Miscellaneous Monday - A New Year Edition

Monday, January 6, 2014

Thank goodness that's over

Christmas, that is.

The holidays have never been an easy time for me, and in light of my daughter's death last year, this season was particularly tough. So I've been crying a lot, and my sleep has been disturbed with dreams of my daughter, as my subconscious screams against reality.

I'm trying to look at 2014 with a little more hope, but I know I have new milestones I will have to endure that will probably result in additional emotional upheaval. But this is how it goes - small steps of healing, followed by rough times, lather, rinse, repeat.

Frankly, it's exhausting.

Nowhere to run to

Now that my insides are no longer falling out, I have an eye towards resuming my conditioning so I can run outside this summer. I was up to nine miles on Sundays before things started falling apart, but I suspect I'll have to start over at this point. Which means I'll be off to the field house, running around the indoor track. Around...and around...and around.

We don't need no education

Or least we don't need no "upper division" writing course that should have been called "Remedial Writing for the Semi-Literate." Thankfully it's over, but I still found the entire experience worthy of a devastating side-eye.

The final papers were supposed to include "peer review" of our draft papers. Being a fan of OCD, I submitted my paper a week in advance. Of the other three members of my group, one submitted her draft several days late. The other two were complete no shows.Now I could give two fucks about how other students choose to manage their work and their time. We're all adults here, and I'm not paying almost a thousand dollars a course to run herd on other people to make sure they get their work in on time.

Which is why I hate, with the heat of a thousand burning suns, "peer review" and "group projects." Based on the purely empirical evidence of my grades and professorial feedback and the subjective evidence of the discussion boards, I am a better student than most of my classmates. This means I typically get no value from "peer review" and end up doing more than my share of work during "group projects."

Thankfully the next ten classes in my curriculum are all technology based, which doesn't lend itself well to such nonsense. And get off my lawn.

3 comments:

vince said...

I was able to bypass most of that when I was in college, but in one business course I was stuck., I told the prof that I had my own business and didn't have time for that shit (I didn't put it quite that way, of course) but he said "you'll have to deal with this in business, and sometimes it will suck, so just suck it up, buttercup" (he also didn't put it quite that way.) Si I did most of the "group" work, and it was the lone B I got in college Mark III.

The other group members did show their appreciation, however, by taking me out for free pizza and alcohol when the class was finished.

Anne C. said...

Interestingly, Vince, your story reminds me of a group project I did in school in which I was a part of a group of 5, one of whom was a guy who had his own business and never showed up for any of the work sessions. I and another gal ended up doing the report portion of the project and we managed to wrangle the other 2 to participate in the presentation part of the project (Mr Business Owner at least showed up for the actual presentation). I got an A, but I'm not sure what the others got - one of the final pieces of the project was to tell the professor who did what work. I told the truth.

Janiece said...

Anne, speaking the truth is usually the best policy. :)