Peace, Man!

Well, the Nerd War of 2008 has ended peacefully. It required a bit of a compromise. A Geneva Geek Conference, if you will. The professor came at us with everything in his arsenal but the Dean served as Switzerland and helped us reach an agreement.

It is a long story and typing it here would give me carpal tunnel syndrome. And why would you want me to get that? I just got back from the war! But basically...the professors had to agree to change some things on the exam and grade on a curve. We had to accept that some questions on the exam were simply not going to be changed. We were also given an extension on our final assignment to make it stellar for as many points as possible.

To be perfectly honest, I already had an A in the class. But there were some people who were between an A and a B and us nerds were not going to settle for a B! This was a battle of principle, not necessarily grades. Fortunately, it ended well and there is peace once again in Geektopia.

On a side note: I made a trip to San Francisco with my girl friend D. We saw Frida Kahlo's exhibit and I took 4 plane rides in one day to get home. I'll tell you more in my next post. Until then, keep the peace!

The Nerd War

So I'm in an all out war against my current professor. That dude does not know how to write exam questions. I'm in a class full of education professionals - we're trained on how to write questions. Poorly written questions on an exam just won't fly with us. And yet, this professor seems to think he's gonna let it get by. Twice! The mid-term and the final appear to have been written for some other class.

Here's the deal... his lecture notes say one thing while the state documentation says the opposite. Then the multiple choice question about that topic shows up on the test and the choices available are partly from his lecture and partly from the state docs. So which response is right?? Which would you choose? Would you side with the teacher's notes? Or stick with the state's documentation? So far, the answers are inconsistent. Sometimes the info from the lecture is listed as the correct response; sometimes the state docs are correct.

Needless to say, those inconsistencies have pissed us all off. There's nothing worse than a bunch of nerds with their panties in a bunch.

The Nerd War has stressed me out because I know we have a huge fight on our hands. The professor has refused to remove any questions from the exams because he claims they are all correct. The others in my class (about 200 people) are pissed and they are planning to fight. It's the first time I've ever had to do this and I hope our soldiers are as ready to fight as me.

To get my mind off the Nerd War, I decided to watch the MTV Video Music Awards. I got through about 50 minutes of it. The Jonas Brothers came on and were introduced as having this "historical performance." However, it looked and sounded like they were on Sesame Street - complete with guitars on the steps of a brownstone. Kermit and Elmo could have been singing it and I would not have noticed the difference. Or maybe that high pitched noise really was Kermit and Elmo!?

Wait a minute!!! Forget the VMA's. Mad Men is on tonight and I actually consume that instead of dinner. Yum!! Gotta go!