Random School/Work-Venting Post

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Communication breakdown

My Turkish colleagues again. You watch them make something wrong, correct them, they do it right next, suggesting they realise that something in their previous approach left to be desired. If you hear them speak, they were never wrong, it just, well, didn't work. Because of anything they did or didn't understand? Heaven forbid. Oh well. I never really follow up on that, because after that, they get it, usually, because they're smart. They get in a pique easily ... I recommend to avoid sarcasm and irony around Middle Easterners unless they know you really well

Anyway, I told the story to a friend of mine. He's a teacher and teaches Turkish kids. He remarked that it is all about pride. If one takes that into account it explains the reaction fairly well. Hehe, it demands a degree of sensitivity and self-discipline to keep that in mind, especially considering that I have a rather direct way of addressing such issues

As I said earlier, I work in a nice company - they don't kick out even warm bodies like the Turkish sisters just so. Instead they give them busy work that they can handle. In those two this made the impression that the quality assurance unit they worked in doesn't do quality assurance work, because all they ever did was copying and scanning largely because they screwed up about anything else, but I digress.

The really hilarious thing is that now, as a result of this, one of my competent Turkish colleagues was to interview those two perpetually overburdened sisters, because of their insufficient performance. She went to the task with great energy. She wanted to ask them if there was a way they would like to receive some extra training, to help them better themselves. She should really have phrased her question differently. She asked them whether they felt they had any weaknesses - now that cannot ever possibly produce a satisfactory result with the above mentioned mentality. Inevitably, both sisters insisted they had no weaknesses. Which of course made a devastating impression because it was so totally out of synch with reality.

Those invisible culture barriers with the added irony that this time Turks failed to communicate among each other because of it

 

LOL! That deserves some Rep!

As for the idiots I work with, I caught the a**hole who yelled at me last week doing the same exact thing he chewed ME out for! I wanted to go up to him and give him a piece of my mind...delivered at the top of my lungs of course...but I decided to just document the incident...because, when you go to shoot someone with the 'Take That Mother****er Gun of Justice +5', it's more fun if you have a full magazine!

 

There are times when you have to put it down to culture barriers. Then there are times when it's just down to personal stupidity.

 

Take home test... mmmm, smells like an easy A.

 

I really dislike the first few weeks of school year when it comes to resources... or should I say - my faculty needs to get more organised.

The largest amphitheatre here can take around 300 people - how do they expect it to receive more then 400?
Also, merging several years together is not a good idea in any case - too crowded!
And just because we are the last year of the old program is not reason enough for us to get shoved forward and cramped together. All that matters seems to be that the faculty gets rid of us as soon as possible - at the cost of services provided. (This is a rather harsh statement, since the staff is doing their best under the circumstances - but that's the general feeling of the situation.)
600 people have enrolled into my year (4th) this year (or so I've heard). My generation initially had 300 people to begin with.
Sure, it's nice to be able to move forward with your studies even if you haven't met all the requirements (speaking from student perspective) but this is absurd.
The whole thing is getting rather insane.

A good thing - most likely the lecture attendance will drop to acceptable numbers in a few weeks (like any other year). However, the fact that the problems can solve themselves in time, doesn't make them any less real.

 

Last time I got a take home exam, it was for a graduate Biostatistics course. It was bloody hard! Good times though.

 

Certainly a difficulty gap is expected; this is for a 100 level history course that I have learned pretty much nothing in.

 

Sounds like a regular university course to me Chicken

 

Gah! TA's should not be allowed to grade papers, especially undergraduate TA's who think they know everything.

Seriously, the professor states that we can use any of the well used formatting styles (Chicago, MLA, APA, etc) and so I went with MLA since it is what I was taught. I am using it 100% correctly, the format is perfect and I'm getting docked for apparent flaws. First problem is I am getting docked for "block" quoting a quote OVER four lines long... Which is what you are supposed to do. Secondly she is penalizing my citations where they are correctly labled. If I were to be citing say... Charles Dickens, and there is only ONE Dickens work in my works cited then this is proper quote citation:

In his work Great Expectations, Charles Dickens states, "Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people we most despise" (x[where x = page number])

It is not necessary and is redundant to cite it as (Dickens X)... The name is not needed and is generally omitted in that case, since you stated the author IN THE SAME SENTENCE.

Furthermore, beyond that I have trouble believing that in the graded sections of Introduction, Body, Conclusion, and Formatting (never mind the inherent flaw of weighting those four the same) I got EXACTLY a 36/50 in every single one. I am the exact same apparently in all faucets of my writings. Yep consistent to a T.

The fact that I've never gotten worse than a 88 in any of my 6 (thus far) college papers or high school ones also makes me question her grading. I know this was acceptable work for at least a B.

 

*slams table* RAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!

If anyone have any tips on how to prepare for History finals, they'd be greatly appreciated.

