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My Latest Special Snowflake

December 4, 2009 in Rantings, Work-Related by Julia | 8 comments

Received via email tonight (per­sonal data changed to pro­tect the student’s identity):

hello pro­fes­sor

this is ********** in your ********** class, accord­ing to a friend in the class that you gave back the exam 2 grades in class which i asked you for it before i left the class on mon­day, you told me you didnt have them graded yet and do not know when you will, may i please know my first exam grade(after cor­rec­tions) and the 2nd exam grade please?
if pos­si­ble, i would like to know my aver­age up to this point before the final exam so i can esti­mate how much i need to get on final in order to get an A in your class, since i do not know any assign­ment grades after the midterm drop point. it was very hard for me with school work this semes­ter. Regard­less of my (med­ical con­di­tion), i kept up with the assign­ment due days (except ch9 hw, my (med­ical treat­ment) pre­vented me to do them on time).

greatly appre­ci­ated if i could get my aver­age in the class.

Dear Stu­dent,

You are cor­rect. Your class’s tests were not yet graded when you asked on Mon­day. They were graded and returned on Wednes­day in class. How­ever, you chose to not come to class on Wednes­day. Your test, along with those of the other stu­dents who were not in class, is in my office.

It is Fri­day night, I am at home, and I am not going back to my office until Mon­day. I do not have a copy of my grade­book at home, nor do I mem­o­rize each student’s test grade as I enter them. There­fore, I will not be able to inform you of your grade until Monday.

As for giv­ing you your aver­age in the class, there is no such thing as an “aver­age” in my classes. Your grade is cal­cu­lated with a rather com­plex for­mula which weights assign­ments, tests, and the final exam dif­fer­ently, and at this point would only tell you your grade for the class if you made a zero on the final.

Rather than worry about “how much you need to get on the final,” I sug­gest you worry about mak­ing sure you have com­pletely mas­tered the mate­r­ial that will be on the final exam. That way, you can ensure that if it is math­e­mat­i­cally pos­si­ble for you to earn a grade of 90 or above in the class, you will do so.

Sin­cerely,

Your Pro­fes­sor

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Larry Scott Class

January 25, 2007 in Lampworking & Glass by Julia | No comments

The Larry Scott class offered through South­ern Flames last week­end was, to me, many things:

  • A huge edu­ca­tion. Larry demon­strated many tricks and tech­niques that I had never before seen, and explained some things I had seen before in a new way so that I finally “got it.” I sort of under­stood the idea behind lin­ear encas­ing already, but was miss­ing one lit­tle aspect — the very acute angle of the cas­ing rod rel­a­tive to the bead. Now I can do it (though I still need prac­tice, duh). I’m also totally sold now on using boro pun­ties for mak­ing cane and lat­tic­cino, because my hands can twist the pun­ties much eas­ier than mandrels.
  • An impressively-run work­shop. South­ern Flames knows how to do things right! The orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides bagels & cream cheese if you don’t have time for break­fast; the class TA takes lunch orders and brings your lunch back so you don’t lose so much time going out to get it; var­i­ous lit­tle things like man­drel hold­ers, stick­ers to put on your man­drels, water cups, and so on are already set up. Oh, and Carl was a most excel­lent TA.
  • A really, really frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence. Okay, so I was the least-experienced glass per­son in the class, and it did show at times. I was work­ing on a Minor burner, when I run a Beth­le­hem Piranha at home, so my torch wasn’t always doing what I expected. I didn’t have quite enough elbow room so had to be care­ful of the space around me. Pos­si­bly the worst thing, though, was the floor right behind my chair — every time some­one walked on it, it jig­gled, jig­gling me, usu­ally right when I was try­ing to pre­cisely place a dot on my bead. I’m dot-challenged enough any­way, so I don’t need any fur­ther hin­drance. In the end, of the six beads I attempted, only one came out fairly decent. Four oth­ers were more or less show­ing the tech­nique but far from accept­able, and the last one…well, the Night Sky bead went into the water cup after first the bead release broke and then the bead itself broke.Some things are just bet­ter attempted at home on famil­iar ground!
  • A ver­i­ta­ble feast of eye candy. Larry’s beads are to die for. I wish I could have afforded to buy more than one. I’ll just have to prac­tice mak­ing my own variations.

