I concur. I cannot imagine a force on earth powerful enough to make me forgo turkey dinner.
Rant VIII: The Reckoning
- Thread starter Anonymous
- Start date
-
- Tags
- boat people
I'm plant-kin and your wholly debased slaughter and consumption of my people is a trigger for me. /s
If Mr.Z was a better cook and could help me, I'd consider it. Plus, I'm not a big turkey person. I like it fresh out of the oven and that's it. Not a fan of turkey leftovers due to a bad case of food poisoning 8 years ago. Mr. Z isn't a turkey person, either, so my goal every year is to buy a turkey small enough so there's only enough for dinner.
fixed that for you
Haha I do what I can.
Now that is an awesome idea. I could make tons of awesome breakfast foods if I had all day to cook them.
Ah, Poison Ivy. One imagines one would.
Necronic
Staff member
Took my first grad-school midterm this Thursday in Advanced Linear Optimization. Spent a lonnnnnggggg time studying the more esoteric aspects that could potentially be tested, and felt pretty prepared for the test. What I FORGOT to do was actually practice the simplex algorithm, which is sort of the most basic part of the whole thing. Conceptually it's quite simple (basic addition and subtraction), but in practice it is super easy to make a small mistake and have it propogate through everything else. Basically like Linear Algebra, but a little nastier. Anyways, completely screwed up my simplex algorithm, which probably means I did not do well on the test (next 2 questions required that solution).
But that's not the rant. No, the rant has to do with my fellow students. The vast majority of our class are foreign students from a particular country (which I will not name), but lets just say they have a lot of chai-walla's there. Very few ever come to class. When they turn in homework (a time you would think they would come), one student shows up and turns in a stack of assignments, which makes it seem like they are copying each others work. When they are in class they talk constantly, or show up 10-30 minutes late. Keep in mind, this is a GRADUATE LEVEL ENGINEERING class.
And here's the kicker. The idea that they have to be told to STOP CHEATING in the middle of the test is beyond insane to me. These students were OPENLY cheating in the test. I was sort of ticked that the TA didn't just boot them from the class immediately, but I don't entirely fault the TA for giving them a pass on it once (she said if "I see you cheating again..."), because the end result of one of them being busted for cheating would be them losing their student visa's and being deported. It's an intense responsibility for a TA to have. But for that exact reason, the intensity of the repercussions, I can't imagine what in the world they are thinking, cheating on a test. And this of course ignores the (to me) even more important issue of how you could justify cheating at the graduate level. They will be expected to understand this material beyond this class. They can't cheat their way through a professional career.
I've seen cheating from all walks at the undergraduate level, but I was really shocked to see it in grad school. Is this something unique to the educational systems in certain foreign countries? The Chinese students don't follow this paradigm, they are generally attentive, punctual, respectful, etc.
Anyways. I was appalled. And....I dunno. I struggled really hard on this test, and the homeworks. The idea that other people are cheating their way through it is just shocking.
But that's not the rant. No, the rant has to do with my fellow students. The vast majority of our class are foreign students from a particular country (which I will not name), but lets just say they have a lot of chai-walla's there. Very few ever come to class. When they turn in homework (a time you would think they would come), one student shows up and turns in a stack of assignments, which makes it seem like they are copying each others work. When they are in class they talk constantly, or show up 10-30 minutes late. Keep in mind, this is a GRADUATE LEVEL ENGINEERING class.
And here's the kicker. The idea that they have to be told to STOP CHEATING in the middle of the test is beyond insane to me. These students were OPENLY cheating in the test. I was sort of ticked that the TA didn't just boot them from the class immediately, but I don't entirely fault the TA for giving them a pass on it once (she said if "I see you cheating again..."), because the end result of one of them being busted for cheating would be them losing their student visa's and being deported. It's an intense responsibility for a TA to have. But for that exact reason, the intensity of the repercussions, I can't imagine what in the world they are thinking, cheating on a test. And this of course ignores the (to me) even more important issue of how you could justify cheating at the graduate level. They will be expected to understand this material beyond this class. They can't cheat their way through a professional career.
I've seen cheating from all walks at the undergraduate level, but I was really shocked to see it in grad school. Is this something unique to the educational systems in certain foreign countries? The Chinese students don't follow this paradigm, they are generally attentive, punctual, respectful, etc.
Anyways. I was appalled. And....I dunno. I struggled really hard on this test, and the homeworks. The idea that other people are cheating their way through it is just shocking.
Necronic
Staff member
Can't remember what it is that you do, but from what I've seen you really can't get far in engineering if you don't actually know how to do the work. There really is a right and a wrong answer in engineering stuff, and if you aren't able to provide the right answer, or (possibly worse), you repeatedly provide the wrong answer, you will lose your job. You can't BS your way around it like you can in other fields. This has been my experience at my company (Oil/gas company).
The real question when an engineer fucks up is, does your fuck up cost money, or cost lives?
fade
Staff member
I must beg to differ. There are master's and PhD level scientists in the O&G industry that BS their way through every day. You can tell who they are. The only reason they're employed is because oil exploration is often glorified button pressing, and they can do that. The ones who don't want to do that--the ambitious ones--will fight out of the pits, and if they're lucky, make it to some sort of actual problem-solving position.
Had to tell the work study students to stop "cleaning" because they were using a bottle of tile cleaner (ie bathroom floors, showers, bathtubs, etc) on particleboard desks. That explains why everything had a weird film on it last week. They honestly had no idea that different cleaning agents were for different purposes.
Replace "cheating" with "shoplifting" or "credit card fraud" or any number of other charges that don't result from heat-of-the-moment issues, and you begin to understand the issues I have with criminals.
fade
Staff member
I CANZ AVR!
What about the charges that result from societal policies built about lying to the poor about how "anyone can make it in America" ? and that there is nothing stopping poor people from pulling themselves up by their bootstraps? Replace shoplifting with Jim Crow laws and Reaganomics and you begin to understand the issues I have with the ruling class.
Halforum Motto: Fuck Corey Feldman.
him and Corey Haim can go pound rocks for all I'm concerned!
GasBandit
Staff member
Well, Corey Haim will have considerable difficulty doing that, now.
whoops
I saw folks get their PhD (in science) by simply not quitting. No first author papers. Hell, no second author papers. 7 years in grad school with nothing to show for it? Here's your degree! It was either that or they convinced them to get their Master's and go. Our program really needed to weed people out early on, but it sounds like engineering has the same problem.
