f13.net

I have found myself  in a questionable situation as a result of Thursday's incident that I described in Useless Conversation. TLDR: One of my teachers is bypassing the enrollment system in order to give seats to students whom she made promises in the past, and I find myself party to the practice after witnessing all the facts.

Long Story: I took two classes with the same teacher this semester as a tactic to get a higher grade in each class. The teacher was also highly ranked.

On Day 1 of the first class, the classroom was packed. The teacher announced there were 35 seats, but somewhere around 60 people showed up. I was on the Wait List for the class and did not have a seat. The teacher took attendance, noting that roughly 8 people were absent. She started calling Wait List names. Five were present, including me: I was number 4. All other students were asked to leave. Add codes would be given out Thursday to give an opportunity to the absent students who were enrolled an opportunity to join class.

On Day 1 of the second class, the same situation arose where the class was full and there were limited open seats. This time, I had an official seat. One student was absent; one student was taken from the wait list. All other students were asked to leave. An acquaintance of mine who I had met last semester confided in me that he wasn't enrolled nor on the Wait List, and was crashing the class. He stayed in the class despite the teacher's instructions.

On Day 2 of the first class, I had the incident described in Useless Conversation. During the student's tirade against me, he stated that the teacher had promised him a seat last semester. Outside the incident, the teacher announced that there were 45 seats in the class. Attendance was taken: 42 students were present (I did not count the number of enrolled names she called on both occasions). Three Wait List students were allowed seats, the rest were asked to leave, including myself.

On Day 2 of the second class, it was confirmed that one student was absent and would be dropped. The slot went to the first person on the Wait List. My acquaintance stayed through the second class. At the end of class, the teacher and he met for a private discussion over a list; I was going to talk to her about finding out the chances of someone dropping and taking the seat in the first class, as I was next on the Wait List. I asked to meet during her office hours, which turned out to be two weeks away.

Between Day 2 and Day 3, I e-mailed the teacher about the incident, indicated I would like to have any seat that opened up, and asked her how best I can check whether a seat became available or not.

On Day 3, in the second class, my acquaintance once again attended class. During attendance, it was openly admitted by him in front of the entire class that he had received a (second) add code.

At the conclusion of Day 3's class, the teacher told me she had received my e-mail and that all she could do for me was promise me a seat in her summer Online-Only class, even if the class was full. I said Yes, but I feel I'm exposing myself to a problem if I don't commit to that Yes or do something quickly about it. This is where I'm at.

There are significant consequences to reporting. First off, she would know I would be the one reporting it. As I have her for class this semester (and have to take her class because of my schedule), this can affect my grades. Second, I would embroil myself in a situation where I have few facts aside from what I observed over the course of three days. Third, even if I was fighting for the seat I missed out, I wouldn't get it -- the student I had the incident with appeared to be one of the students she promised a seat, and may have been granted enrollment (I haven't confirmed it yet). I wouldn't want to be in the same class with him, and the teacher is smart enough to realize that I shouldn't be in the classroom nor should I get confirmation that his official status was ignored and given priority over other students. Fourth, because of the incident with that student has yet to be resolved administratively, the timing could distort the nature of my report; it might be construed as retaliation.

Fifth, all kinds of issues arise from being offered the same deal as her other students. It not only confirmed my suspicions but made me party to them. From one angle it looks like I'm being paid off to remain silent, but on the other she genuinely wants to give me the opportunity I missed out and extended her policy to me.

One of my closest friends advised me to let it lie, take her deal (and I'd only have her word I'd get a slot), get my classes and grades, and let the teacher do what she is doing. I couldn't have been the only one witnessing the conflicting information reported on several days. Other students were turned away that might have gotten seats they were entitled to. My student-teacher relationship is already compromised.

It's one giant clusterfuck. Thoughts?

Edit: I want to report on principle and to enforce fairness in the system, but this time I sense I would be rushing into a situation that's way over my head. I had stayed up until 5 am back in January to get enrolled in the second class and get Wait Listed in the first. When seats opened up for the class prior to the first day, anyone on the Wait List had the opportunity to grab the slot, meaning you had to enroll as quickly as possible after a seat opened.

Serious reply: You are not cut out for politics.

Serious question: What the fuck kind of shitty school is this?

Ok, actually finished reading this.

1. Why is this class so full? Is it bullshit 101? Is it one of those classes everyone wants to take because it's easy?
2. This system is insane. I don't care about her system, because:
3. Nothing is fair. Ever. If you're not willing to play the game, don't join the game.
4. You report her you're setting precedent of being a pain in the ass, and frankly, you won't like yourself (even more?)

Do you want the Nerf answer or the real one?

Note, this is in itself an answer.

I'm untangling this carefully, reading the first post. I guess I'm still confused about Day 2 of the first class, on two fronts. The other student started an unprovoked tirade against you during discussion? About the issues being covered in the class? When did the question of him having a guaranteed seat come up? This is what seems weird to me. I've had students upset about wait lists and I've had students complain that there seemed to be private or prior agreements about access to the class (or complain that they can't get a private or prior arrangement) but I've never seen a student so clueless as to announce right in the middle of class in front of everyone else that they have an issue of that kind. Let alone have two students getting into it with each other about that issue while everyone (including me) watches.

99% of the time, if there's an issue about wait lists, access and policy, students take it first to the administrative assistant, second to the professor in question IN PRIVATE/AFTER CLASS, third to the department chair and then maybe if it's something really nuts (like "I can't graduate if this class isn't available to me, please help) to the division head or dean. I really do not understand this part.

I'm also not clear on what you're planning to report--that you didn't get in the first class? You're in the second, right? Do you absolutely have to have the first course to graduate?

The rest of what you describe is stuff that I think happens in a lot of places on some level or another--a full class that's full for the reasons Schild suggests (popular/famous professor, required course in a desirable time slot, course with a rep for being easy, course that seems like it's a highway to some kind of interesting job, some combination thereof) where students jockey for spaces in some way or another (meeting w/prof on the side, hanging around hoping that the prof will let them in out of pity, etc.) In general, you're better off complaining about your own need for access--I would generally say that you are not going to make any friends if you complain about somebody else seeming to get a better deal than you.

