Yahyahyah. First day of my last year as an undergrad.

Normally, this would have been my first day of classes in my junior year at college, but I'm taking a leave of absence to attend some night classes at a really good art school and build a portfolio so that I can (hopefully) get into one of their actual degree programs. With any luck, I won't be going back to my programming life at my current college.

In other news, I have six console games in my suitcase but I can't play them and I'm having portable game ADD and I am so bored bluh.

Is it an official leave of absence?

Being done with school now, I should come to decide on what I want to study at university (although I plan on half a year of living as a NEET to take care of some things I did not have the time for till now). Theology would very much interest me, but the problem is that while priest would actually be my favourite future occupation, I imagine there to be a few slight complications with my philosophy Buddhism and Taoism more than Catholicism… Perhaps I should take Philosophy instead, and then something else.

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Aug 23 2011, 06:28 PM

Take Stellar Astronomy. Stars, good stuff.

That sounds like a really fun class.

I think the general ed class I enjoyed the most in undergrad was Classical Mythology.

I started school several days ago, starting on my teaching courses. I partnered up with some guy named Paul, some pretty old guy but he's an interesting guy. We don't agree on some deeper topics but thats fine. I was just trying to send him a message about what we could teach the class as our project but it seems he isn't on the roster right now, hm.. Well, aside from that, class this semester should be good and fun. The hardest course will also be interesting, taking Algebra and looking deeper into how it actually functions (Algebraic Structures). Everything else is pretty easy, like Linear Algebra. I'm taking an Introduction to Proof course as well, to help me mentally formulate how I approach proofs better. I have one I should work on before class today, its a pretty interesting logic question, but I think the answer requires more work than what you would think it does. Has to do with hand shaking, and there's 5 couples (10 people), and the most someone can shake is eight hands. At the end, the host asks everyone how many hands everyone shook but everyone gave a different answer. The question then asks how many hands his wife shook. I came to the conclusion that its four, but I can't 100% prove it so i'm going to work on something to present the class.

I think the most fun this semester will be my teaching stuff. I'm planning to go to a school for their school period once a week and sitting down in a classroom watching a teacher teach and possibly helping out. There's other work I gotta do, like going to a conference and writing several papers, but that right there will be the coolest part. I hope I can participate, i'd love to share some of my ideas.



Try to focus on taking courses that are pretty middle road that would apply to what you like and to other fields too. I'm sure eventually you'll figure out what you want to do. All I can suggest is don't take something you think is a hobby; pick up something you know you can do for the rest of your life doing.

This post has been edited by Elnendil: Aug 25 2011, 12:39 PM

Yes, although I'm still waiting for some paperwork to go through so that I can cancel my housing contract.


I agree with this, and from what I've learned so far from my college life, it can be difficult to decide what exactly you would be willing to do for the rest of your life as a career—and even if you do know, the educational path to get there might not be as obvious as you think it is. I guess I would start with working towards what you believe is going to be your dream job. If you start dreading your classes or doing something else in your free time, I would consider a change in focus.

This post has been edited by Hayate: Aug 25 2011, 06:16 PM

Heh, my father always gives me the opposite advise: Not thinking about what career I might want to pursue, and instead just following my bliss, trying things I'm interested in and experimenting a little until eventually I find my true calling, or until I just have whatever degree to show so I can then pursue something completely different I discover a natural talent for.
 (He'd know. He left university with a translator degree, then got hired by a bank, rapidly rose through its ranks, and eventually got fed up with their incompetence and now he leads his own financial advising corporation, meeting Bosnian government members a bit ago and being on business trips to France every other week. …with a translator degree.) :V

 Keep in mind that German universities and German society work differently from the (awful) American ones, though—one of the differences being that universities are free, or only cost a few hundred Euro per semester (depending on the state). (Even if our government is trying its best to ruin our education system to be just as destructive and worthless as the one in the U.S.A.)

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Aug 26 2011, 04:19 PM

I suppose that's him telling you to keep an open mind, since the possibility of you going on a different path than expected is always there, for better or worse.

