another Justification

i read an article on slashdot.org today that i nearly COMPLETELY agree with about engineering students. i'll give the key to it away right now: college engineering is geared towards destroying inspiration. the article gave 5 reasons:
1. bad textbooks
2. horrible profs.
3. horrible advisors
4. other majors have inflated grades
5. all assignments seem the same

the first one is totally right. textbooks are written by professors to supplement their class. they leave out SO much information, and are extremely expensive. i don't think they should be written that way. they should be written as reference books, and should be separate from books that try and tell you how to learn the info. i've learned more from Schaum's Series and Oreilly books than any other book required for class.

2. is obvious. eng. profs are there for research. they have gone through the system, mostly without understanding any real-world experience and have a stick up their ass because they get paid shit for doing research for other people to make millions off of. they lost their inspiration to be creative and learn years ago, and the attitude gained from that pushes students in the same direction. a big reason most engineers are alcoholics.

now, engineering advisors...that's one of the biggest jokes in college i've ever known. i would've picked better classes my freshman year if i had post them all on a board and thrown darts at them. my junior/senior level advisor garth favored the students who kissed his ass and did extra projects. someone like me, with a mediocre gpa, was seemed to be looked down upon by him whenever i went into his office. just because i got a D in my pathetic history class because i didn't give a fuck about it, the first time i met with him i got a lecture because i was 'letting my college slip away'. what a load of shit from someone who didn't understand any of the classes and had almost no engineering experience. my fix: get a teacher with honors to develop a few suggested class paths and make teachers explain, in moderate detail, what students will learn in their class and how it relates to other classes. then students can do it themselves and you don't have to pay a bullshit advisor who doesn't know shit about what they're doing.

yes, my friends and i always joked about how other non-science majors were a fucking joke. but you can't explain that to people in those situations, which can still make an engineers self-esteem do a nose dive when they find their friend who got drunk before their last exam 4.0 it. i know this goes for science majors too and just sucks. the amount of work and brilliance that kids in these classes have is unbelievable, and the system does all it can to drag them down into the pits with all the losers who don't give a shit about anyone but themselves. my favorite quote from the article: "Brilliant engineering students may earn surprisingly low grades while slackers in other departments score straight As for writing book reports and throwing together papers about their favorite zombie films"

in engineering, every homework assignment is a math problem. i've had maybe 3 classes where i actually did a project that i enjoyed. it's so fucking easy to be creative and make projects that can inspire students need to learn, and no professors take advantage of it. they believe that they are there to weed out the bad eggs, but that's wrong. they are there to present the information in a way for students to be able to learn it, because they are PAYING them to do it. what they don't realize is, in the real world, if you need to use an advanced math problem, YOU FUCKING LOOK IT UP. they have a limited amount of time to get information to the students and they waste it by going over unnecessary problems when they should be doing real-world projects. but i guess they'd have to know some real-world problems other than their fucking research to be able to do that :)

i hope you feel the same fellow egrs. if you read this and end up going into teaching...please take it seriously. a professors potential to guide intelligent students is enormous. don't waste it.

slashdot.org/wired

i'd hire someone to do it if i didn't care about them touching my shit

ok, so i've finally gotten all my shit into another part of the town. moving is such a bitch. when you're busy, there's nothing like having to move to set you back a week or 2 on absolutely everything.

then there's the address changes. i have to change cable/internet/electric/magazines/voter registration/license/loans/bank addresses. who's got time for that?

then laundry. we are waiting till the stupid company that does all the condo work to put them in, but until then i have to sift through old clothes to see what's actually clean and bearable to wear everyday.

plus today it's supposed to get up to 53 degrees!!! i just want to get out of work and go to the lake and just do nothing. but can i do that? fuck no...i have to unpack, get 5000 addresses changed, and work on my projects that i've been putting off because of all this. I FUCKING HATE MOVING!!!!

other than that, milwaukee this weekend and getting to see the chicago river dyed green. yes i know it will be just a different shade of green than normal but the people there will hopefully be cool.

...back to work

a new post

hello

i'm trying to post again. bear with me.

spring's just around the corner and i get the feeling that everyone hates this time of the year. it's still fucking cold and it's like the planet is playing the biggest game of taste and take. gimme 1 nice enjoyable day for 8 days of shit. i want it to be spring already.

i NEED to get this stupid website going. i have billions of pictures to upload, and projects to talk about and other stupid shit to talk about and i need an outlet for all of that. it seems so simple...just put the fucking thing together. but it's not. i need a unique style/layout. i need a comprehensive photo page. i need to implement del.icio.us and i need to put up professional stuff (soon to be woggybear.com). it will be done. i always do what i say i'm going to, it's just that the timetable is up in the air.

thanks for reading and chat me sometime.