There's a big difference between rule-governed situations like this and laws where life and death (or imprisonment) are at stake. The rules in an institutional setting are mostly intended just to provide a kind of administrative approximation of fairness--if you act like Phoenix Wright yelling "Objection!" you will irritate a lot of folks, even people very sympathetic to you otherwise. On those occasions where I've had to lottery students out of a class, I try to find a way to get them in to the next similar class I'm teaching, get them into a comparable class taught by a colleague or if I think the person is just so so so genuinely desperate to get in this one class for some reason, I may try to see if I can't create a little more space. If I had somebody getting up and saying, "I will report you to the dean!!!!" I would in fact be kind of annoyed--I'm doing the best I can to make it work out, and there is really no way to parcel out a scarce good (X number of spaces, Y number of people wanting space) in a totally fair way.

The only time I think it might be legitimate to say, "This is unfair to the point that I need to keep pressing on policy with the objective of getting myself a seat" is if it's a class you have to have this particular semester in order to graduate on time. But then that's kind of bush league on the part of the institution (though sadly not unknown). We always make sure that if a student has to have the class to graduate or advance in their major and this is the only plausible time they could take it that we have enough seats in the class to get everyone in that situation a place. I usually go down the list like this: a) must have class to graduate; b) major in this department; c) minor in this department; d) other program of study that includes this class/subject as an integral part of the program of study; e) lottery for everyone else.

This whole situation sounds like you giving a fuck when it ain't your turn to give a fuck.

Your cunning strategy to get the prof to like you by taking multiple classes with her and thereby get better grades in both is UTTERLY going to backfire if you act like an asshole.  I understand that you feel like you're owed a seat in her class, and not getting it is making you angry, and in your mind by being willing to carry this fight all the way to the top you're some sort of cross between Sir Lancelot and Serpico, but you probably don't have all of the information necessary to know whether she's being "fair" or not.  For all you know the other dude has a terminal illness and this is his last chance to take this class before he croaks.

In fact, that's a useful way to approach this general type of problem.  Go ahead and pretend the other guy has a terminal illness, or that he's already been through this same waitlist drama three semesters running, or whatever, and then in considering your next move, ask yourself if in light of that situation you would look like a tremendous flaming asshole for making whatever move you're considering.  (In game theory terms this is an example of the "minimax" strategy.)

It also sounds like it might be in your best interests not to be in the same class as this individual for the rest of the semester anyway.  Taking the class at a later date could be a better deal all around.

You sound like the guy who didn't get a raid slot.

Seriously, this is what you're worried about? It's fucking ridiculous. You know how much individual classes matter in the real world? Jack shit. Take the stuff, make good grades, put it on your resume and after you get a job in your field absolutely nobody will ever reference what you did in college again except for parties and/or sports.

I mean fuck, dude.

Go HAM, dude.  Fight the system.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/nickfrost.gif)

Paelos is basically right.

Except in your case, I highly suggest booting up Quake 3 Arena and not going to parties.

That gif gets funnier the more I watch it.

Quit being a dipshit. Be glad you are in one tough-to-get-into class and take advantage of the offer to get you into the other one. FFS.

Yep.  This reads as if you're blowing the whole thing WAY out of proportion, you just need to take the class you're in, and take the other in the summer as offered.  Or find a different professor to take the class from if you need it this semester.  I've been in a situation where a class I would have liked to have was full and being on the wait list didn't get me anywhere.  It sucks, but that's just part of life.  I doubt there's some vast and nefarious conspiracy on the part of the professor to screw over students.  Take it at face value:  She knows you wanted to get into her class and it hasn't worked, so she's trying to help you out for next semester. 

As Paelos said, this stuff is something no one will care about once you're out of college except you.  If this professor is part of your major/program, you can make your life a lot more difficult from here on out by going crazy over this stuff, because again, this sounds like nothing worth causing a big stink over. 

Your friend sounds like someone who is not going to be getting an ulcer worrying about trying to change shit he has no hope of changing. Unlike, it would appear, you.

I'm going to crawl back into my hole where I belong.

Jesus fuck, dude. Not to pile on or anything, but really... you take shit way way too personally, and it is going to end up killing you. Either from you eating a gun or burning a hole in your stomach. I realize you are on meds and seeking help, but it does not appear to be working.

Get clinically diagnosed with what the fuck ever.

Grats, you can now register before everybody.

Seriously, you're doing literally everything pretty inefficiently.

See this is the completely wrong fucking attitude. You deleted your avatar and, apparently, are going back into lurker status. Fuck that noise.

I'm fairly drunk at this point because I had an unbelievably shitty day. I basically was fucking pantsed in front of an assembled crowd of the public, my boss, my boss's boss, the legislative body of my employer, and the local media, live on camera.  I then had to go scramble to write a four page, single spaced memo in a couple of hours to salvage my shit, then go back and get grilled again by said legislative body, again in front of my boss, and my boss's boss.  All of this related to a several hundred million dollar project that is incredibly high profile on a national scale.  I ultimately think I pulled the shit out of the fire, but who the fuck knows how this will all shake out.  That's the kind of shit that gives ulcers out here.  What I didn't do was flip out and actively make things worse.  Sometimes you need to step back, take a breath, and sublimate your own rage/sense of justice/anger to make things right. Then you go bitch to your friends/girlfriend/wife/message board about how unjust it all is, and move on.

You are dealing with people on average 10-25 years older than you are. We have been through shit. We have dealt with shit. Maybe take a fucking second to reflect that maybe we actually give a flying fuck about you (despite being a random, anonymous shitheal on a website, that's what is amazing about this tiny little dust-bunny corner of the intertubes), and are trying to impart some genuinely earned wisdom based upon not only going through some crap, but having the self-awareness to know that we didn't always handle it all that well. It may be snarky and it may be harsh, but there are pearls of god honest truth in it.  So step back, drop the ego, and maybe learn a fucking thing or two.

Of course, I am also quite drunk. So whatever.  

What Abagadro said.

If you absolutely cannot let shit go to the point that you're calling the cops over fucking class seats in college, I shudder to think what's going to happen when you get into the real world. Like a client wanting to tear your eyeballs out over something you've got no control over, but if you lose that client it's your job. Or in my case the FAA breathing down my neck over something I've warned our company about repeatedly but which was fucked off by upper management until now, and now I've got to make excuses for said upper management to get the feds off our backs. Schild is right, the WORLD is unfair, and if you don't get this sorted out immediately your degree will be meaningless because you won't be able to keep a job from all the tilting at windmills you'll be doing.  