>German universities
>(awful) American ones
>awful

wut

This post has been edited by chrishawke: Aug 26 2011, 09:37 PM

From everything I hear from my U.S. American friends, U.S. universities/colleges function like some sort of School 3.0, requiring to visit various courses that have little to no relation to or relevance for what you actually want to study, loading you with homework, having weekly schedules with near-daily classes and various clear subjects (as opposed to broader courses encompassing a multitude of diverse lectures), and functioning on the basis of some twisted credit system demanding regular attendance and constant tests while discouraging individual learning.
 This really all sounds like normal school to me, which is not something a university should be imitating. I understand though that your public school system is even worse (if it wasn't so tragic I could laugh forever about your multiple choice “tests” alone), and your colleges need to catch up on delivering the general, broad education your normal schools have failed to provide.

Our public schools suck because US society is generally favored towards credentialism, and it raises the bar for the minimum requirement to achieve the same status for what it takes to get a job now compared to what it takes for that same job 10 years ago. Because of that, the expectations for public schools are raised, and when schools don't meet expectations, they don't get looked upon favorably well. The school may suffer budget cuts, classroom atmosphere may turn sour, and parents start fussing over their children failing school. Some schools do pass, and when they do, yay, kudos and rewards to them!

The problem with this isn't because of that. You don't reward bad children for doing bad things. But you don't leave them out of the education system and let them stay dumb. That's socially unacceptable. The real problem is that there is an imbalance of available resources spread across the whole freakin' country. Public schools at one state don't get the same quality teachers and teaching materials as another state. Hell, public schools in one area within a state don't get the same quality teachers and materials as in another area in that same state. Try giving out 1,000 pieces of Snickers to 100,000 kids. Try giving 1,000 pieces of Snickers to 100,000 kids who are waiting in a line for your Snickers. First come, first serve, baby. You can't divide those Snickers to feed and satisfy the first-comers and give enough to feed the rest of 80,000 kids.

So what our public school systems do is try to standardize things. Standardize tests. Standardize education. "This is what all you kids should know by the time you graduate high school. AND THEN WE'RE RAISING THE BAR FOR THE NEXT GENERATION!" Some systems do fairly well, others don't.

Then there are the private schools, but their costs of attendance for one student can cost as much as going to a decent university, so you can say they should have more than enough materials to meet and/or exceed standards. I've never been to one, so I dunno.


Because many people want to continue their education to get better jobs and better lives (due to credentialism, aka raising of minimum requirement to get a specific job), those same kids who went through the hellish public schools start attending universities and colleges. Imagine the problems that can brings. Student-to-faculty ratio rises. The lowering the quality of prestige, degrees and diplomas. Kids who aren't adequately educated struggle like hell in their first couple of semesters in college. Some transfer out of a good college to go to a community college to raise their grades and transfer BACK into that good college. Oh, wow. Those numbers are gonna look bad to the local government. BUDGET CUT. That good college has less to work with now. There are more to it, too, but I'll stop at that as a more general outlook to it.

There are reasons why each university/college do things the way they do, but you really can't group all universities/colleges into one general entity and evaluate it at that. Several handful of universities may actually fit your definition of a "good" college, but they may only be one-in-a-thousand spread across in the whole country. For example, my university requires me to go through electives, which I had chosen Classical Music, Astronomy, Sociology, and European History. Despite them not really related to my degree of interest, they do help expose me to several topics I've never had gone over or taken in high school. This diversity helps build character, and that's the point of electives. Even if they're crappy electives, by passing them you show your peers and supervisors that you can handle tasks that you don't particularly like as well. As for the rest of my classes... well, they're pretty important to my major, so I'm not sure how to answer your concern with constant attendance and tests. You don't want kids to fuck up the structure of a bridge or building that you constantly use, do you?

My last year of school ever begins tomorrow ugggh

Going to start working tomorrow too, wish I had one more week of break.

Got back from Mechacon today. Pics later when I'm not too busy catching up with homework.

I'm jealous, that sounds kind of fun.

What did you do there?