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...

judgment day

My first semester at college I roomed with an old friend of mine. We were really good friends, but as the semester went on, he began to grow distant and somewhat ignore me and wouldn't treat me with much respect, and for a long time I was perplexed at his behavior. Eventually it got so bad he would act like I wasn't there most of the time, and when he did talk to me he was very condescending. Finally I found out what was bothering him so much that he was treating me like that and found out that it was me! Which at first baffled me because I'd never done anything to him and never treated him with anything less than the utmost respect. He explained to me, also in a condescending way, that I was not making the most out of my first semester at college. I'll admit, I had bad study and sleeping habits, I would stay up late playing games and then often sleep in and miss class the next morning, and so far that's been a recurring theme in my schooling. I recognize that's something I need to work on but what I didn't understand was this: how do my decisions (poor or not) concerning personal matters that shouldn't affect others, do in fact affect others, causing them to judge me and/or look down on me, like I'm insulting them or something. Even after I talked to my friend about it and found all that out, and rebutted with this same argument, he continued to treat me that way, which is sad because we didn't end the semester as very good friends and ever since have never been as good as friends as we were before that semester.

That's not all though, it's just always that harsh. I've experienced the same kind of behavior with other people I've lived with, but its a lot less severe. They may not treat me like they despise me, but I've had people tease me about it, seemingly because it bothers them. I'll take the teasing over the down-right judgmental behavior, but essentially they are the same; negative reactions to decisions and behavior that shouldn't affect them. I guess I don't feel like anyone has the right to judge me over something like poor sleeping and/or study habits, which again, SHOULD affect only me.

Is it entirely their fault? Would someone do it on purpose? Maybe not, maybe for some reason they genuinely feel like it's a personal attack on them having to live with someone who doesn't have the same personal standards of achievement as they do. Maybe being witness to my poor personal choices genuinely affects their mood so they retaliate, perhaps subconsciously, with judgmental behavior and subtle underlying attacks. I don't know. If that's the case, who is wrong in this situation? Me, for indirectly affecting the moods of those I live with by making choices that aren't in accordance to how THEY would live THEIR lives? Or them, for allowing my personal decisions affect their mood or more specifically, retaliating, either consciously or subconsciously, with judgmental behavior and the like? I just don't know, I certainly don't feel like it's my fault. I guess ultimately I could shape my own solution and just try and condition myself not to feel bad about the poor choices I make so I won't feel bad when I get singled out for it.

For example, if someone is teasing you for wearing glasses, and you DID wear glasses and were already self-conscious about it, you would certainly feel even worse about it if someone teased you, right? Or even still, maybe you weren't already self-conscious about it, but if someone keeps pointing it out, you might develop a complex, and then maybe you would begin to feel bad about it whereas you might not have otherwise.

Now if I made a B in a class, and someone tried to make fun of me for it, I wouldn't feel bad because, in my standard of living, a B is still pretty good. It's not the best, yeah I could've worked a little harder and gotten that A, but an A is a standard of excellence and I may not have achieved that excellence, but a B is still above average, and I'm okay with that, so I wouldn't feel bad if someone tried to make fun of me for it. Yeah I missed some classes this last semester, yeah I could've gone to bed earlier each night and gotten up earlier, I could've spent a little more time studying and a little less time playing video games, but I still got 3 A's and 2 B's, and to me, that's still pretty good, so why do I feel bad if someone, more or less, makes fun of me for missing classes and having poor sleeping habits? Clearly I'm that person wearing glasses in the example, who is already self-conscious about it and additional teasing is just going to make me feel worse. However, on the other hand, when it comes to being somewhat teased/ridiculed about something you CAN change and maybe SHOULD change, such as poor sleeping and poor study habits, perhaps that ridicule will cause you to increase your own standards, making you an overall better person? Why would someone work hard to improve if they felt good about where they were at in life? Only if they or someone else were to create a feeling of inadequacy in them. So then is it right to create that feeling of inadequacy in someone when they feel good about their life? Is it right for us to say what personal choices are good and which are bad? When it comes to choices that affect others, sure, but I mean personal goals and achievements. I think that right there is the real question. Perhaps my roommate, and others I briefly seen this behavior in, are consciously or subconsciously, trying to create that feeling of inadequacy to cause me to improve my life. But why? Is it because they want the best for me? Or because of what I said before, that they are somehow offended by my behavior and want to fix me for their benefit? So again I ask, who is wrong in this situation?

Wow, that's already digging way more into the matter than I had intended, maybe I'll revisit it if I have any epiphanies.

friends

I've come to the realization that friends are harder to make as you get older. When you're a kid, you meet another kid, you push some girl over together, and bam! You're friends. When you're older, people already have their friends, social orders get more complex, suddenly it's not as easy. Right now I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I really need a good friend.