As a university professor, I'll give this little tidbit of advice.

Stop doing this.

1) Gaming the system for grades is a waste of your EDUCATION money.

2) Highly rated teacher?  By whom?  Students, by and large, are not qualified to judge the ability of someone to teach.

As for the rest, you can avoid ALL OF THIS by registering on time and getting seats when they are available. 

Nebu and I disagree on this point:

Learning how to game the system is the most valuable thing you can do in college. (Edit: CAVEAT: This only applies if you aren't going to school for a very specific degree, in which case, you should still learn how to game the system, but take your core classes fucking seriously).

Learning how to game any system is how you bend the American Dream over your knee and make it your bitch.

I stand by my "Get diagnosed to get an advantage" comment.

If you want to actually challenge this (which, along with everyone else in this thread, I advise against) then the only way to do it is with the backing of the rest of the class. You on your own - no dice, you'll just mark yourself as a troublemaker and lose.

You along with everyone else - you've got a chance, but you'll mark yourself out as a dangerous troublemaker. Worth it if that's what you want to be in life.

But, this doesn't sound like something worth taking a stand on. Brush it off, get on with important things. When I was a student these were considered to be sex, drugs, rock & roll and... er.. that was about it.

This is like a word problem from hell.

I feel like it doesn't even matter what your wrote - the details are completely irrelevant. You might as well have written 10 paragraphs about how you ordered a cheese pizza but it had mushrooms on it. Basically you're blowing it out of proportion, and also blowing the responses here out of proportion.

You're being silly - but people act silly all the time. There's no need to be embarrassed or crawl into a hole. You got worked up about something pretty minor - it happens. This is not some unrecoverably shameful incident. It sounds like your teacher is trying to do you a favor by finding a way to slot you in somehow - just take it.

The thing about being trapped in your own head, as you appear to be, is that you assume that everyone is as invested as you are. That they are going to remember every little slight against them or every mistake you've made and obsess over it the way you do. You're maybe thinking "oh my god now everybody on F13 thinks I'm some crazy ass or something!" The second I close this tab I will never think about this again.

There was a time in my life when I was kind of depressed and would constantly think about what other people thought of me. But the reality is that most people thought nothing at all, and people who did think anything quickly forgot or moved on. What seems like an external problem - that you come off as weird or that people don't like you or think you're a drama queen or aloof robot or whatever else, is actually just an internal problem, with other people's perception of you greatly exaggerated in your own mind.

Basically: chill out. It's cool man!


Bonus points for capitalizing HAM.

And you ought to take that advice.  You should also keep this friend, though it's hard to do through Uni.

Actually, if you want to get your Machiavelli on, convince some other student who is annoyed that the rules were bent to go complain about it.

Look, don't take the unanimous verdict of the community that you should handle this differently too badly. It's just a confirmation of something you know already and have talked about--that your instincts for reading situations like this are not at the moment accurate.

I talk some with students about this--you could file it under "emotional intelligence". In general, that's a much harder thing to improve on if you're neuroatypical in some way, if you're suffering from any kind of mental illness, but also it's just hard to learn for most people even if there's no reason why per se. It takes experience, usually, and that includes making mistakes. But it's important to functioning well at work and in life.

Break it down like this: emotional intelligence involves understanding:
a) how other people work inside
b) how facial expressions and body language give you information about how people are reacting in real time to what's happening
c) how systems, institutions, organizations, etc. work politically and socially--they all have tons of unstated or implicit rules and habits
d) how to shape your own language, expression, body posture, etc. to the situation as it stands so that you accomplish your goals to the extent that it's possible to do so--you have to assess the limits and capacities of your own power in a situation

That's where what Abagadro is saying about his own day is a good guide. You can walk into some rooms and situations and just know that the only thing you can do is not fuck up. You can't win, it won't be fair, and you can't say anything about what you're really thinking when that moment arrives. Sometimes you're there to take a beating and the only thing you can think about is whether you're being set up as someone else's patsy and whether that's just a thing that happens or if it's being done to you with special malice. And about whether you have the option and desire to get out of that situation later on--because sometimes there's important and satisfying work to be done that just requires on occasion being the guy who takes the blame.

And at some point, emotional intelligence becomes a problem in its own right. Sociopaths are masters of emotional intelligence--the problem is that they have no genuineness or authenticity of their own, they use it entirely to manipulate others. So don't lose a sense of who you really are while you try to learn who other people are. That might eventually let you be the guy who thinks that the rules should be followed, or the guy who gets angry at the smarmy person who selfishly bends the rules. But don't be that guy until you're ready to be that guy, because you can't do that well until you go to emotional intelligence boot camp.

Khaldun I'm pretty sure you just broke-down Aspergers symptoms.

Which is what I've been thinking is the problem the whole time. I dunno, I'm not a professional, Maven, but you might want to ask your Dr. about the possibility. The inability to read social ques and break-down human behavior is a pretty big indicator, as far as I know things. Of course, it could also be a side-effect of your meds.

This is why we have pros to diagnose this sort of thing. The rest of humanity is really just there to go, "Yo, that's not acceptable social behavior. Consult someone."

You're WAY off the mark about letting this bother you, though. Shit happens, you don't know all the information and you're not going to endear yourself to this professor you desperately want to take a class with by reporting it.  You're also going to hurt yourself in the one class you do have if you DO say something.

Also, taking the class later works out better anyway. People develop casual relationships over time, not over a concentrated amount of time with someone. Developing a relationship with a professor or co-worker over a year is going to work out better than dealing with them twice as much over half the time.  There's a tipping point at which you become a nuisance rather than a familiar face and it's sooner rather than later for casual acquaintances.

Oh Puh-leeze. The taught are the best qualified to judge the teachers, certainly at the college level. I agree that asking 2nd graders is not all that valuable.

I'll let you read my evaluations sometime.  These include insightful commentary such as "Dr. Nebu couldn't teach a goat to shit".  Students are not content experts.  They only can evaluate whether a teacher appeals to their learning style or not.  While that tidbit can be valuable, it's often overlooked by students during the evaluation process.  Typically you only hear from the people that had issue with your style, not your ability. 

