success

Got test 3 back today, 96 is the verdict. I was very surprised. Very pleased, but also very surprised. Mostly because I didn't feel that much better about knowing the material than I did on test 2. I may well have, and that may have been the main factor in the difference in grades, but I can't help but feel like there must have been something else. My brother in law (who originally suggested I actually see him in his office to talk about my grades/concerns) mentioned that in Law school, you don't put your names on the test, you just use numbers, so that the professor can't make his grading personal. He thought that since they don't do that at Richland, obviously, that it could only work to my advantage, that if I were to raise concerns and basically let him know that I was very interested in doing well and was trying and wanted to know how to work harder at it, that he would take that into account when grading the test. This actually seems like it may have been the case. Or maybe I just knew all the material a lot better, or maybe it was something else lol.

In any case, now I don't have to drop the class! And you can bet I'm going to work my tail off to get a similar grade on both test 4 and the final. At least to get a passing grade in that class. I'm not taking this again. I like my free time, and my $150, thanks.

test 3

Quick update, I took test 3 today in my pre-cal course. This test will determine whether or not I drop the course this Thursday and have to repeat it in two weeks at the start of Summer II. I felt good about the test. I didn't study for it as much as I would've liked, and that's mostly my fault, but I still felt good about it. I actually knew how to do all the problems (unlike test 1) and I had time to complete all the problems (unlike test 2). I expect my best grade of the 3 so far, but considering even a 52 would be my best so far, that's not saying much. I need to get at least like an 80 to consider not dropping. I'll get the test back tomorrow or Thursday at the latest.

This teacher is still wildly frustrating. I went to talk to him during his office hours yesterday to express my concerns for my grade and the difficulty level of his course. He pretty much just disagreed with all my arguments saying it really ISN'T that complex and I really SHOULDN'T be having a hard time if I'm doing the homework. What a joke. I mostly wanted to see if he had copies of tests he'd administered in previous semesters covering the same coursework (an equivalent test 3 with different questions) that I could study from, to which he replied that he didn't keep old tests. Useless...

epic failure

My precalculus class is ridiculous. Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous. The more I go to class, the more I believe that. What's ridiculous about it? The stupid teacher. The teacher is like no teacher I've had. He's not bad at teaching per se, but he is a bad professor. Unfortunately for him, teaching the subject isn't the only part of being a professor. There's also grading, communicating, helping students, curriculum choice, etc. He fails at pretty much all of these things, in an epic way.

Grading: This guy is the toughest grader I've ever seen. He has admitted in class he plans to count off points on anything he can. He insists you show all your work on tests. Correct answer+no work=0 points for the question. Correct work+wrong answer=0 points. But it doesn't stop there. On the first test I had a problem that was simple enough that I didn't need to work it out with any algebraic steps, I was able to logically solve the problem. I gave logical reasoning for my answer, but was still counted wrong because apparently he was looking for me to show specific steps (which obviously were unnecessary). On another problem, as I was solving it I was debating between two possible ways to solve it. So I worked through the problem both ways. I eventually decided on one way, which was the correct way and supplied the correct answers, but he still counted off because I left the incorrect steps on the page as part of my work. He has counted off for not writing 'X=' before the solution, he has counted off for not having a perfectly sketched graph, with lines not bending at exactly the correct curvature, but still passing through the key points. Etc.

Communication: He talks to the white board the entire class. Half the time he is covering up his work with his body, making it difficult to follow along. He insists on us knowing the hows and whys of every formula he presents, and spends 15-20 minutes proving each formula before presenting it. He insists we need to know the specifics of why these formulas work. I disagree. I do lots of websites as a means of side income. I use computers all the time, but that doesn't necessarily mean I need to know why or how a computer works. That doesn't mean I should spend all the necessary time learning the details and specifics of what a diode is or a circuit so I can understand how a computer works. I don't need to know those things in order to use it. I don't need to know why a math formula works, just how to use it. If I was majoring in math, or was intending to be a mathematician, I would agree with him that it needs to be learned. He spends at least 40% of each class period proving formulas and other mathematical facts.

