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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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One Reason to Love Ubuntu

November 3, 2009 in Rantings, Techie Trivialities, Work-Related by Julia | No comments

A lot of my co-workers don’t under­stand why I loathe Win­dows (or any­thing Microsoft) so much. Nor would they “get” why the news today that the fac­ulty are get­ting new lap­top com­put­ers run­ning Win­dows 7 to replace our desk­top com­put­ers made me bang my head on the desk. Sev­eral times.

My cur­rent desk­top com­puter is set up to allow me to boot into either Win­dows XP or Ubuntu Linux. I NEVER boot into Win­dows. That com­puter much more sta­ble and use­able for me with Ubuntu, and man­ag­ing it is a breeze, even though I have to do all the tech sup­port on it myself.

Did you ever have to upgrade or rein­stall your ver­sion of Win­dows? Remem­ber what a pain it almost cer­tainly was? Con­trast that with yesterday’s Ubuntu Linux upgrade. Ubuntu released ver­sion 9.10, aka “Karmic Koala,” this week­end. It’s one of their every-eighteen-months “Long-Term Sup­port” releases as opposed to the every-six-months reg­u­lar releases, so it has to be in primo con­di­tion when it hits the Inter­net. So…

I logged into my com­puter yes­ter­day morn­ing and saw that the new ver­sion was ready. I clicked on the “Upgrade” but­ton, and checked email & such while the com­puter did the pre­lim­i­nary info-gathering and prep work. When it told me what would be needed as far as down­load­ing & upgrad­ing com­po­nents, I clicked on the “Con­tinue” button.

Once I saw that every­thing had down­loaded suc­cess­fully and the actual install had started, I headed for class. Four hours later I came back to see a mes­sage that a num­ber of com­po­nents were no longer needed and could be removed if I wanted. I did, so I clicked “Remove,” waited another cou­ple of min­utes, and was then informed that the sys­tem was ready for the end-of-upgrade reboot. Two min­utes later, I’m rebooted, logged in, and every­thing is pretty much WORKING CORRECTLY!!!

Let’s see. Click, click, go away, click, ONE reboot, DONE. Per­fectly pain­less, even on the flakey com­puter, and no out-of-pocket cost. I still have two more machines (my net­book & DH’s com­puter) to do and I bet it’ll be the same thing.

Still won­der why I’m a Linux gal?

If I can man­age to “legally” make the new lap­top into a dual-boot com­puter like my cur­rent one, I will not whine too much. If not that lap­top is going to become a very expen­sive paper­weight on my desk, most likely!

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Catching Up Is Hard To Do

November 10, 2008 in Miscellaneous, Work-Related by Julia | No comments

So I go away for three and a half days with highly lim­ited com­puter access (just a brief chance on Fri­day to check email). I come back to over a hun­dred per­sonal emails, not quite that many work emails, var­i­ous and sundry forum post­ings at the Glass Haven, bunches of Tweets, and over 350 things in Google Reader. The emails are caught up, as are the forum post­ings, but Google Reader is only down to 217 entries. Of course, when you get 150–200 post­ings to Google Reader on many days, it’s no won­der that’s tak­ing a while to catch up.

It doesn’t help that I came back tired from not enough sleep in a strange bed. That led to essen­tial naps both yes­ter­day and today. Nor does it help that my fab­u­lous pur­ple suede ankle boots were never meant to be worn for a six­teen hour day spent mostly on my feet on hard floors or walk­ing back and forth across a col­lege cam­pus. My feet are still try­ing to recover from the result­ing blis­ters and major swelling.

Then there’s the grad­ing. Let’s not even talk about that, ok?

How do you eat an ele­phant?? One bite at a time, my friends, one bite at a time.

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One more show to go

December 3, 2007 in Business, Lampworking & Glass, Work-Related by Julia | No comments

I fig­ure tomorrow’s show (the first annual GPC Arti­san Craft Fair) is a crap shoot.? I am just tak­ing bead stuff, no books, because I know I can fill up a six-foot table with just my and Mincot’s bead stuff.? I’ll have loose beads because I know some peo­ple do make their own jew­elry, but I’ll be kind of sur­prised if I sell many of them.? Ear­rings and Chi­nese threader neck­laces, who knows?? What I expect to go is those lit­tle wonky bead tree orna­ments because they are cheap!

I do have hopes for the new boro pen­dants.? They are def­i­nitely out of the ordi­nary! *I* like them — whether other peo­ple will or not, we’ll see.

And of course I will have the most impor­tant item with me — that GOOD ATTITUDE that is so important!

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Time for a tiny break

November 20, 2007 in Miscellaneous by Julia | No comments

Ahhh, Thanks­giv­ing break.? A whole five-day week­end, no classes to teach and no meet­ings to attend.? Never mind that I have my par­ents, the Off­spring, and Min­cot com­ing for Thanks­giv­ing lunch; I’m work­ing at Good Mews on Sat­ur­day for adop­tion coun­sel­ing;? the GPC? Arti­san Craft Fair is in two weeks and I need to take at least some of those beads that didn’t sell and turn them into jew­elry (the good beads) and orna­ments (the wonky ones); the Glass Haven needs some atten­tion — did I say this was a break?? Silly me!

Thank you, my DH, for remind­ing me that I’d for­got­ten to blog today and sav­ing me from let­ting the chal­lenge slip thru my fin­gers after 20 days!

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