Well, can you? :awesome_for_real:

That's some good grief title material right there.

When you're dealing with undergrads, teaching style is nearly more important than what you're teaching.

Go take a comp sci class taught by someone fresh off the boat who literally knows more than god but can barely speak english and get back to me on how it went.

Style is why people love folks like Neil deGrasse Tyson, etc.

FAKE EDIT: YES, I KNOW THAT'S A LITTLE RACIST. I'M STILL BUTTHURT, DAMN.

I think its not that clear cut, Dr. Goat Evacuator. I think it varies from subject to subject. Learning in the hard sciences can be evaluated with non-subjective tests that show whether a teacher is, in fact, reaching their performance goals. If student evaluations are poor on a professor that otherwise has well-graded students in the hard science curricula, then you'd be correct. However, I suspect that that scenario is rarer in subjects where evaluation is far more subjective.

Also, Maven, this looks like a big deal now, but read Aba's post again. THAT is a bad day. You're having a frustrating teachable moment, from which you can learn, but for goodness sakes, don't torpedo yoursefl by thinking that any of it really matters. You'll take the course at some point, you'll pass, or not, and move on to the next, and by the time you're sat behind a desk asked to do a job people are actively giving you money to do, you'll be as bewildered as we are now as to why this seemed to matter to you.

Evaluations are a fickle thing.  If I'm teaching a large service course, I disregard them.  If I'm teaching a senior/grad level course in field, I take them VERY seriously.  

I also agree that communication is key.  I find that all of my teaching awards have come because my students know that I care rather than the use of technology or style.  Students just want to know what their expectations are and they'll perform.  Making them guess is the sure way to piss them off.


This ^^^ 

If you think the drama in school is a big deal, just wait until you get into the working world.

This whole idiotic thread was worth it for Dr. Goat Evacuator.  :awesome_for_real:

It's a bit of both.

I took a Java programming class at Ohio State when I was in my first undergrad. I knew I wanted to be working in CIS, but couldn't hack studying it at a major university because I'm more hands-on than theory. The first words out of the professor's mouth was "I don't speak good English", he literally knew ~100 English words, and six weeks later I dropped out of the course along with roughly 20% of the rest of the class. Sure, it was a weed-out course. But language never should have been a barrier in a course about languages.

On the other hand, I have become pretty good Internet-friends with one of my professors from this recent bout at school. He's confirmed the "teach a goat to shit"-esque comments on reviews. There were quite a few of those types of remarks, more than I expected. His response? "If I don't have 10% of the people I interact with mad at me, then I'm not doing something right."

If that's not his title by week end, you've failed at internet.  :why_so_serious:

Thank you everyone.

There is actually some pretty good evidence from several studies that the teachers with the highest evaluations do not overlap the teachers who were the most effective at teaching the subject. One of the best examples of this recently has been studies of what's called "flipping the classroom"--where the professor records the lectures and makes that the "homework" and where the class does problem sets or other applied work together with the professor when they actually meet. "Flipped classrooms" typically show up as making a huge difference in retention of information and skills compared to standard listen-to-lecture, do the problem set as homework. But students also downrate flipped classrooms compared to listen-to-lecture, and it's easy to see why they do: a flipped classroom is on balance harder work--you can't zone out, it compels you to be active and interactive, etc.

There's also some studies that show that there are some pretty substantial bias effects in evaluations.

That said, students also see things that faculty never notice about their own teaching, and student judgments of effectiveness are really important for faculty to hear in some respect. I frankly wish most of my colleagues could find a way to listen invisibly in on conversations students have about them (sort of like Scrooge in Christmas Carol) because they'd find out a lot of useful information about their own teaching style (not all of that information would be negative). I was sitting in one of the lounges the other day working on something before a committee meeting and there were a bunch of students behind me who didn't notice I was there, and the observations they had on several departments were just very interesting and actually quite helpful.

Part of the problem with standard teaching evaluations is that sometimes the end of a course isn't the best time for a student to be thinking about what they learned and didn't learn from a class--a lot of evaluations would be more helpful if you were getting them after six months or a year or even after the student graduates. You often don't know what you learned or how useful it was to learn it until you're putting it to use in some fashion, much later.

I think when it comes to students evaluating teachers, I would classify that study under the "No Shit, Sherlock" form of wasted grant money.  :why_so_serious:

I guess, but you know, if you didn't document it, you'd get people saying it wasn't true. As it is you can document something pretty clearly like "women professors get lower evaluations than male professors even when delivering it in the same way, with the same results in terms of testing or assessment of student learning" or "evaluations of women professors use very different, more negative words" and find that there are people who either don't believe those studies or dismiss their findings as unimportant.

RateMyProfessor is what I use. The Yelp of Teaching. I try to get a teacher 4.5 or above or at the very least nothing below a 4.

It's meant to give *some* indication of quality and more information than I would otherwise have. It has proven accurate so far.

I once took a Comp Sci class (or maybe math, I forget) that was in large part taught by a TA that I couldn't understand one fucking word of. Literally not one word.

I just looked up my sister on some professor rating site. She got pretty good reviews and a red pepper for "hotness."

 :oh_i_see:

RateMyProfessor tends to have info basically on really popular profs and really unpopular ones, like all rating sites. Also profs who are notorious characters or unusual in some way. People who are basically solid teachers don't tend to motivate students to go and post on them. I'd generally trust other students I know first, something like RMP later.

I've had to take classes with professors that rated poorly on the rating sites because that's all I could fit into my schedule, and more often than not, it wasn't that they sucked as teachers, it was because they didn't make the class an easy way to get an A.  I don't bother checking the rating sites these days. 

Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad.

 :heart:

I'm a tough prof with high standards.  I see the same in my own ratings. 

I also get more students into medical, pharmacy, and dental school because they do well on the PCAT, MCAT, and DAT.   

Which would you prefer?

I dunno. What pepper are you on the hotness scale?

Waiting for Dr. Goat to respond since I already looked him up (LOOOOOOOOOL)  :drillf: #fangirl

Whee.

10/10 Thread title, would read again.

Needs more Nerf.

This title is fantastic now. Thanks  :drill:

I'm gaming the system at college at every opportunity, up to and including picking my college. I figure out what the optimal strategy is, I execute, I adjust it, for each class I am taking. My target is an "A" in every class.

