OMG

I went to bed around 8:00 last night, planning to just nap.

Woke up at 3:40 am. Stayed up long enough to set my alarm and went right back to bed.

Woke up when the alarm went off at 8:45.

And I'm gonna end up taking a nap after this class, I can tell already.

Eh. I'm picking up some extra hours at work tonight, and weeknights are slow as Hell so at least I won't fall asleep at the desk.

whoo

We had a Java quiz Tuesday. Four essay questions and a little bit of coding.

Essays were no problem. I can handle the theoretical stuff fine.

Coding...ick. Ick ick.

Figured I'd bombed the coding question.

Nope!

Got a 17/20 on that question (and 10/20 on one of the ones I'd thought was no problem, eesh)

83 on the quiz. Yaaaaay me.

(this class is still too hard and I still suck at programming. But there's hope!)

if I'm rambling I'm guilty of wearing my heart on my sleeve

A good example of the way work totally disables my brain:

Walking to the school bus stop from the city bus stop, I was thinking about something on SNL. And for some reason I kept mentally replacing Rob Schneider with Rod Stewart.

On top of that? Rob Schneider wasn't even the guy I was thinking of, it was Dana Carvey.

Awesome.

I was pondering JWU's English classes today, for no real reason other than I had Newswriting this morning.

Despite the idiots, I've enjoyed most of my English classes here. The professors are usually nice, and intelligent, if uniformly overqualified. And for some reason I tend to be the most social in English classes.

And they're fantastic for my ego. It's so awesome to listen to the professor lecture about how people need to work harder on _____ and _____ and then get my paper back with no comments other than "omgurock" (in so many words). It's especially nice that I have Newswriting the same day as Java - I get my ego inflated in the morning, so when I get deflated in Java it's not debilitating.

But I'm not learning anything. At all. Papers that I dash off twenty minutes before class come back to me with 100s and "Awesome"s, not things I need to fix or ways I can improve. The most in-depth comment I ever got was something like "work on paragraph transitions".

I don't fault the professors, really. There are so many idiots...not even idiots, but otherwise intelligent people with no idea how to craft a sentence or a paragraph, there's no way to take the time to push for something better than basic, than passable. Yeah, they can push me to learn on my own, and a few professors have. But that can't translate to grading, because think of the potential backlash. Holding one student to a higher stnadard? Punishing the poor girl for being smart?

Not that I'd consider it a punishment. But if we got over that hump, there's always the potential of someone else claiming I get preferential treatment. Everyone's too goddamned sensitive.

It's not the professors' fault. I blame the school systems that don't see fit to actually teach so people learn what they need, this culture of sensitivity where it isn't okay to make the stupid kids feel stupid , the culture where it's far better to be cute and dumb than cute and smart, for God only knows what reason. Or not even that it's okay to be dumb...it's not okay to think other people are dumb. "Don't judge me based on appearances" has turned into "don't think anything about me based on looks or fashion or what I say or what I do". You're not stupid if you choose to only use 1% of your brain on anything remotely academic, you're unique and different and yadda yadda yadda.

JWU's big on shoving people into careers right out of school. The rate of graduates who have a job w/in 6 mos of graduation is something ridiculous like 96%. And last year one of my English professors commented that the biggest complaint they get is new graduates can't write for shit. So JWU's starting to "focus more on writing". Except all that means is "focus more on basic grammar you should know by 6th grade".

I'm not a brilliant writer. I'm good, at the very least better-than-average, but I have room for improvement. You'd never know it from the way my papers are graded.

It's infuriating. And more than that, it's sad. It's just really, really sad.

That was longer than I planned.

nbgeekgirl, I picked up that Java book you recommended. I wish there was a chance of it getting here before work on Saturday, but ah well. I'll let you know how I like it.