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A White Guy posted:My CSU has their finals next week. I've got two finals, then I'm bugging out ASAP to avoid the usual moving out fiasco. Why the hell they do move out day at the end of finals is beyond me. poo poo, they let you leave the moment finals start here. I've left with papers incomplete and finished them at home before.
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May 10, 2014 22:54
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Today I moved out of the dorm, aka put everything I own in my car, then drove to work. On this drive I saw and realized that today, the last day to move out of dorms, was also graduation day. That's a smart decision.
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May 11, 2014 08:02
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I've just written over 10,000 words of essays and now I have an upcoming three hour exam on a subject I studied last year. I know they like to have all exams in the summer term, but I don't understand why we couldn't do the part of this course that required an essay in Autumn term and the exam part in Spring term so I wouldn't be trying to remember poo poo from 2013.
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May 11, 2014 10:39
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Nasgate posted:Today I moved out of the dorm, aka put everything I own in my car, then drove to work. On this drive I saw and realized that today, the last day to move out of dorms, was also graduation day. At least graduation will be over and done by the time I have to move out next Saturday.
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May 11, 2014 11:53
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achillesforever6 posted:Woo got a B in Physics II lecture even though I bombed horribly on my final! Huzzah for curving 
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May 12, 2014 16:25
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gently caress Blackboard. gently caress it forever. I just left my Feminist Theory final, in which we were allowed to bring our readings in on any device we had available. My laptop it too clunk so I brought my phone to pull the readings off of Blackboard. Except every time I booted it up and tried to zoom in on ANYTHING it would loving crash. I had to squint and hold it up to my face just to read whatever I was looking at as to not anger the Blackboard gods and lose my place when it inevitably crashed my browser.
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May 12, 2014 17:05
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achillesforever6 posted:Woo got a B in Physics II lecture even though I bombed horribly on my final! Huzzah for curving While it's nice and all that you passed I get the feeling that grade curving is a terrible idea as opposed to straight percentage grades.
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May 12, 2014 20:00
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Boiled Water posted:While it's nice and all that you passed I get the feeling that grade curving is a terrible idea as opposed to straight percentage grades. Without curved grades, I can count think of at least 3 majors that would have classes with 100% failure rates. I have an old friend attending a UC studying Chemistry, and classes were the highest grade in the class is a 30% are not uncommon.
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May 12, 2014 20:39
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That sounds to me like a terrible workaround for a not very well laid out course. If I understand this system correctly, a long shot, you could have a class where everyone is graded the same letter grade based on everyone being terrible.
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May 12, 2014 20:43
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I also don't get the point of classes where everybody is "meant" to fail. If you get 50% on a class you clearly haven't demonstrated mastery of its content. Curving your grade to an A doesn't change that. It especially isn't very meaningful if that class is supposed to ground you for higher-level stuff.
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May 14, 2014 13:29
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Vegetable posted:I also don't get the point of classes where everybody is "meant" to fail. If you get 50% on a class you clearly haven't demonstrated mastery of its content. Curving your grade to an A doesn't change that. It especially isn't very meaningful if that class is supposed to ground you for higher-level stuff. In my chem 1 class a passing grade (C-) was a 56%.
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May 14, 2014 15:37
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Vegetable posted:I also don't get the point of classes where everybody is "meant" to fail. If you get 50% on a class you clearly haven't demonstrated mastery of its content. Curving your grade to an A doesn't change that. It especially isn't very meaningful if that class is supposed to ground you for higher-level stuff. I had a class where an A was 31% and failing was below 4%. It had 2 classes that came after it, and the people who had my professor were much more prepared for the stuff that came after than the students who had the 'easier' professor for the subject where most people passed.
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May 14, 2014 16:35
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My condolences for everyone who has to deal with Blackboard. My college scrapped it a couple years ago for a system called Moodle, which is not much better. I've lost work because it won't let you have multiple tabs open. Re: easy-A courses, I heard through the grapevine that there's a Communication professor at my college who declared he'd give people passing grades literally just for showing up, even if they failed all the tests and did no homework at all. He was also allegedly teaching outright misinformation a out linguistics. And earlier this semester I had a professor call me up to say she was late for our meeting (for an independent study course) and suggest that we start our planned discussion over the phone... while she was on the road.
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May 14, 2014 18:56
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Hahahahahahaha oh my god I got an A- in my stupid meme class. She liked my "Loss" essay, this is amazing.
