Bike Forums - finals are LAME

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Flak (Post 5809852)

Im married, have two kids, and have recently (18 months ago) gone back to school.

I have a completely different perspective compared to the teenagers in my classes. I actually like going to class and enjoy learning new stuff. I put the work in and get A's because i actually want to be there; as opposed to the teenagers that are there because they have to, or feel they have to be for whatever reason. They hate it, and it shows.

I think college should be off limits until you're 25 and had a chance to live a little and experience the real world. Sweeping generalisation i know, and ofcourse there are exceptions....but by and large, college is wasted on fresh highschool grads because they simply don't want to be there.

I'm an engineering prof and I'd say that the vast majority of the students want to be there. There are some that really don't want to be there with the typical reason being that they have a lot of family pressure to do it. I have had more than a few students over the years stop by my office during finals week and tell me NOT to give them a break on their grade and that they wanted to fail the course. For them flunking out was the only way to get out of it. Pretty sad.

I love when humanities majors complain about "how tough school is.." and how finals suck...Go STUDY and take some challenging courses that make you to prepare ahead of time. Or meet some Engineering Majors and ask them how tough their lives are. Now if you are an Engineering major, i can agree with about half of you (Aeros, Chems and EEs) in that order.

Here's an Idea..ride your bike to campus at least you get some riding in!

You forgot the most difficult kind of engineering.... BioE....

Finished finals on Tuesday.

+1 on science majors sucking away at your time.

Im a marine bio major, to think I'm working so hard only to work harder to find a job when I graduate. I work in a fisheries ecology lab between classes so its hard to find time to ride. At least I get to ride my bike on the 2 mile trip to school.

So many bikes are stolen at the UW (and they don't have to be high end ones....) so I never take my bike to school - besides, I pretty much live on campus.

Dietetics major with Chem minor here.

I make a point to get out and train as a way to get away from finals week.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bike enthusiast (Post 5810692)

You forgot the most difficult kind of engineering.... nuclear....

fixed.

My perspective - when I was in college, I had tunnel vision with respect to classes. I clearly saw them as a means to an end. I accomplished my goals, and couldn't be happier with my station in life.

However, I can now see that I could have looked at college in a different light. Instead of grinding out my classes and studying, I probably should have stopped and smelled the roses along the way (I'm talking about academics, as I smelled my share of roses outside of class). While the OP was commenting on his lack of interest in social studies/history I believe, I look at his class and think about how interesting it sounded. What was it, something about the Mideast? What could be more relevant in this day and age. When I was in high school, I recall a class on the Cold War that I enjoyed, as it still seemed somewhat relevant at the time (early-mid 80's).

As I stated earlier, I can understand a college student's perspective on the seeming uselessness of exams and classes. In many ways this is quite true. I took a fairly wide range of courses, despite being a chem major. I can't really say that much of my course work ever comes into daily use in my career. In fact, I could say the same for my post-grad studies, as my real training came after my graduate degree.

If it's any consolation, for some of us, the examination process never ends. My particular profession requires certification and periodic recertification. It's a fact of life, and I use it to keep current.

For all those still in college, my advice - enjoy it and take advantage of your opportunities.

This is an interesting thread. I'm a 27 year old full time mechanical engineering student who works 30 hour weeks (minimum full time) in an engineering consulting firm to put myself through school. I wouldn't say that finals "piss me off" but I'm definitely going prematurely grey.

I spent a few years in the Army after high school so I was ready for college and a change. I got my B.S. in Geography in three years. I put in plenty of hours studying and working part-time jobs and my wife and I had three boys at the time. I remember not being too thrilled with finals at times. We lived in family housing in an 800 sq. ft. apartment. I then worked seven years in a consulting firm with some great coworkers but with management that was difficult at best. My current job is with a university. I've since gotten an M.S. in Forestry. There were times when I was really wondering what I was doing when I was taking graduate level stats classes and writing my thesis. Overall, I enjoyed school but I have to admit that I do prefer doing research and assisting with classes instead of taking them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by neurocycler (Post 5806567)

Nothing irritates me more than people that believe Universities are part of the "service industry". A university is an institution dedicated to research. You are privileged to be there, if you don't like it, you are free to ride your bike out of there. I manage to put together finals, grade them and ride my bike...

To add to this, if you believe that a university is a service organization and the customer (student) is always right, then a university degree is worthless. It is exactly because a university is not a service organization that a degree has some value. You can buy a pretty piece of paper that says "I'm smart" and it won't help you get a job.

-soma5

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeffremer (Post 5804093)

Off topic, but you are completely wrong about this as far as linguistics are concerned.

The latter claim is a lie perpetuated by prescriptive grammar propagandists since the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The former has been shown to be historically more accurate. The rise of the middle class in 18th century England gave rise to the feeling that English usage and spelling needed standardization, partially out of desire to emulate the way the upper class talked and to distinguish themselves from the Cockneys and the lower class. Prescriptive grammars made their ways into elementary schools after movable type and inexpensive printing in England contributed to the rise of dictionaries and formal grammar books. Once prescriptive grammar tool hold any idiosyncratic word usage became wrong.

However, a careful study of the evolution of the English language, and of language in general reveals that it is constantly changing. What is grammatically correct today may not have been grammatically correct a decade ago, or yesterday for that matter. Case in point: placing a preposition at the end of a sentence. This was once a big no-no, now you'd be hard pressed to find an average college student who even understands what a preposition is, or how it should be used. Further proof of the shift to descriptive grammars after linguists made this realization is the format of dictionaries. Both Merriam-Webster's and the Oxford English Dictionary do not say necessarily how a word should be spelled or used, instead they describe actual common uses, of which there may be a variety.

So, in reference to smitty22's "grammatical correctness": we have high grammatical standards, but his grammar is not incorrect, it's just his.

Yup. And for thousands of years there was no such thing as laws. Therefore they're entirely relative and we shouldn't bother with them.
:rolleyes:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Treefox (Post 5814230)

Yup. And for thousands of years there was no such thing as laws. Therefore they're entirely relative and we shouldn't bother with them.
:rolleyes:

Read a little bit about descriptive vs. prescriptive grammar and Whiggish historiography. Come back if you think your law analogy is still so clever. :rolleyes: