As of yesterday I have power again, btw.
Cat did the world a favor.
Good job Cuppy!
I just learned that one of my friends in College Station passed away back in August. I didn’t know until I read some Silver Taps updates. It must have been sudden because she was active on Facebook almost until the end.
I hadn’t seen her in the years since I moved out of town. Still, it’s a bummer.
I hadn’t seen her in the years since I moved out of town. Still, it’s a bummer.
Midterms are today. My exams are multiple choice and online, so I use a program that tells me who’s taking the exam and how long they’ve been at it. The students who have taken it thus far are doing quite well and taking most of the allotted time. I love those kids.
Every time there is an online exam, a small group of students in every class will somehow turn in the exam right before cutoff time and get a perfect score in under three minutes. These are the same students who are chronically absent, asleep in class, or on their goddamned phones the whole time. They’re also the ones who are unscrupulous enough to fabricate a dead cousin who got shot at a house party for an excuse.
I anticipated that, so I scrambled the exam question order for each class. There’s a very good chance that my cheaters will get the wrong answers from their classmates. They’ll punch in the answers and expect a perfect score, only to receive an abysmal grade instead because they didn’t even look at the questions for one goddamned minute.
I’ll need to put the Academic Affairs office on speed dial. This is going to be oh so much FUN. It’s times like these where I really wish Catness was still alive even more than usual. I could pet her on my lap while laughing.
Update: And so far it seems to be working. I guess any potential cheaters heard that all the questions were switched around so they're taking the test honestly. There are few who finished in seven minutes, which is possible to do without cheating. Those particular students are actually quite good so this seems to be in order.
Every time there is an online exam, a small group of students in every class will somehow turn in the exam right before cutoff time and get a perfect score in under three minutes. These are the same students who are chronically absent, asleep in class, or on their goddamned phones the whole time. They’re also the ones who are unscrupulous enough to fabricate a dead cousin who got shot at a house party for an excuse.
I anticipated that, so I scrambled the exam question order for each class. There’s a very good chance that my cheaters will get the wrong answers from their classmates. They’ll punch in the answers and expect a perfect score, only to receive an abysmal grade instead because they didn’t even look at the questions for one goddamned minute.
I’ll need to put the Academic Affairs office on speed dial. This is going to be oh so much FUN. It’s times like these where I really wish Catness was still alive even more than usual. I could pet her on my lap while laughing.
Update: And so far it seems to be working. I guess any potential cheaters heard that all the questions were switched around so they're taking the test honestly. There are few who finished in seven minutes, which is possible to do without cheating. Those particular students are actually quite good so this seems to be in order.
Last edited:
I should have known when we had a nice, quiet, peaceful weekend, shit was going to blow up on Monday.
I won't bore you guys with the details because it involves kids sports, but OH MY GOD are sports dads the most petty drama queens. Thanks for ruining my week, and all our work for the last 2 years, assholes. And it doesn't help that I now have to deal with them daily because we have games every day this week through Sunday. I just.....arghjndnoxngldsgnkjdfgklnfd.
Once upon a time, October wasn't stressful.
I won't bore you guys with the details because it involves kids sports, but OH MY GOD are sports dads the most petty drama queens. Thanks for ruining my week, and all our work for the last 2 years, assholes. And it doesn't help that I now have to deal with them daily because we have games every day this week through Sunday. I just.....arghjndnoxngldsgnkjdfgklnfd.
Once upon a time, October wasn't stressful.
So far my experience has not been like this and I am even coaching little league. EXCEPT, 11s soccer team last year came in 4th of 4 in a competitive tournament...until a dad from either the first place or second place team (both from out of state) threatened to get his gun when arguing with another dad from the other team (second or first place team) and both teams were disqualified. Their boys did not win because the dads ruined it.
I'm glad my son got second in the tournament, though. I'm also glad we weren't there.
You know, South Park did an episode about rowdy parents in the stands.
You get some sports Dads who live vicariously through their kids. These middle-aged men wanted so badly to play baseball for UCLA when they were boys, and they see their kid's athleticism as a second chance. I taught in rural Texas for a while and saw poor families drum "sports or nothing" into their kids. Low-income black families in the area were especially affected by this. That might be a reason why SEC universities have majority black football teams. A lot of parents put their hopes into their kid making it into university on a scholarship and pulling the rest of the family up. Anyone that stands in the way of that, whether it's a teacher with standards, the referee, or even another parent in the stands, is considered an obstacle to be removed. I tutored student-athletes at University of Hawaii and Texas A&M. I've heard it from them.