My best friend of 6 years got married this last summer and I hardly ever see him anymore and I don't really have many other friends in Dallas. Almost all the friends I had in high school are away at school or in different parts of their life and I don't see them anymore. I have my family but in most cases family isn't really the same thing as friends. Friends can talk about anything, friends understand what makes the other person tick, friends have similar interests and similar views on life. My brother Spencer and my sister Maretta are who I spent most of my time with growing up in my family and Spencer has been in Utah for a majority of the last few years and Maretta has been as well, and recently got married and moved to Philadelphia for the next 4 years. I'm striving with connect with my other older brother Scott but he's married with a kid and is starting up a new business still and so his schedule is pretty busy.

Over the last 6-7 months I gradually been getting to know a lot of people through means of an online game, World of Warcraft. I play with a few of my friends, and have met many more people that I would call friends, but what do you do when you start to realize that the people you thought were friends actually don't respect you at all and consider you beneath them because you haven't been playing the game as long as they have and don't have as much 'experience'. Where I used to really enjoy socializing with most of these people I've met online, chatting or over vent, over the last few weeks I've been coming to the realization that a lot of them probably don't consider me as a friend, just a 'friend rank'. Which has come as devastating news to me, because before I started school this fall I didn't have much other opportunity to socialize, so these people were about the extent of my friends, but now I feel like I have been setting myself up for disappointment. Even my friend Max who I've known for years and years, sometimes treats me that way in-game. I don't blame him, he's supposed to be the leader of this guild, or social network, and feels obligated to maintain order amongst everyone. It just sucks he's in that position because he's one of the few friends online that I could fall back on, and I can't even do that sometimes because I know he can't fairly take my side. Whatever...

Friends just come so naturally when you're younger that you never really learn HOW to make friends. I go back and think how you make friends, by finding a common interest. Well...one common interest that is easily found in almost any guy is video games, which now that I think about it is one of the great benefits of video games. It's really how I've made many of my friends in the past. Also and more recently, sports, also found in most guys. But depending on the situation it's kind of difficult to genuinely steer conversation towards these topics. I'm also learning that school is one of the harder environments to make the transition from 'classmate' to 'out-of-class friend'. Lucky for me I'm an introvertive person and am usually happy with 1-2 good friends. Thats why it's never been a problem until my friend William got married, and that's a whole other mess by itself, but it leaves me suddenly feeling friendless. Or maybe more specifically, best-friendless. It's important for people to have a best friend, and not just someone they consider a best friend, but someone who considers you a best friend back. To be one of the most important people in someone's life, and be the same to that person. Mutual friendship.

I've been trying to befriend some people at school but it doesn't happen quickly, if at all. There's two girls in my math class that I sit between, Jennifer and Amber. Both are cute girls and have a lot of energy and personality. My first thought at that point was "hey maybe I can hook up with one of these two" but now that I'm realizing I just need a friend, that's my only goal at this point. But how do you make a friend out of a girl anyways? And why isn't there a better term for non-intimate male/female friends anyways? I used to have a female friend a few years back, and it was awesome. We joked back and forth, had a lot of the same attitudes towards things, had a lot of fun times, and there's just something confidence building about hanging out with a hot girl who you're important to, even if it's in a non-intimate way. Turns out that girl got too comfortable with me being a generally nice person and started taking advantage of my generosity, using me if you will. Chauffeur, fast food, TV/internet, whatever. She went off to college (in Dallas still) and we stopped talking, or rather I stopped making effort to get together with her and since she had never really made any effort to begin with, we just stopped talking.

So this girl Jennifer, she's got a boyfriend which is kind of discouraging, but she's pretty, funny, and interesting. We talk a lot in class and I've gotten to know a lot about her, but I'm afraid the end of the semester will come and that'll be that, we don't really see each other again. Given my need of friends, I would hate to have that happen. So I wonder how you create a friendship with a girl knowing you can't use any kind of chemistry to help the friendship along. That's what I used with the first girl I was talking about, we probably would've hooked up at some point and I think the feelings were there from both of us at one time or another, but we never got the timing right. So do I start by asking this girl to do something outside of class? I've already done that, we've gotten together to study outside of class, but we still mainly talk about what we're working on. So do I just ask if she wants to grab some lunch on campus or something? Will she take that as me asking her on a date? Indeed it essentially is the same thing, just different motives, but it may be hard for her to differentiate those motives. Bunch of questions I'm just asking myself really lol, need to ask someone who can maybe give an answer.

In any case, that's my lament. At this point in my life I feel like I could do with a few good friends, since I recently 'lost' my best friend. I'll make due with what I can though.

And ps for anyone who might be reading, this isn't a cry for help it's just me logging my feelings. This is my journal first and foremost, then an outlet media.


::EDIT:: I was kind of emotional when I wrote this and realize that impromptu writing, at least for me, produces very unorganized writing. This entry was all over the place.