Verschult

Ok. I feel in a good ranting mood now.

The certain professor from the last post seemed nice enough to begin with. But then as the class progressed, the arrogance and idiocy was more and more evident. First, he changed the classroom location. Almost everyone in his class is in the class right before it, and now, everyone has to walk all the way across campus to satisfy his stupid whims. Also, we will have a quiz every week on the material that we were supposed to read for that week. This quiz will take place before the class discusses it. Many people were upset about this because they have difficulty fully understanding the readings before they are discussed. When confronted with this issue, he asked the seemingly rhetorical question of whether the quizzes are reliable and whether they are valid. My question is, is it valuable? Who cares if the quizzes test what they are supposed to test or if the results can be duplicated if it is not testing anything worth testing? The purpose of these quizzes is to make sure we read what we are supposed to read and nothing more. How is that at all valuable for graduate students or even college students in general? All it does is create extra stress for us. The Germans would call it verschult, which basically means treating adults in university classes as though they are in grade school... with more structure, more "baby-sitting", and less independence. Ridiculous. In high school, they always tell you that in college you will be responsible for yourself and that no instructor is going to be keeping tabs on you. I found in my undergrad that this was true to some extent but not as much as was suggested. Now as a grad student, I expected to see even more of this predicted freedom, but in fact, I am seeing even less.

I made falafel for lunch yesterday. It was actually pretty good.

There is indeed more to rant about, but as I'm slowly recovering from the reason for said rant, I will refrain.

It's a dark, wet, dreary day. The snow is melting. It's a balmy 43 degrees. I like winter, but last year's winter was extreme enough that I am glad to see signs of spring in January.

Speaking of January, my mom's birthday is in a few days.

I have no motivation to do my homework. It's not good.