Adventures Attending College

[PUNdit]

Ursa, exclusive clubs and organizations are not for everyone,

Rich, that there college education is sure making you smart!

[Ursa Major]

Yogi Berra would be proud.

[Ursa Major]

As a preemptive measure, I should clarify that it's not my intention to belittle your achievement, Rich. I know that your acceptance into that society required an admirable academic record; one which I myself never approached as an under graduate. It's the whole pseudo-masonic networking angle that offends my proletarian sensibilities.

[RichPella]

LOL, PUNdit. What I really meant was that there is no club that suits everyone. That's why there are so many different clubs. Thanks for de-Yogi'ing my statement.

The other thing I meant to mention earlier but forgot, is that many organizations on campus, honor societies included, do some sort of work in the community. Sometimes such work is limited to the university, other times it's the broader local community, and still other times it may extend to a more global effort. So these societies benefit not only their own members, but others, as well.

Originally Posted by Ursa Major

It's the whole pseudo-masonic networking angle that offends my proletarian sensibilities.

I don't quite get it. Are you saying that clubs in general offend you, or just ones that restrict their membership? Or something else that I'm not understanding?

[Ursa Major]

Originally Posted by RichPella

I don't quite get it. Are you saying that clubs in general offend you, or just ones that restrict their membership?

Just ones that restrict membership to the "right kind of people". By the time I got to college, I was fed up with cliques of any kind and was rather appalled that college students had institutionalized the kind of attitude I had hoped I'd left behind in high school. I know it sounds like sour grapes but it's really just my particular brand of anti-snob snobbery at work. I've never owed my success to "who I know", and I don't think anybody else should either.

[OpalCat]

My mom says that she's had her Phi Beta Kappa membership get her sort of in-the-door access to people and opportunities that she may have not had otherwise. My degree is from a college that only had Golden Key, and while I was invited, I turned it down because everything I read about it has been that it's $70 in exchange for diddly.

As for the transfer student thing, some honor societies require that X number of your credit hours be from the university the chapter is at. If you went to school all at one school, that isn't a problem. If, on the other hand, you are like me, and collected credits from 6 different colleges, you may not have enough from your final school to qualify for the traditional honor society.

[RichPella]

Thanks for the insight on traditional honor societies, Opal. North Texas is my sixth transcript, too. I've attended 8 schools, though. I took classes at two separate colleges in each of the two community college districts I attended.

[RichPella]

I'm registered for my Spring classes! They are:

1) Business Statistical Analysis Using Spreadsheets (a long name for Business Statistics)
2) Finance
3) Greetings and Salutations, Your Most Glorious and Wonderful Opally Cattyness!
4) Real Estate Law and Contracts
5) Property Management
6) Beginning Tennis

#1 and #2 are Business Foundations courses, which everyone in the College of Business must take. #1 is the second part of a course I'm taking now.
#4 and #5 are for the Real Estate major.
#6 is just 'cuz. I've wanted to learn to play tennis for many years. I don't need any more P.E. credits, but hey, why not?

[RichPella]

I'm done with one of my classes this semester, even though we have two weeks remaining.

One of my professors gives three tests during the semester, one of which is the final, and drops the lowest grade of the three. After two tests, plus a variety of other assignments, I have achieved an A in the class. It's a squeaker (it's REALLY close to a B), but it's an A nonetheless. Guess who won't be taking the final exam?

[Dick Macy]

So you have the option of living with the results of the first two? You don't have to take the final and let the chips fall?

I'd be very sure of that before failing to sit the final.

[Penquin47]

I had a few classes like that... generally, my professors encouraged students with As and sometimes Bs not to take the final.

[RichPella]

Dad, the chips have already fallen. My grade so far is an A, and the only thing that can affect it now is the final exam. The only effect the final can have is to increase my grade, because he drops your lowest exam grade (which will be a 0 if I don't take the final).

The fact that he takes only 2 of 3 exam grades--and that the final exam is optional--is made very clear in the syllabus. He's also talked about it quite a bit in class. Yes, I'm sure.

[Ursa Major]

Originally Posted by Penquin47

I had a few classes like that... generally, my professors encouraged students with As and sometimes Bs not to take the final.

I was given that option several times in college. Because tests in my major (History) were so essay intensive, teachers saw it as a way of cutting down their workload when it came to grading the final. Also, it never looks good for a teacher to turn in a roster with almost all As. Lazy students happy with a B or a C helped make the class-wide grade point average look a little more realistic.

[RichPella]

Computers II: A
I already knew this, due to the optional final.

Business Statistics I: A
Principles of Real Estate: A
I did so well in these two classes all semester that I could have failed the final exams and still made A's.

