Using my creative energy on "real" things I am proud of as opposed to writing the same paper every kid writes every year for every Seminar........

I was gonna leave a rep comment but it was too long. In my opinion, the things you're made to do should have some overlap with things you want to do. If you're a freshman then you are lucky enough to still have time to reconsider your major and the courses you're taking. I'm not sure what class it is in which you have to write papers about John Locke (Philosophy? I don't really know.), but if your in a program in which those sorts of classes are what will make up the rest of your college career than maybe you should reconsider. Some might even advocate taking time off from school, but I don't know if your situation is serious enough for that to be a viable option.

On the other hand, if this is just some required course that's giving you trouble (This is good advice regardless.), I would highly recommend outlining all your assignments (for all of your classes) that are due over the course of 2 or 3 weeks, and plan when you will work on them. It's something I started doing towards the end of my sophomore year and I wish I had done it sooner. Much less stress, much more free time.

[finolino]

why pay so much for college if your professors treat you like human trash?

like honestly, you may have had forty years of experience studying philosophers like heidegger and sartre, but if you can't help your students who've been studying the aforementioned for a little less than a month understand the material without berating them for their lack of knowledge and blatantly attacking their self esteem (during finals week, no less) then said experience doesn't mean anything to me. i may not have a good grasp on my own dasein, but at least i can talk to people without making them feel completely and utterly worthless...