Curriculum: His curriculum isn't terrible actually. He has 4 tests, and a final, and the final will count twice to replace your lowest grade of the original 4 tests, if it would raise your overall grade. That's pretty decent. However, the way things are looking, I may need 2-3 tests dropped. The worst part of the curriculum is he only allows 75 minutes for tests. For a math test where you have to show your work in a very concise and detailed way, that's not nearly enough time. On the last test I took, only 2 people finished the exam before time was up. No one else had time to complete the test. He insists that math is not only about knowing how to do the problem, but also about how fast you can do it and further insists that his time limits are enough time to complete the test if we 'know the material'. Personally, I think that's a load of crap. I can tell you I knew the material on that test. It's one thing to take a long time on a problem because you aren't sure how to do it, and it's another thing to take a long time on a problem because it's just that type of problem, regardless of how well you know how to do it.

I didn't study or do any of the home work for the first test, as a point of gaging how tough the course would be. I got a 45 on that test. Out of the 5-6 people I talked to (15 in the class), none of them got a higher grade than me. Oooookay, gotta try harder. So I buy the book, do the homework, stop falling asleep in class, pay attention, and try hard to keep track of the kinds of minute details he is looking for on the tests. Second test...I get a 51. The professor acts surprised that there's so many low scores (I'm sure...like he isn't used to people failing/dropping his classes). Test 3 comes before the drop date next week, so I'll be able to take that and if I still fail it, I'll have to drop the class.

It's just stupid. I've gotten A's in both algebra and trigonometry before this, in trig I got 100s on all the tests but the final. It's not the material I'm struggling with, and that's the worst part. The only thing standing between me and an A in this class is this stupid ridiculous teacher. The problems in the homework are all simple problems, straight forward, sometimes a little complicated but still easy. The problems on the test are like the most deviously constructed and are as far from simple as you can get. This teacher isn't trying to teach us precalculus I've decided. He's just trying to fail us all with his stupid questions, his horribly picky grading, and his incredibly boring classes. This guy is more worried about the red tape of precal than the concept of it. He's the bureaucrat of the math world. He's the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law. Only thing is, he's teaching us the spirit of the law, but grading us on the letter of the law. He's an idiot. Having to drop his class and retake precal in summer 2 is the very last thing I want to do, but I'm not sure I can pass this class. I don't even know what to improve on. I totally understand the material, I'm very comfortable with it, but the test questions are overly complicated and unclear sometimes. And it's not like its even just me. Like I said, almost everyone else I've talked to in that class is failing. If it was just me I would know that there was something I could do to make up my poor performance, but if it's 80% of the class, you have to wonder at the teacher.

Usually near the end of the semester, the school will have the students fill out anonymous reports on the performance of the teacher. I'm hoping these go out before the drop date, or that I can get a good enough grade on the third test that I don't have to drop it, so that I can give him the worst possible review I can, along with everyone else in the class that's failing. Far as I know, only 3-4 people tops, are passing. I would be very interested to know what the pass-rate of this class is, or even his average pass-rate for all this classes. I would bet it's below 30%. What a dick....

mood: miserable

I rarely blog about my feelings. I blog often about events or my thoughts and ideas, but rarely do I write about my own feelings. The purpose of this post isn't to gain pity or sympathy or whatever, in fact I want none of those things. The only purpose of this post is to put my feelings into words, because I find I express myself best and come to an enlightened state of understanding concerning my own feelings and thoughts when I put them to words. But not only that, I have to write as though I'm explaining it to someone, because ultimately I am, to myself. If I write as though no one else were going to read it, I might as well stick to just my thoughts because it comes out just as disorganized and muddled as it is in my head, but when I explain things to people whether in person or in writing, I feel a sense of clarity come over me that often leaves even me surprised due to the resulting insight. Thus is the preliminary to this post.