But you have to roll with the punches. Don't get so tied up in your plan that you think you have to win every little point on it. I have one class where the professor is nearly useless, probably should retire (a "Speech" teacher that goes off on tangents, forgets what point he was trying to make, and several times has given us assignments in terms that left most of the class mystified about either what the assignment actually was, or when it was due). I'm having to teach myself from the textbook in order to pass the written exams, which means that class takes several times as much attention as my Government class, which is taught by a notorious hardass but he *actually* teaches.

Other people have their own plans, fighting them is often more trouble than it is worth.  Adjust, adapt, and overcome. And I want to echo what others have been telling you, Maven: You've got to learn to let this shit *go*, or you're going to snap one day and burn down the building because somebody stole your stapler.

--Dave

I too game the "system" at my college. My strategy is to do all of my work, and get good test scores. So far I have had all A's every single term.

I'm talking more in terms of what I study, figuring out how the teacher signals (even if subconsciously) that something is on the test in a tricky form, analyzing the syllabus to figure out which assignments have the most weight in terms of my final grade (for example, one class, if I show up every class, and turn in a "A" quality "extra credit" book report, I'm a lock for an "A" even if I do nothing else). Or taking a particular English prof again, because I know he "gets" my oddball humor and won't count it against me when I write papers for him.

--Dave

Maybe life and education aren't problems to solve with tricks. Not always. It's kind of like Groundhog Day. The "I'm figuring out all the tricks" is Phil Connors' problem up until he starts to just live and learn.

Four decades as a gamer has not prepared me to win life?

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9d9U8S8SdYc/VK7aat_ZatI/AAAAAAAABC4/ACckWqSHoG4/s1600/thats-unpossible.jpg)

Seriously, where there rules, there are optimum strategies. The more those rules involve numbers, the more applicable game strategies are, and college is filled with numeric feedback and inputs. I'm not here for the 'College Experience", I'm only incidentally here to learn things (even if I need to learn them in formal settings, I don't need to be "in" a university , I could audit courses at a community college or download lessons from the net), I'm here to get a piece of paper that says "I are smart, really".

--Dave

Bullshit.

Edit: If you're not min/maxing life, I put it to you that you're somehow living wrong.

The question is what part of life are you min/maxing.

Earnings potential? Sex? Family? Knowledge?

Everyone's got their priorities.

True enough. One of the factors I balanced when picking a school was that it had to be within 400 miles of my youngest daughter, so that I can frequently visit her and be part of her life. Schools out of that radius didn't even get considered. Other factors involved the proportion of students on financial aid (indicates a highly active Financial Aid office and a flexibility of payment deadlines to match FinAid disbursement schedules), the availability of scholarships, etc.

Knowledge: This is undergraduate. The substance of what I am going to potentially learn is not going to change significantly regardless of where I do it.

Earnings Potential: Since schools with widespread name recognition were outside both of my radius and my financial reach, all that mattered was that the school was a "University" rather than a mere "College", and especially that it not be a "Community College". I've been in the room when resumes were being sorted, after the "brand name" schools and the alma maters, that's the only consideration that matters.

I built a spreadsheet with various factors, applied some thought to what those should be and how they should be weighted (and what was a disqualifying score for any given factor), and picked one out of the top five for personal reasons. As Schild said, if you aren't minimaxing the parts of your life that *can* be reduced to numbers, you are doing it wrong. "Munchkin" for life, yo.

--Dave

EDIT: As for sex: I am 44 years old and recently divorced. I do not need the drama of relationships with girls younger than my oldest daughter.

I get where Dave is coming from. Gaming my college experience for the highest return is a core part of my thought process, but not the only one. Shooting for a high GPA but also areas where I think I'm lacking. I'll sit up front, stay engaged, figure out my points budget I can lose before I get a B, get a sense of the semester. I took classes with harder subjects like International Political Economy, an English course that was harder than 101 but focused on issues in business, and am filling Gen Ed with Health and Nutrition because I take poor care of myself, especially measuring the stress cost of my decisions. Those I care about. Art and science, I pick the classes that will get me the easiest A: Genre Film Studies aand the easiest Astronomy course on campus.

I know I don't have a broad or neurotypical perspective, but I have to make this work and leverage as much as I can to better my chances of success. Call me a schemer or a shitty strategist who can't see the political rules society plays by, but no one is going to come to my rescue if I reach a fiscal point where I can't meet my basic needs, and low wage low skill jobs are a death sentence. I have to look good on paper and a worthwhile investment, and the new normal appears to be 3.75+.

Yes, that competitive attitude is death to interpersonal relationships and liable to have me end up in some casino gambling away my earnings. I'm afraid of failure. (I know, get help. I can't do that overnight.)

Maven: In all honesty, you need to learn how to recognize when 'intangibles', things that can not be reduced to numbers, are involved, and how to value them without obsessing on them. You strike me as the kind of guy who doesn't like his peas to touch his mashed potatoes (perhaps literally, perhaps not, I'm speaking of that kind of "this is not in the right *place*, RAGE!" reaction).

Life is messy, and no matter how hard you try, things are going to slop out of their proper roles and channels. Learn to recognize when it is time to let the petty shit go, and what that stuff is. Be suspicious of that urge to kick back because the plan is falling apart, learn to have goals you improvise your way towards instead of precisely mapped out checkpoints.

--Dave

You should play huniepop.

You seem extremely worried aboout shit that isn't going to matter the instant you graduate. No one is going to give two shits about any of that. It's the next step in not mattering. How you did in grade school didn't really matter in middle school which didn't really matter in high school which didn't really matter in college and won't really matter in the work force. I just spent 5 years watching 150 very young adults become complete fucking wrecks trying to finish at the top of the class. And none of it mattered. At the end all that mattered was if we were competent or not.

Also, friends don't matter much either. Once you get married most of them fall out of your life, and once you have kids the rest disappear. The people you get to have as friends are the parents of kids in your kid's class and the neighbor you say hello two a couple times a week when you're both doing stuff outside.

Biz school is different, Bob: They really will care about what his GPA was for the first 5 years or so of his career, and it will be absolutely *critical* if he wants to go on to graduate studies. He's not sweating over nothing on that front, he's just not leaving any stretch in his strategy and getting too worked up when the inevitable happens and the plan hits even minor derails.