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May 14, 2014 20:15
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Well my University just fired and banned for life a tenured Dean for speaking out against the brutally corrupt, unethical, and shady-as-gently caress, $44.5 million cost cutting "TransformUS" restructuring plan that is slowly destroying the University. http://www.thestarphoenix.com/news/saskatchewan/University+Saskatchewan+fires+outspoken+dean+Robert/9837701/story.html
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May 14, 2014 20:18
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Waltermelon posted:Well my University just fired and banned for life a tenured Dean for speaking out against the brutally corrupt, unethical, and shady-as-gently caress, $44.5 million cost cutting "TransformUS" restructuring plan that is slowly destroying the University. This is just my first impression from reading the article but the whole thing reeks of corporate management and shareholder value maximization thinking running afoul of how public education actually works. From the statement from the uni leadership to the name of the program. edit: which is weird because your University president seems to be from an education background. Also it's kind of crazy since he's tenured. My understanding was that you could practically get convicted of publicly murdering someone and still keep tenure. paragon1 has a new favorite as of 00:03 on May 15, 2014 |
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May 14, 2014 23:59
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paragon1 posted:This is just my first impression from reading the article but the whole thing reeks of corporate management and shareholder value maximization thinking running afoul of how public education actually works. From the statement from the uni leadership to the name of the program. Tenure means you have a right to a hearing or evaluation before you are dismissed for misconduct. This university is about to have a shitstorm on its hands.
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May 15, 2014 00:37
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Trilineatus posted:Tenure means you have a right to a hearing or evaluation before you are dismissed for misconduct. Which he didn't get. So, that's wrongful termination right there. Way to kneejerk shitcan someone and ignite a media firestorm.
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May 15, 2014 00:47
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Trilineatus posted:Tenure means you have a right to a hearing or evaluation before you are dismissed for misconduct. It also means that unless you show up with a few hundred signatories to a professor's unacceptable behavior and an established paper trail, the department head won't even bother listening to the issue, much less talk to the problematic professor.
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May 15, 2014 13:43
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Picnic Princess posted:Hahahahahahaha oh my god I got an A- in my stupid meme class. She liked my "Loss" essay, this is amazing. wow such writing much explanation wow so A Complaint: They waited until late yesterday to post my grades 
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May 15, 2014 14:13
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Ours won't be up until tomorrow. Hahaha oh god gently caress Blackboard in every orifice.
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May 15, 2014 18:18
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Picnic Princess posted:Hahahahahahaha oh my god I got an A- in my stupid meme class. She liked my "Loss" essay, this is amazing. What's even taught in a meme class? I'm legitimately curious. We're not allowed to just hand in a disc for a programming assignment at my Uni. Nope, we have to print out the source code as well. We can hand in stuff digitally in other modules so it's not a whole University thing - just the programming courses.
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May 15, 2014 19:13
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Grade deadline for my college is:  . Apparently they couldn't be arsed to include it in the academic calendar. Upside: Been done with finals for a few days now. Downside: I realized I have nothing to do until summer school starts.
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May 15, 2014 19:59
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A White Guy posted:Grade deadline for my college is: Where I teach at grades were due the last day of finals by 5pm and instructors with a night class (night classes start at 5) final that day had to stay till whatever hour it took them to finish grading the class and hand it in that night.
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May 15, 2014 20:20
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Eggn0g posted:What's even taught in a meme class? I'm legitimately curious. I had an English requirement for my degree, so I chose a class called "Writing about images" because I really like photography and poo poo. We hardly wrote a thing, mostly discussed in class. I think I only showed up for half the classes after it turned from analyzing famous photos to looking at garbage like Shiba Confessions and XKCD in class. The teacher mentioned stuff she saw on Reddit and Tumblr numerous times. Our final exam was to write an essay on a meme of our choice, as well as analyze 1 of 3 pictures she chose, which were actually decent, to be fair. Basically they gave a Redditor free range to make a General Education class and she took it to the next level.
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May 15, 2014 20:36
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Holy poo poo I think I hate my Anthropology professor. He disappeared the last week of class, so no one had any idea what was going on with the final, sent us an email with answers to a test no one had or even knew where to get, and mentioned that the final was actually 40 minutes earlier than the school's schedule and the syllabus said. So I head to the final this morning, and before it starts, he gives back the last paper that was due. I got a 75 because he says art really doesn't have anything to do with anthropology. When I explained that I had taken Art History last semester and really enjoyed it and learned a lot, so I thought it'd be interesting to link Egyptian art with Egyptian culture, he cuts me off and says, "Yeah, I KNEW you were just reusing an old paper  " (Hint: I wasn't). Added to that is a strict 300 word limit (I was docked points when a previous paper was 375 words), which means I can't discuss ANYTHING in any detail. He INSISTS that we use APA even though all the other papers were variations of "How does this make you feel?" and really don't require sources to write at all.So I'm already pissed about that going in to the final, and I find out that ALL of the questions are things we never discussed in class, and all the essay questions but one are about where we think our ancestors come from or about local church programs that were created to prevent gang violence. Halfway through the final I realize that I haven't learned ANYTHING about Anthropology that I didn't already know (I didn't know much to start with). To top it all off, when I went to sell the textbook, the clerk tells me that it's an old edition (The teacher insisted it be THAT edition) so they wouldn't buy it. I checked on amazon and it turns out it only sells used for 5 dollars, so it's not even worth the effort to ship it. Goddamn.