Last night I made possibly the biggest mistake I've made in a long time. As with all mistakes, full recognition of the consequences and impact of the decision didn't come until later, or today. I brought and consumed alcohol in my brother and sister-in-law's house. And not only that, I let it get out of hand enough that William, who I was drinking with, ended up getting sick over it and had to stay the night instead of driving home. When I got home from school today Kisty brought it up. Honestly she didn't need to say anything beyond "I know what happened last night and I'm disappointed" for me to realize in full what kind of decision it was. Not that she said much more beyond that anyways, for all her attitude and spunk she's awful non-confrontational and actually apologized to me a few times while discussing it, which I was quick to disallow. At the moment, I just feel miserable. She said it perfectly right when she asked "What were you thinking? I thought you knew better." and really I don't have an answer to it, and I should have known better. They've allowed me to be a guest in their house, a house they try very hard to maintain a certain degree of civil and religious standards in, and last night I knowingly acted against those standards. There's no excuse for it, I know that. Regardless of whose idea it was, or who (between William and I) was the one acting more irresponsibly, it all comes down on me
, and really it should. I just....I feel terrible, like there's this heavy blanket of guilt thats suffocating me. I feel like I need to get out of this house...as though the house itself is disappointed.
Eddie is out of town on a high adventure trip, and of course he needs to know what happened. Kisty was nice enough to allow me to explain it to him first. I have no intention of down playing it, or omitting details, least of all lying about anything. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if they asked me to move out, but if this guilt persists I may end up preempting that decision and moving out myself. I don't feel bad for the drinking, or even for allowing William to drink himself sick, those are things I'm okay with. It's all about location, location, location. It takes a long time to build trust with people and in one night I've shattered months of established trust, probably more. I think the worst part about it is how painfully obvious it is to me now how bad of a decision it was and that it didn't even really occur to me last night. I feel toxic...as though I've been infected with a disease I know I can't get rid of...

happy people

In this troubling world of ours there are two kinds of people. There's angry people and there's happy people. Sure there's some kind of 'in-between' breed, but ultimately when the chips are low you're either an angry person or a happy person. Perhaps it has more to do with the way people cope with their struggles than anything else. Some people are totally happy people, until they're tried, then they transform into our friend here on the right.

I work at Chili's as a server, and a server (almost by definition) is a high-stress job position. When it gets busy and you've got a full section, things can hit the fan very quickly. And it's in a job like mine when it's busy and everyone's guard is down, that you really get to see if your co-workers are angry people or happy people. And once I've made the distinction, it becomes obvious who I'd like to get to know better and who I can probably avoid entirely. Now, I'll admit, it's not a solid form of testing the character of a person, observing how they handle stress or cope with peoples' complaints and bullcrap, but I feel it's a reasonable indicator. I've only been working there about 3 weeks and I can point to each person I work with and tell you if they're an angry or happy person. And really it's the happy people you want to work with, the ones you want to talk to and possibly get to know better, maybe even hang out outside of work. But it's those people who really stand out, at least to me. It makes me wonder if those kind of people stand out to just me, or if they stand out even to the angry people as well. I like to think of myself as a happy person, someone who is upbeat and optimistic and usually wearing a smile, even when times are tough. At the very least, that's what I try to be. I also wonder if outside of a high-stress environment, if I could get along with some of the 'angry' people I work with. How much of the angry or tense or stressed feelings I see coming from these people at work at retained even when they're not at work. How much of lies dormant all the time just waiting for a trigger and how much of it only comes as a result of a specific trigger? Bruce Banner is always the Hulk, even when he seems happy and contented, the wrong thing could set him off and BAM! He just flattened your dog. See, if you knew Bruce Banner was that unstable time bomb just waiting to go off, you probably wouldn't have invited him to come along when you walked your dog. Bruce Banner is an angry person, that's just how he is. It's a residual personality trait, not a byproduct of specific and temporary events.

I'm not prepared to say all the people I see trembling and turning Green in the kitchen are 'Bruce Banners', but maybe they are. But at the very least, I can safely assume the people who aren't turning Green in the kitchen, and are instead relatively cheerful, are definitely not Bruce Banners, and hence would be safe to invite them along when I take my dog for a walk (that is if I owned a dog lol). Bruce Banner quit flattening my dog! HULK SMASH!