You get some sports Dads who live vicariously through their kids. These middle-aged men wanted so badly to play baseball for UCLA when they were boys, and they see their kid's athleticism as a second chance. I taught in rural Texas for a while and saw poor families drum "sports or nothing" into their kids. Low-income black families in the area were especially affected by this. That might be a reason why SEC universities have majority black football teams. A lot of parents put their hopes into their kid making it into university on a scholarship and pulling the rest of the family up. Anyone that stands in the way of that, whether it's a teacher with standards, the referee, or even another parent in the stands, is considered an obstacle to be removed. I tutored student-athletes at University of Hawaii and Texas A&M. I've heard it from them.
Or their classes are taught by football coaches who routinely give them a 99 on every report card so they can play on Friday. I am in periodic contact with some teachers from that high school I taught at. Most of the academically inclined kids escaped after graduation. A good number of athletes signed with community colleges or small Methodist universities in Texas, Oklahoma, or Kansas but most of those didn't make it. I heard they're back in town, not going anywhere in life, and exuding major "peaked in high school" vibes. Oh, and one of them is in jail.
I’m a teacher, a boyfriend, a son, a dad, a brother, a neighbor, and a best friend. And in all of these roles I strive to be both a good listener, and to be emotionally supportive. It’s like the one thing I think that I actually do well.
But goddamn am I getting emotionally exhausted. Lately it feels like EVERYONE around me is going through a crisis, is super stressed, experienced tragedy, or is otherwise reaching out to me for emotional support. It’s all legitimate, but it’s starting to feel overwhelming. I can’t be there for literally everyone all the time. And I feel like I don’t have anyone for me to talk to when I’m going through shit myself.
Which, I suppose, is where you come in Halforums. So thank you for letting me rant.
But goddamn am I getting emotionally exhausted. Lately it feels like EVERYONE around me is going through a crisis, is super stressed, experienced tragedy, or is otherwise reaching out to me for emotional support. It’s all legitimate, but it’s starting to feel overwhelming. I can’t be there for literally everyone all the time. And I feel like I don’t have anyone for me to talk to when I’m going through shit myself.
Which, I suppose, is where you come in Halforums. So thank you for letting me rant.
Dave
Staff member
Sorry to hear that, man.
god damn Pat, I laughed so hard, I cried and coughed....
figmentPez
Staff member
Apparently the theme for this fall's allergy season is debilitating headaches. Every day for weeks I've been getting headaches so bad I can barely do anything else. Sometimes I just lay down in the dark, which sucks because I can't even get restful sleep when things are that bad.
Do I hug because I sympathize with allergy issues and lack of sleep or do I laugh because funny image.... decisions...
Holy shit. Two kids at my school (I teach high school) dressed up as the Twin Towers, while a third student dressed as a plane and would run into them. They thought they were hi-larious. They got sent to the office shortly after. No idea what happened to them, but the fact that they did that at all makes me sad for humanity.
They never knew a world where 9/11 hadn't happened yet. They were born into this shit, humor to me seems like a perfectly valid defense against it.
I suppose dressing as the Titanic and an iceberg would not be considered as tasteless. So there must be a time limit for such things. But perhaps it needs to be more than one or two generations to avoid offending the people that lived through the news of the tragedy.
GasBandit
Staff member
Slight difference of scale and national impact there. But yeah, in the late 80s, the Challenger explosion jokes started coming almost immediately.
"Why didn't Christa McAuliffe take a shower before the Challenger launch? She figured she'd wash up on the beach!"
"What does NASA stand for? Needs Another Seven Astronauts!"
"What were the sharks eating after that morning? Launch meat!"
I agree with you here, but not so much because of how much time has passed as the fact that no person or group deliberately steered an iceberg into Titanic. There was no intent involved like there was with 9/11. You could dress up as the coronavirus (hundreds of thousands dead, still ongoing for some) and it would still be more tasteful than going as a mushroom cloud over Japan (about 200k, almost 100yrs old).
—Patrick
I remember that.
"Did you know she had blue eyes?"
"one blew this way, one blew that way"
so if they are seniors, they were born in 2006, and wouldn't have strong memories of world events until the early 2010s, by my estimates, and add a year going down to 9th grade. is it tasteless, yeah, do they have any attachment to the event, no not really. its just history to them. Kids don't always see the context for why their actions are hurtful, and in their defense, it happened over 20 years ago. Despite the rising tide of being more thoughtful about our words and actions not everyone gets the same instruction from their parents and mentors about how actions can be hurtful. Hopefully this can be a moment they can learn from, and even if it cant, no one was actually harmed, and it was addressed by responsible parties, no need to crucify them any further. Ill take my downvotes, but that's just my personal opinion as someone who manages high school kids in his workplace.
I think the better example would be dressing like an SS officer/Hitler, which is more timeless and easily recognized, a mushroom cloud would have too much nuance.
I'll downvote you for thinking we have downvotes here. We just point and mock, like civilized people.
At a night club, 9/11 jokes are fine. At a school, no.
Here, take my updoot.