this is interesting, because last year i started back in on school after a 30-year or so absence. my experience is kind of the reverse of what K reports. i'm doing far better in school now than i did back in the day when college was just something a young stoner did after high school. now, i'm taking the classes i am for a reason: to get a degree (in technical communications, with an emphasis on visual and interactive)

and even though i can feel my own resistance to "regurgitating back the same putrid vomit I'm being fed," i really am learning some new, up-to-date shit. one of my problems now is that i can do the work fine, but it's sometimes difficult to report on how i did the work using the knowledge models presented in the courses. for instance, i can make kick-ass business cards, web sites, books covers, what have you, but to then describe what i've done using the theories put forth in the (to me) useless textbooks is difficult

what i'm discovering now, however, to get around this is that teachers like to have the feeling that their students are learning something, so i'm now being up front with the teachers about my situation. they can see that i can output excellent work, and when they hear that i'm struggling with learning the theories behind the excellent output i'm doing, i get their immediate sympathy. i kind of over-amp up my struggles so that i can show them a progression of my understanding of said theories, even though in truth i can little for the theoretical knowledge

still, until this semester (which ends tomorrow, if i can get my last project in my last class done), i've maintained a 4.0 GPA. I never did anywhere near that well in my younger years

this semester i probably may have to let go of striving for that perfect GPA. in a couple classes i'm hovering around 88% and though, surprisingly to me, i have been pleased with myself for up till now having a perfect GPA, most of me doesn't really care. I was reminded of this by a friend who turned me on to Click and Clack's Car Talk episode on NPR called "Campus Counseling: A's are Overrated!"

this hit home when I found out that in my UNIX class, even though I figured I had well above a 90% grade in the class after completing the bear of a final exam and getting 85 out of 100, that the teacher is weighting the 3 exams to have far more value than the 10 exam reviews (most of which I aced). I got 74/80 and 68/80 on the other two exams, so my final grade for the class works out to be 88.51% instead of well above 90%

yesterday I considered for a couple hours whether to ask the teacher if I could redo the 68/80 exam. on the one shoulder was the angel saying, "sure you could. Just study more and you could still get an A in the class!" The devil on my other shoulder was of course saying, "Don't be a chump! Who the frell cares if you get an A or a B? Unlax a little!"

i'm going to listen to the don't-stress-out-about-the-perfect-GPA advice Click and Clack gave and just leave things be

as to whether i really am learning up-to-date shit, what they say in this--about students getting a four year technical degree--gives me a little bit of a pause, because i know it's true:
www.youtube.com/watch

My main issue is with a philosophy class I'm taking. For the life of me I just couldn't get my brain wrapped around truth tables...simple as they may seem to be. I really bombed two of the quizzes because of this. So, okay...no big deal because we have 3 papers to write that will end up being about 70% of the overall grade and I have never, not even once since middle school, received anything less than an A on any paper I;'ve written. This has been my saving grace because I often have terrible and nearly debilitating test anxiety, but as long as there is an opportunity to research and write my ass off then I'm okay.

But not this time.

Interestingly, I was already somewhat familiar with many of the topics presented for our response papers and was excited to sink my teeth into them. However, I received a mid range B on the first paper and I really needed and A to compensate for the bombed quizzes. It was a 20 point paper and I spent approximately 10 hours researching and writing and editing and revising and then sent it to a friend of mine who is an English prof and another friend who is just your average run of the mill brilliant science geek. I figured between the two I'd receive some great feedback and constructive criticism, which I did, and I revised the paper accordingly. When I showed them my grade (and lack of comments from the prof as to WHY he deducted 15%) they were both dumbfounded.

So for the next paper I really tried to get into the prof's head- rather than pulling together my own knowledge, experience and personal interest and using the theme of the class as a point to begin my interrogation of the subject at hand. This time I really tried to just give him what (it seemed) he wanted. Another B.

At this point I still only have a C in the class and really NEED an A on the final in order to bring that C to at least a B. But every time I try to get into this last and final paper I almost begin crying because it seems that no matter how fucking hard I try, I just can't seem to get that elusive A that always came to easily to me before. A friend of mine suggested that my personal knowledge and experience with these topics has actually been detrimental and that if I could try to wash my brain clean of having any prior knowledge of these topic then I might fare better on this last paper.

But how in the hell am I supposed to do that?

-K

I spoke with the dep't head about this paper and since I'm no longer technically in the class- and he's now grading my papers himself- he said I could come up with a topic on my own and submit it to him for approval (thereby eliminating trying to psychically determine what my prof's hidden agenda is). He said it still has to be about 5 pages long. So, since we've been studying science and pseudo-science I thought I might try to tackle the "God Hypothesis". I've always wanted to put into writing exactly WHY I'm an atheist so here's my chance.

-K