Business Law: This one was not so cut-and-dried. I've held a high B in this course all semester. My highest test grade before the final was a 91. I knew I had to go gangbusters on the final to make an A in the course, and that was not a certainty. I did put in some good study time. When I took the test, I went slowly and took my time. I went back and checked all of my answers again, and found one that needed correcting. I wrote twice as much on the essay question as anyone else did.

And I made it. It paid off. Course grade: A

Yay me! I made the President's List two semesters in a row!

[Dick Macy]

Dang! You're pretty cool!

Congratulations on doing so well. I'm proud of you.

[Luvsadawg]

If you are so Smart, why ain't ya Rich?

Oh wait.... You already are

[RichPella]

LOL ... Thanks, Luvs.

[RichPella]

Thanks, too, Dad.

[Suerreal]

Yay! Congratulations, Rich.

[Surgoshan]

Fuckin a!

[RichPella]

hehehe ... Thanks, Sue and Surgo.

[AuraSeer]

Good show, Rich.

I also got straight A this semester, but this is nothing to be excited about. I only took one class, my final prereq. That one was such a silly waste of time and money, it's an embarrassment to community colleges everywhere, and I'm going to bitch about it now.

World Religions sounded like it would be interesting. I didn't notice that it was a 101-level course. I would sum up its entire content thus: "Hello, freshman! There are religions in the world other than yours! Isn't that neat?" Since I am not your stereotypical teenager newbie freshman, and I may have encountered one or two non-Christian persons in my lifetime, I encountered no surprises.

It didn't help that the professor did everything possible to avoid actually teaching. There were a total of thirteen scheduled class sessions. Three of them were taken up with the midterm, final review, and final. Three were spent watching movies (The Whale Rider and Seven Years In Tibet.) Two were devoted to student oral presentations. One was cancelled. One was given over to a guest speaker (Random Other Professor talking about his visit to a Holocaust museum once). If you're keeping track, that means there were three whole sessions of lecture time-- and none of those lasted even 45 minutes. I could get more information from a quick Wikipedia session.

Near as I can tell, the whole class got A's except for two guys: the dude who was clearly stoned the whole time, and the one whose oral presentation got sidetracked into his personal disagreement with certain tenets of Orthodox Judaism.

I took this class because my nursing program is at a Jesuit school, and requires either World Religions or Theology as a prerequisite. I chose... poorly.

[RichPella]

Thanks, Aura. I'm sorry to hear about your lackluster experience with the World Religions class. The one I took was fabulous, and everyone in the class learned something.

The course covered Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In addition, the professor divided the class into small groups that each researched another religion and gave an oral presentation about it. We had to keep a journal, and we found newspaper articles concerning the five major religions and gave our thoughts on them. It was a VERY interesting course. It's too bad you don't live in Dallas County.

[RichPella]

Monday, January 18: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday (observed) - no classes

Tuesday, January 19: one class: Beginning Tennis - 10 minutes of "This is a tennis court. You will need to buy a racket. We'll see you Thursday."

Wednesday, January 20: I have no Wednesday classes this semester.

Thursday, January 21: Tennis again. We did the syllabus thing and started hitting balls with our forehand swings. Next class will be backhand. You can already tell the difference between the students interested in learning tennis and those just taking the class for a P.E. credit.

The first session of my Residential Property Management class is tonight at 6:30, about 1.5 hours from now. The title of the textbook is Practical Apartment Management, so I guess the course is going to be about apartments rather than "residential" in general.

[RichPella]

Residential Property Management was great!

Friday was my Finance class.
Professor: "You are all adults here. I don't care if you come to class or not, if you do your homework or not, if you pass or not. You're all adults, and you can make your own decisions. By the way, none of you are allowed to use a laptop computer to take notes because I can't trust you to stay off of Facebook."

When I told the professor that his statements were contradictory, he said that his reason is because if a student gets on Facebook, watches a movie, or does anything else besides taking notes, then it distracts the other students nearby. He invited me to discuss the matter with the chair of the department. I think I will.

A friend of mine, who happens to be a professor at a local community college, wrote this when I posted the professor's comments on Facebook:

hahahha Okay, the first part sounds like me starting my classes. I don't care if they use a computer in class. . . however, I let them know that since I assume they are adults, I expect them to act like adults. If they play with "toys" (phones, games, etc.), I'll treat them like the kindergartner they are and take up their toys until the end of class. They usually behave as a result.

I'll bring up my friend's points when I talk with the department chair. I seriously don't understand why many people should be punished for the actions of a few. If the professor really wants to teach adults about the consequences of their actions, why not punish those who are guilty of breaking the rules instead of the innocent folks?