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May 15, 2014 23:20
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Boiled Water posted:While it's nice and all that you passed I get the feeling that grade curving is a terrible idea as opposed to straight percentage grades. Physics II is basically a weed out class for Geology majors much like Calc 2. I did pretty good though in my other classes and hopeful that I can continue my graduate school work into a masters in Paleontology even though I have to start paying student debts now 
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May 16, 2014 01:12
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I graduate this weekend from my junior college. My finals are next week. What the gently caress.  Whatever, out of the frying pan and into the fire. I'm sure I'll have more to bitch about once I'm in my CSU.
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May 16, 2014 03:12
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Waltermelon posted:Well my University just fired and banned for life a tenured Dean for speaking out against the brutally corrupt, unethical, and shady-as-gently caress, $44.5 million cost cutting "TransformUS" restructuring plan that is slowly destroying the University. Technically speaking tenured professors can be fired for insubordination and that might be the route they're going to try to take but yeah, this sounds more like one of those situations where firing somebody was exactly the wrong move. Conversely, tenure itself is under attack by the right wing so this might also be dragged through the mud and declared a perfect case of "see? Tenure is bad!" Definitely a story to watch but that sounds like some of the stupid bullshit that's be going on in universities in general. A lot of colleges are becoming increasingly for-profit and right wing political movements are trying to dismantle public funding for education. The school I go to has had its state budget cut by the millions while our college president keeps blathering about things like "fiscal responsibility" and "having every department break even." Because I guess nobody ever takes a class outside of their major and it's literally impossible that a finance major also wants to learn how to paint or play the tuba while they're at it but doesn't want to take a second major.
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May 16, 2014 03:27
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Glasgow Kiss posted:I graduate this weekend from my junior college. Same. May I ask which CSU?
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May 16, 2014 22:24
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Bad News: Professor assigned a bunch of stuff for the last test that was only on powerpoint slides that weren't posted online or anything. Good News: Every single test came with a copy of the answer key, so everyone got in several freebies before she picked them all up.
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May 16, 2014 23:32
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300 words for a college essay? As an upper limit?
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May 17, 2014 01:44
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Maxwell Lord posted:300 words for a college essay? As an upper limit? I've heard the argument for short essays is that it forces you to make very concise arguments, without relying on nonsense or padding to reach a high page limit. I think the idea is that it demonstrates more understanding of a subject if you can form a compelling argument within those strict constraints.
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May 17, 2014 01:59
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ChiaPetOutletStore posted:I've heard the argument for short essays is that it forces you to make very concise arguments, without relying on nonsense or padding to reach a high page limit. I think the idea is that it demonstrates more understanding of a subject if you can form a compelling argument within those strict constraints. That or the professor didn't want to be stuck grading 8+ page papers. One of my final papers worth 50% of my grade had a limit of two pages. This was a senior level class.
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May 17, 2014 06:53
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Forceholy posted:Same. May I ask which CSU? Los Angeles. And I already have something to complain about over there already. They're switching from a quarter system to semester in 2016. Meh.
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May 17, 2014 11:21
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Maxwell Lord posted:300 words for a college essay? As an upper limit? I actually had a history class this last semester that consisted of nothing but max 300 word essays. It was about as much fun as you'd might think.
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May 17, 2014 23:57
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Agatha Crispies posted:I actually had a history class this last semester that consisted of nothing but max 300 word essays. It was about as much fun as you'd might think. As someone who meets the minimum length for assignments about once in a course, I would kill to get into this class.
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May 18, 2014 03:30
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Maxwell Lord posted:300 words for a college essay? As an upper limit? I had a class where the professor told us that for every page over 20 we turned in totaled up over the semester he was dropping a letter grade. We had two 4 page essays, three 2 page essays and a dozen or so quarter to half page assignments. One kid went over every paper, he got a C despite getting b's and a's on all assignments because he was too wordy.
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May 18, 2014 03:41
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I feel like there's a one page limit to when you go over page limits. Beyond 1 page over the limit, professors get progressively more ragey. -1 point, over page limit -10 points, 3 pages over limit F on your assignment, 5 pages over is way to goddamn much.
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May 18, 2014 06:07
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I literally cannot fathom writing a 300 word essay. The shortest we've had to do has been 2,000 words and we get 10% leeway in both directions. My dissertation will be 10,000 words. Also, I'm kind of jealous that you can do minor classes in US universities. Here, you have your major (or occasionally a double major) and you just do that. Want something else? Join a society and shaddap.
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May 18, 2014 12:01
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