--Dave

It does depend a great deal. For CS your GPA doesn't really matter unless it's below a certain threshold. For pre-med? It matters immensely.

It takes some guts to go back to school as an oldster. Kudos to you guys. I felt awkward enough when I was the right age, hard to imagine me going back now.

Sometimes when I visit my hometown I walk around college campus there and even that feels weird, even it students are on break.

I've sat on admissions committees for medical school, pharmacy school, and graduate school.  If you have any interest in those areas, I can tell you what the committees look for.

I got into a very highly rated MIS program with that I'd consider average grades in my undergraduate CS (and even one black mark against my record).  I had a few things going for me: I'm hispanic, I had better than good grades outside of my major, I had great recommendations, and I present well compared to other CS/highly technical majors.

I think I did fairly well on the placement exam (MCAT?), although I don't think I did that well. 

The major respect in which Schild is right, shocking as that thought might be, is that you gotta know what matters to you--why you're in school or for that matter why you're doing anything else. Never use a university or department's system and requirements as your own value system, or let it dictate the reason why you're doing something. Universities may act like their systems and rules are for the benefit of students, but they aren't, at least not directly--those systems exist largely to keep day-to-day business functioning, as a way to route resources efficiently, and so on. I think there's no harm in suspending judgment and trying some new subject or class with an open mind, and I think deciding that the system is always your enemy is just as dumb as trusting that it's always your friend. But every student (and employee, etc.) should have their own goals, should be playing their own game and be playing it to crush.

Employee evaluations (especially 360 evaluations) can pretty quickly turn into bloodsport if you get a critical mass of munchkins, though. Part of why they have worked out so badly in Tech, every time some version of "evaluate each other" is used.

--Dave

Not to belittle your efforts, but it is extremely likely that being Hispanic was a big factor. They are desperate to improve diversity at every level in tech, being ethnic (not white or Asian) and articulate is equal to a full GPA point (says the vaguely brown man who is fond of his walls of text).

MCAT is medical school, though. Doesn't appear to be a standardized CS/MIS aptitude test, although it appears a fair number use the MAT (Maths Aptitude Test). Which is probably a better choice than most, especially for graduate level.

--Dave

No doubt.  I don't remember any other hispanics in the system.  I'm sure there were some. I'm not the most hispanic looking person in the world. Could have been other daywalkers.

Probably the only reason I still get Google calls out of the blue about every 3 years. 

I had to take the GRE, specifically some sort of math variant.  I don't remember completely, that was approx 12 years ago.

The best advice I got at uni was from my English lit teacher, with whom I took about 3 classes, which was that doing honors was a good year, but a PHD was a waste of time.

Ironic considering his job, which for the most part he seemed to enjoy, but very apt for me. I love study and literature, but I really just love it for the personal journey, not because I want to shout my views at the world.

Honours was very rewarding in that context, but I'm sure if I went into a PHD instead I'd have gotten bored half way through and never finished, and felt like I'd just wasted my time.

Realising what I wanted to get out of university took me a long time (finished when I was 27), but it was great that when I did I actually found something of value for myself. If I'd pushed through and min-maxed any of my previous degree attempts I'm sure I'd look back and hate it.

I min-maxed and slept through the final two years of high school. It was a horrible experience and I am still pissed off at myself and the system about it. It just confused me and wasted more of my time later on.

Min-maxing may not be the best system for Van Wilder. You would want to do the opposite. Make your college experience as inefficiently as possible.

Did Maven rage quit?  Real men post goodbye, change password to something they don't remember, and slink off to a good ol' glass of bourbon.

Have some class, man!

No he didn't.

About 4 hours of severe depression, 12 hours of sleep, 8 hours of putting one foot in front of the other and intense self-loathing, then significant quantities of caffeine and getting homework done before I returned to some semblance of regulation and renewed determination with some acceptance.

This is about the only place on the internet I go where I interact with other users. Doubt I'm leaving anytime soon unless I get engrossed in something offline, like, I don't know, a sex cult.

So are you just gonna take the class over the summer or what?   :awesome_for_real:

Don't discount the idea of a sex cult.

I think if you're gaming life, a sex cult sounds like an improvement over f13.

Eh, sorry for my drunken rant. Hopefully it was at least entertaining. I am having a fun week being a chew-toy for mega-corporations.

Someone's gotta be the bitch.

Ouch. :( That had to suck balls. On the bright side, it can only get better? 

Could get better or it could go to hell and I get fired.  So we'll see!  :awesome_for_real:

I was there last year. Like...multiple highly visible screw-ups. Some were me, some were just "Oh, here do someone else's job -- he's out of town and you've never done it before, but I'm sure you'll figure it out from these utterly useless instructions, as they're not 'instructions' so much as cryptic notes to myself". I'm a bit bitter about taking the fall for that one.

I was the closest I ever got to being fired for, you know, actual cause. (Well, they'd have let me resign I suspect).

Stressful ass shit. Hope it goes well.

I don't think I have screwed up, but could easily see becoming a goat if things blow up.

This can be hard to accept, but I agree fully.  I may not want to admit that I am surrounded by competitors, but I am.

And channeling Schild -- if you can't see who's ahead of you and how, you're not really competing.  And from my experience, especially in Universities, if you're not trying to compete, it's very likely that you won't get the chance to do so for long.  Meaning: competition for most of us is not optional.  You will be excluded ("crushed") eventually  (like going broke).  

When I was in college basically anyone with a CS degree was coming out with a bunch of attractive job offers, so I guess the idea of school being highly competitive didn't occur to me.

Maven's in accounting though if I remember correctly. I can speak with some authority on this.

Nobody gives a fuck about your college experience in the accounting world. They care if you can pass the CPA exam. Once you do that, you're basically proven as a commodity and you can take a job anywhere without them questioning your credentials. The only thing that matters from that point on is your work experience.

Now getting your last year of accounting as a Masters Degree can be tricky if you try to get into one of the top schools. But again, that hardly matters. I didn't get into UGA for my Masters. I did get into Georgia State. Absolutely nobody referenced this once in my interviews. Once you pass the CPA exam, nobody looks at where you learned accounting other than to ask you sports questions.

