March 3, 2006 11:31 pm

Longest Entry Ever

:note: Foo Fighters

Geh. I can’t say the talk went well, because I really don’t think I accomplished much. I will say, though, that a lot of the problems I outined earlier were actually intended. As in, the fact that he assumes we all want to grow up to be Senior Programmers somewhere? That’s true, and on purpose. And the fact that it’s a “Computer Science” course but it’s taught like a Video Game Programming class? Also true, and on purpose. Initially, the class wasn’t even going to let people who were not VGP into it, but the teacher said, “No, go ahead and let them in, it’d be useful for them to know this stuff.” My response to that was to tell him that had I known those two issues were the case to begin with, I never would have signed up for this class. If that had actually been communicated to me early on, I would have totally dropped it and found something else to take. His response was basically “Too bad, there’s nothing I can do about it now.” Which, yes, is true, but OH MY GOD.

So yeah, that’s pretty much how the whole talk went. It was me saying “blah blah blah this is impossible and you expect too much” and him saying “I get what you’re saying but these are simple programs and I’d feel like I was doing you a disservice if you didn’t get to such-and-such a point by the end of this class” and me saying, “They are simple to YOU–” and him cutting me off and saying he can’t dumb them down any further because they’re so simple functionality-wise that there’s no where else to go but up.

Oh, and the other thing that I was right about was the fact that he thinks that the reason most people didn’t turn in the homework from the week we had off was because they just blew it off. He said he was “disappointed in all of us” for not doing it and would have expected more out of us. I told him that some of us, namely me, did work on it, for hours even, and managed to come up with nothing and didn’t turn it in because it would have seemed stupid to turn his own code right back in to him wth no changes. He admitted that he thought we all blew it off (because only half of the people in the class actually turned something in, and out of that group, only half of them actually did anything with the code. You’d think that 75% of your class not doing an assignment would alert you to the fact that maybe it’s too difficult, but no). I felt so good about being right, even though it sucks he thought that.

Also, I think he’s not taking my concerns seriously because I’m still (apparently?) doing okay in the class. I guess he hasn’t decided to go by his “miss one assignment and you fail the whole class” policy outlined in the syllabus. (Thank god, but still.) The fact remains that I feel like I’m doing horribly because, truly, I DO NOT GET THIS STUFF, and his answer was basically “C++ is hard. I said that the first day. I used to go home and cry when I was learning it because I learned it on the job and didn’t have anybody to teach me.” My thoughts? HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT KNOWING YOU ARE INFLICTING THAT PAIN ON OTHERS?

I don’t even know what my plan of action is anymore. I’m going to talk to my Department Director again, just to follow up, and I’ll see if he wants to do anything about it because I’m through. I tried. I got nowhere.

On the plus side, we got our final project assigned today and while it seems impossible, we have until week 11 (next Monday begins week 09) to work on it. So that’s a huge relief.

______

On to more pleasant matters:

Daniel and I went to get dinner tonight at this cute little pasta place by his old work. We called ahead to make reservations, but they apparenty don’t do that, so we walked down there and the line was out the door. We headed back up the street, planning on going to a Thai restaurant nearby (because oddly, I really like Pad Thai noodles) when we came across this place called Vivace that’s open late and they are a crêpery. Crêpes! YUM! We quickly decided to go there instead and it was DELICIOUS. I had a crêpe with strawberry jam and Daniel had one with raspberry jam. They also have ones with sandwich-type stuff inside them (more lunch-y than breakfast-y) and are generally a very neat place. It was awesome.

Also. You may recall that about two weeks after Daniel got hired at a coffee shop, they learned that it was closing. A different coffee shop offered to take on the current crew, so Daniel’s first day at New Coffee Shop was Thursday. He learned yesterday that the opening date for the shop in our neighborhood (a 5-7 minute walk) has been pushed back from May (originally mid-March) all the way to August. So he will be working at a store on the East side of the city for quite some time, with a 45min bus ride there and a 60min bus ride home. He is currently looking at Craigslist for cheap cars. :P I told him I want a Jetta.

I’m super excited about our upcoming Spring Break trip, because I really need it. I also really need the massage I’m getting tomorrow. :cheer:

My keyboard still sucks. It’ll only type about 70% of the letters I want it to, so I have to type each paragraph or sentence and then go back and edit for a few minutes. It’s awful.

And, GO ME! I finally got more than eight comments on an entry! Of course, they were mostly from random people I don’t know about some weird spammy email I got, but YAY! I’m excited. I’m not being sarcastic either.

Um, has anybody else ever had a broken blood vessel in their eyeball? It’s happened to me once before, in high school, for no apparent reason, and Daniel just started looking at me strangely a second ago and IT’S HAPPENED AGAIN. At least this time it’s not nearly as obvious (the other time, it was right next to the color-y part of my eye so nobody wanted to talk to me because they couldn’t look me in the eye without being weirded out) but it still sucks. I’m tempted to take a photo of it but I don’t want to freak you out. (Okay, I did anyway. View it here, but don’t think I haven’t warned you.)

See? Awful.

An awesome end to an awesome week. :faint:

File Under: ,

Tagged: No tags

2 Comments

  • callie says:

    Wow. That’s all I can really say right now. To any and all of this. Wow.

  • Paul says:

    (Longest comment ever)

    Hey Meggan. I’m sorry to hear that the face-to-face with your instructor didn’t go well. But I’d totally go back to the dept director and let him know that not only did the teacher not let you fully express your feelings, the ones you did express were welcomed with the attitude of a bear looking at its 300th salmon. One other thing… you might want to look up what actually causes blood vessels to break in ones eye, could it maybe be stress? Another piece of evidence to the outside world that this class is causing undue grief to some of the students? Actually I took a liberty…

    What is a subconjunctival hemorrhage?

    Subconjunctival hemorrhage is red lines or spots on the part of the eye that is usually white. The redness is usually harmless and painless. You may not know your eyes are red until someone tells you or you look in a mirror.
    How does it occur?

    The conjunctiva is the thin sheet of transparent tissue that covers the sclera (the white part of your eye). It contains many blood vessels that are usually too small to see. Your eyeball looks white. However, blood vessels in the conjunctiva may become inflamed and cause redness. They may also bleed. The blood from a broken blood vessel becomes trapped just under the conjunctiva. A small amount of blood can make the eye look very red.

    Possible causes of these hemorrhages are:

    * injury
    * rubbing your eye
    * coughing or sneezing
    * lifting heavy objects
    * straining.

    Sometimes subconjunctival hemorrhages occur for no clear reason. They may occur more often in people who have high blood pressure.

    Read more about it here: http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/aha/aha_scjhemor_oph.htm

    I thought that perhaps straining as in looking at your computer screen 30+ hours in a single week might qualify (that doesn’t even count your other classes work load). Bah, sorry for ranting, but I’m seriously pissed off for you. It seems like my flash class but on a much more ridiculous scale and with an even more apathetic instructor.

    But I’m very much looking forward to spring break too! Wooooooo!!! And I hope you enjoy your massage.

    cheers.