I did indeed get my money’s and time’s worth out of the week­end, and I would highly rec­om­mend Larry’s classes to any lam­p­worker. Any prob­lems with the class were strictly due to the stu­dent, not the teacher, LOL.

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A Life Cut Too Short

November 7, 2006 in Miscellaneous by Julia | 1 comment

In the last issue of the alumni mag­a­zine from Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­sity, where I did my grad­u­ate work, I found an entry in the “In Mem­ory” col­umn that stunned me.

Tanya was my clos­est friend in grad­u­ate school.  She was sev­eral years younger than I and an under­grad­u­ate, but it didn’t mat­ter — all of us com­puter sci­ence women tended to hang out together.  We shared a love of crafts, espe­cially stitch­ery, cats, and cook­ing; we had sim­i­lar per­son­al­i­ties and senses of humor.  We were lab part­ners for sev­eral courses and worked excep­tion­ally well together.  When one of us would get sick of the grind, we’d take a break for a bit and go shop­ping and do girl stuff.

I moved back to Atlanta and even­tu­ally fin­ished my degree; she grad­u­ated with both her B.S. and M.S. and moved to Colum­bus to work for what is now Lucent Tech­nolo­gies.  Nei­ther of us was that good at con­stantly stay­ing in touch, but every year or two we’d touch base via email and get caught up on each other’s lives, almost as if it was still the early 1980s in Cleveland.

I had not heard about her ill­ness, so it was shock­ing to see her name as I read through the mag­a­zine.  It has taken me days to be able to write this entry, and I still have a hard time real­iz­ing that I’ll never see her smil­ing face in this life­time.  She’s another per­son that I’ll always wish that my hus­band had got­ten to meet, just to know another part of my prior life.

Tanya, you made the world a bet­ter place in the too-short time you were with us, and you are missed.

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TV">A must-see on TV

January 17, 2006 in Rantings, Work-Related by Julia | No comments

If you didn’t see 20/20 last Fri­day night, with John Stossel’s report on “Stu­pid in Amer­ica,” find a way to see it on a rerun, find some­one who taped it and bor­row the tape, get a tape from ABC, what­ever. It is a must-see for any­one involved with the K-12 pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem as a par­ent or a tax­payer or a con­cerned cit­i­zen. Of course, the NEA and the AFT are up in arms about it because it goes com­pletely against their agenda, not to men­tion that they are pin­pointed as a big part of the problem.

Of par­tic­u­lar note were the com­ments from the Bel­gian teenagers as they were inter­viewed about their per­for­mance rel­a­tive to that of Amer­i­can high school­ers on an inter­na­tional stan­dard­ized test. “Com­pared to our reg­u­lar tests, this was easy.” “The Amer­i­can kids must be stupid.”

Stossel’s pin­point­ing of the causes of our fail­ing school sys­tem was, of course, over­sim­pli­fied. He neglected the role of the media in shap­ing today’s soci­ety, and more impor­tantly the role of the par­ents at home, in favor of push­ing the pro-voucher, pro-choice solu­tion (which I do agree with) and call­ing the teach­ers’ unions to task for their com­plic­ity in per­pet­u­at­ing the problems.

Still, his mes­sage is dead-on and needed — I see the results of the fail­ure of our schools to do their job every week, four days a week, in my own classroom.

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I should take this seriously???

December 19, 2005 in Rantings, Work-Related by Julia | No comments

I hate to give this for­mer stu­dent any more time, or any more sense of his/her own self-importance, but this really is just too absurd not to share. I’m post­ing the whole com­ment just so you can get the full fla­vor, and decide for your­self what it says about this student…

Jeez!!! She is still teach­ing? Amaz­ing how that kind of teacher are not yet fired! WORST teacher I have ever had! DO not take her, SHE will make you HATE com­puter sci­ence. She basi­cally gives a lec­ture and does not give a damn about you. Plus she is hor­ri­ble look­ing ( her hair style is disgusting) .….

What can you say?

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