Actually, it's the same over here.  You could spend the entire four years putting candles up your hole, as long as you get the bit of paper at the end of it in some fashion and then pass the further accountancy exams.

So, basically, we're reinforcing the WTF here.

Everyone just figures if you can do this one thing, you know accounting.

Which is hilariously untrue. The average CPA here has to spend 40 hours a year in training just to stay current, and that's probably not enough.

Nevertheless, that's how it works.  Given that the accountancy firms over here do the training, weeding out the incompetent is usually done at that level.

I'd be more worried about the company you get into, rather than the Uni, to be honest.

Let's be honest here.  Once you land your first job, nobody cares about your college grades.  The only reason grades matter at all is if you plan to attend graduate or professional school. 

There's that.

I have an English Degree, for fucks sake.

Well, if you do become the goat, and you find yourself with digestive troubles, we have the man for the job.

And you'd be a hit with the sex cult.

Don't forget your leggings.

Since I can't teach a goat to shit, I'll be of no help if you become the goat.   :why_so_serious:

Well, I was hoping that the scathing review would have encouraged study.

CPA has been marketed as the Never Worry About Employment Ever Again license.

Despite this, I don't feel I can slacken my academic effort. But we'll see how I feel after I start taking better care of myself. It's possible I'm stressing over academics because other areas of my life are empty or unfulfilled and it is coming out as overachievement and whirlwind tilting.

I still honestly want to know how the original story ends.

I'm currently going back to school for accounting myself.  From what I understand, for accounting you can't slack off completely, but it's not like it's 4.0 or bust.  As someone currently on the hunt for an internship, the GPA requirements I've seen for jobs have been everywhere from 2.75 to 3.5.  Big 4 firms tend to be pickier about academics. 

Beyond that, as said above, once you clear the initial hurdle of that first job, no one cares.  My first degree only ever came up in idle conversation, and thankfully no one ever asked about my GPA, because I did not take school seriously enough the first time through. 

A Scotsman with an English degree. You broke my irony meter.

Absolutely true. If your goal is to work for the Big 4, then you need to be an overachiever grades wise. People will tell you this is a good thing to work there. It's not. It's a horrible soul-sucking experience that will leave you drained and hating your life. However, you can leave in two years with your full credential, and much of the work experience you get will be seen as usefull in large corporate companies.

If your goal is to work for IBM, or Coke, or Apple, or whatever in big dog companies of the world? You need to excel in Big 4 accounting. If your goal is to work in a local or regional business? That's not a big deal.

On phone, will type resolution when I have a keyboard.

Short version, sleep with your professor for the A.

 :why_so_serious:

Or the D, if you are female  :rimshot:

 :facepalm:

This alone speaks volumes.   :why_so_serious:

I'm going to take the business law course in the summer. Her course is an easy A in a difficult subject because of her grading structure. 5% extra credit comes from active participation. The course will be online, which I will need given I have two other courses planned to be completed in a 6 week period. I already have the textbook and am reading it so I should be able to ace her online course. Her Spring law class was in the middle of my schedule, so I get a longer lunch break. I plan to read and integrate more than she covers, and I have all semester to do it. So, I may say easy A, but I am getting the education to go with it.

The student who called me racist was one of the professor's benefices from the previous semester. He took her for Business Communication, which I am taking now. He eventually got a seat in the law class; it appeared the teacher added 10 seats to accommodate students she made promises to. I assume she knew that if I got into her other class and saw that student attending, that would raise a huge red flag. She also is handling all this in face-to-face conversation, so there is no e-mail trail with the school. She's being smart about it!

Regarding the incident, I'm awaiting the letter from the student judicial board to see what I have to deal with. If I could pull the plug on the whole thing I would, but I need to see how serious this became. It won't affect me academically and I'm expecting at worst a slap on the wrist.

Going forward the plan is to purposely avoid that student. I have run into him on campus, which is expected, and off campus which is surprising. In the entirety of Los Angeles, he appears to live in downtown Westwood (not a cheap place to live) where I go for therapy at UCLA. He knows or suspects I'm in the area as I've walked past him twice in Westwood and ignored him both times.

My therapist and I talked about the scenario and explored both why childish is a trigger word for me and my pattern of emotional build-up and volcanic eruption. At the time of the incident I was overcaffeinated, running on little sleep, terrible diet, and other stressors that put me into a high alert state. The eruptions are a lifelong problem going as far back as elementary school. The single-minded pursuit of what I want and my lack of negotiation and political skills are also faulty areas.

My therapist and I both agree, along with my psychiatrist, that accepting the situation and moving forward is the best action. Also, I'll be entering group therapy to develop social skills, which fills me with all kinds of dread and anxiety (despite any type of workplace or creative collaboration having the opposite effect).

In closing, the unanimous feedback tanked my mood to the point of wishing for psychic death (not physical suicide), but I recovered, and I'm trying to integrate what was said. My therapist attempted to validate that, whatever the board's consensus is on how important all this is, the events did upset/trigger me and it is worth exploring why to move past it. I get why the things said were said, but it minimizes my issues and pushes me to ignore them rather than deal with them once and for all.

Does that makes sense? I agree that, compared to people struggling with mega corporations and running mult-million dollar accounts, my problems are small, but they are large to me and I won't grow unless I get past them, or they'll always trip me up. I have a friend who is CEO of a drone technology firm who unloads his problems on to me about his company and the relationships, guy in his 40's who graduated from Cal Tech, and all I can think of is "Hey man, even if your company bankrupts, you're always going to be able to find a job." I could listen and be supportive but I had trouble empathizing. We are in different places.

If your therapist is good never bring stuff up on here and just talk to them.

Ya, if us bunch of knuckleheads actually bothers you, you should probably just avoid posting about such things.

Look, I value the wisdom and the experience of the posters on here; even if I disagree or I don't feel like contributing, it's fun to read the different perspectives. My therapist is good but they aren't available 24/7. I ended up with a problem where I was stuck and sought advice from people who I thought might be able to help me and who I thought I would be receptive to. I don't find that erroneous -- but if the problem is a result of my psyche, welp, I'm in for pain.

I had unanimous feedback implying there was something wrong with me and to seek professional help, that my entire orientation to this situation was wrong. That was a reality check too big to handle. I felt severed from whatever illusion of group identity I have by coming back here time and again.