Eight essays in two exams. 45 minutes for each essay. What the hell are they thinking? What's the point of essays in exams? If you honestly had to write an essay "IRL", you'd have all the time that you need to research!

ROAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

 

Grr!

The 'Department Head' guy who happens to also be an instructor who I really hooked up with free stuff is really annoying me. I'm getting him 40 microchips free per week, which for how many he wants, would normally cost the average Joe over $400. In return, I asked for 30 minutes of "alone time" with the school's high-res photo plotter to print up some non-school-related projects. That's a reasonable offer in my opinion. However, the nosy b***ard wants to know exactly what I'm going to be printing! I told him I'd get back to him on that...but in reality, I want to print out a bunch of 24x32 prints of the wife I've been wanting. The main problem is my school has a very strict 0 tolerance policy, that even though all my photos are artful, they would still fall under the policy’s "porn" category...and I’d end up getting booted out of school!

Usually, when I hook someone up, they return the favor, but this guy is your typical Mormon prude, so even if he was going to be cool and open the "Geek Lab" after hours for me, he'd most likely be in there with me...and I think you can figure out what would happen as soon as he saw what I was about to print.

 

OK, so last week was great. Got lots done in the lab, got a lot written up, and out of the blues I saw the most amazing piece of data I've produced ever. It was revolutionary, groundbreaking, never-seen-before, something I've been trying to see for 3 years and had given up on. And it finally happened! I was right all along!

Aaaaaaaaand today I found out it was just a fluke. So... yeah. Not terribly happy at the moment. It's a good thing I kept my expectations from spiraling out of control.

 

I was asked to write a guide for proper XML tagging for tables based on the CALS model (long live the US Dept. of Defense - I like CALS). Which I did. I just about fininsied writing it. Now they really could have told me that they were about to introduce changes that turned some 30% of what I wrote into spoilage. Now I'll have to change my text, and I'm swamped anyway

My dismay stems from the fact that the person who asked me to write the manual, was the person who proposed these changes. Hapless scatterbrain ...

 

My boss is a real cow. she never lets me have time off, she always yells at me, she makes me work really late too.

unfortunatly, i'm the boss........

 

If there's something I hate the most about school it is the poor distribution of work. I'll have nothing due, nothing due, nothing... WEEK OF HELL!

Yeah, I'm at a week of hell right now

 

My boss seems to realize I am a valuable asset and as a matter of fact told me that once the other night shift guy's (aka my bro) vacations are done, we'll sit down and discuss this same schedule.

In short, with this new schedule, I end at 7AM, which means I do get a rush, but not the worst of it -- which would fall on the day guy/chick who got under my skin.

I was pondering about getting a transfer to a different store once December has come and gone (I told my bro I'd work till Xmas holidays), so once I held my word, I definitively could ask for my transfer... but if my boss offers me 10PM-7AM, chances are good I will stay there - the 10PM-7AM schedule was the reason why I wanted a transfer.

I also started piecing together my master plan -- my bank has offered me a credit card, which this time, I accepted, I got an iDEN phone with a monthly package (month-to-month base, of course), and the monthly payments for the phone are billed to my credit card, killing two birds with one stone - I pay my credit card statement which in turn pays for my phone.

Looking to move out on my own again, or with someone I can trust, since my housemate is planning on moving out with her new man either this upcoming summer or next winter. That's a 9 months heads-up, so this leave me more than enough time to take care of all my buisness.

 

Well, the wife is quitting...which is going to suck because for the past 2 years, we've worked together. She's been screwed over ever since our old boss got fired, first with being denied a promotion, then the spread of untrue rumors by two mindless whores we work with, and then came the unfounded wrath of our current idiotic boss.

The funny thing is, our boss still treats me like nothing has happened, and I reply in kind just to keep my working environment less dramatic...but I can't help but imagine all the painful ways I'd like to kill her for what she's done to my wife as she talks to me...because when you f*** over my wife, you're f***ing *me* over...and I don't put up with that crap.


As for school...I've got 1 day left in each class, which unfortunately are the days I have to take finals.

 

Well, got my fingers in the bowl now. My boss made me a player instead of just an assistant helper-monkey.

Still no pay-raise for weekdays, but it might come soon enough if I just tag along long enough.

But hey-hey, more rights, more responsibility and I'm feeling like a real administrator now. If only I'd get mo' money...I get to fiddle with our campaigns now, so it's all good. Micromanagement is fun and it does have an impact on the whole of what we do, small, but an impact still. Oh, yeah...

 

advertising is so expensive and my partner won't release anymore of our ad budget to me. Then she wonders why we aren't getting much business

 

[snip]

I had a post for school venting, but I didn't like it

Got a job interview tomorrow for a Summer Job that pays $2 an hour more than the custodial job I had last year... Coupled with an extra month of work and I think I will bring in about $2500 dollars more this year. That's good. Still got to find a job for next semester though