I just don't understand what motivates certain types of interaction and communication, whatever the reason. And I feed way, way too much conversation about what I'm doing and how I'm thinking because I guess I love being under examination and given feedback (Actually, it seems like I want continual praise to assuage my own doubts -- something for therapy).

I'm on a new medication to address sleep issues. With better sleep and diet I'm hoping I'll have the resources to handle myself better.

Abagadro, I don't blame you for the delivery of your feedback. From what I read -- how do I phrase this? You were in a world of shit and all out of toliet paper.

It's not different than someone from England getting a French degree, or an American a degree in Spanish. ;D

I am in a world of shit.

(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/Abagadro/maxresdefault_zpsmfwysqcj.jpg)

That'll end well.

:sad:

Maven: I wish you had mentioned (or I had noticed) your sleep issues earlier. Fix that shit. Seriously, fucked up sleep patterns and inadequate time for REM sleep will fuck you sideways in areas you wouldn't intuitively think of as being related to them, including emotional management and the effectiveness of your study time. Given a choice between two hours of sleep and two hours of studying, and you're getting less than 8 routinely, choose sleep. You'll remember more, and integrate those memories more effectively.

This isn't even a marginal or potentially unrelated effect, it's been studied in college students literally hundreds of times, always with the same result: more sleep = better grades and fewer problems connected to behavior.

--Dave

Dave's right here, sleep is very important. For me messed up sleep patterns are my "ohhh right!" alarm, the indicator that tells me I've lost control of my depression again and that it's time to do something about it.

And it's actually pretty easy to sort out too I find. For me it's really simple things - get off of the PC at about 9.30pm, read for an hour, cut out the alcohol and no caffeine after 6pm, and, the big one, do some exercise every day. Doesn't take much - a 20 minute walk is enough. That gets me sleeping properly within a week every single time, and then it becomes much, much easier to start getting the head stuff under control again.

The crowd here can be tough but do remember that when somebody clearly isn't worth our time, the admins ban them. On the other hand, when you post a barely-comprehensible e/n rant and the thread goes on for pages and pages instead of just getting locked, well, you're one of us. At least for now.

Also, I think some of the... intensity of the responses you get is because a lot of us nerds are, or used to be, socially retarded in some fashion, and something or other in what you write sounds just enough like a slightly crazy, more naive version of us that we can't help but care just a little.

Or I may be projecting.

Echoing the sleep thing. Lack of sleep -- whether from insomnia, sleep apnea, or just choosing to get less -- can screw you badly. Especially when it comes to emotional control and rational thinking. It screws with your entire brain.

Get a sleep study if it's not something you can control. If you can get your sleep pattern stabilized and sufficient, you'll find a lot of your problems just go away -- and what's left is much more manageable.

If you do get a sleep study, get one ordered by a doctor, such as a neurologist. It's better to go through your insurance due to the cost involved. I hit my deductible because the study was like $4k for two nights.

 :roll:

Alternate solution to a sleep study.

Pop some Benadryl, knock yourself out for 10 hours.

You need healthy, natural sleep. Chew some Valerian root and get more exercise.

Doesn't help if you have something like sleep apnea. You sleep, but you don't get any rest, probably because your body decides you're dying every few minutes at best and jerking you awake.

You think you slept 8 hours, but you're lucky if you got an hour of real sleep -- spread over all 8.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Remember, Schild is mostly here to amuse himself. Anything he says is mainly him being a dick.

I'm insulated from his dickery. He means well.

I think.

The new medication I'm on is intended to help with sleep for those with Bipolar disorder. I've seen some positive results for the first couple days but it'll be a week before I'm on full dosage. Also it's only one part of the strategy, caffeine intake and other influences have to be managed as well.

I'm not in a position for a sleep study but it has been on my mind.

You say that but

You need to get your personal shit functional before you're gonna be functional in society.

One of us, one of us....

Hands up, anyone in this thread that has not either posted a wall of text ranting about something in their real life, or used one of our perennial rant-fest/mosh pit threads as a cathartic release valve so we didn't go to prison because we had to beat the shit out of some asshole?

Anyone?

--Dave

EDIT: It is entirely possible that the Politics forum alone has prevented at least a few massacres, by distracting the potential perpetrators into fighting to keep anyone from being wrong on the internet. We may not be warm and fuzzy, or even particularly healthy in our mental stability, but sometimes it's best to let crazy deal with crazy rather than trying to "heal" them.

My thoughts drift back to erect nipple wet dreams about Mary Jane Rottencrotch and the Great Homecoming Fuck Fantasy. I am so happy that I am alive, in one piece and short. I'm in a world of shit... yes. But I am alive. And I am not afraid.

What do you need, Ab? Besides a drink.

I keep coming back to emotional intelligence: grew up midwest and ignorant to emotional health. No one gave a fuck about feelings, why should I? That's the thought to challenge. Daniel Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence has been great.

I am a remarkably poor reader of social situations.

I have had a drink. My last post was actually a happy post. My stuff was resolved in the way I was ultimately hoping for and removed (mostly) the cloud over my actions. I was high-fived by my boss and told "You are so fucking good at this."  So there is that.

There may be another shoe to drop (so of course I am still in a world of shit, that is the natural state of things), but I am "alive" and not afraid at this point.

To the rest, I am an incredibly bad reader of social cues too (I am often described as "distant" or alternatively "blunt"). It's sort of become my thing. I am the "guy who speaks truth" in many circles. The key for me is to be very self-deprecating. It's virtually Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer levels of "I am not familiar with your social conventions and niceties, they frighten and confuse me, but your underlying assumptions of reality are fundamentally flawed and let me show you why you are wrong..."

Caveat: I have had a few drinks.

Drunk semi-happy Caveman Lawyer is the best kind of lawyer.

So you are almost literally Ron Swanson?

 :rofl: OK, that's funny and amazing in a good way. Glad things are better for you.

Reading this whole thread after recently binge watching Community and I have now decided that Maven may well be a young version of Pierce Hawthorne.

I took out this place is full of autistics and sociopaths.

And people wonder why MMORPGs stopped having PvP enabled...

I'm a mildly Homophobic Irishman with a degree in Greek and Roman civilization. Beat that. Studying Plutrarch's love poetry to a little boy was an experience I gotta tell you...

That is pretty masochistic.