Well, it’s official. I hate spam. No, I’m not talking about the prepackaged meat product. Although, if you knew anything about me then you’d know that as far as I’m concerned the two aren’t mutually exclusive here. I hate spam because I just had to delete 699 posted comments that were all spam. Will the madness never end?
One of my room mates has decided he likes fajitas. At least the OMD variation of them. Variation in the sense that they’re more psuedo-fajitas because I can’t cook. Still, he likes them and is learning all sorts of things from me. Like, how to use the microwave to cook most foods. Or, how to use paper plates for EVERYTHING so that you don’t have to wash dishes. And, how to keep a kitchen somewhat clean (a hard lesson I had to learn myself by throwing away every cooking utensil I own…twice). In addition to learning how to survive bachelorhood on nothing but psuedo-fajitas, quesadiallas, nachos, and coke he’s also picked up tobacco. Oh, and let’s not forget the most important lesson of all: how to work hard so that you have a heart attack by 40 years of age. I’m quite proud of that one in particular.
In other news, I just finished a 1500 word report (final draft to be done Saturday) which is just one of 10 that I have to do for this class (not counting the group report due at the end of the semester). While I’m on the topic of school work I’m going to rant a little bit. This is utter insanity. See if you can follow along and spot my major issue with this semester (recall I’m doing a Masters by coursework).
Class one: requires roughly 6 - 1500 word reports, along with a group presentation, group report requiring an unspecified word count, and an exam.
Class two: requires a group report with presentation and an exam.
Class three: requires 10 - 1500 word reports and a group report (no exam…whew!).
Class four: requires a “mini-thesis” and a series of journal entries detailing my “reseach journey.”
Ok, did we spot the odd man out here? I’m used to reports, proposals, projects, and the like. That’s why I signed up for a Masters by coursework. Had I wanted to do a “research project” covering some as yet unresearched topic using some as yet undecided research methodology (otherwise known as a thesis) I would have signed up for…take a guess. Masters by Research Project (or whatever they call it).
So everyone goes into the class with some idea of what they thought it was going to be about: some massive research project in which we had to develop some proposal along with all the associated materials (SOW, cost plan, schedule, risk assessment, procurement plan, etc.), do a presentation to sell the idea and write up a report about it. We were all ready for that. We’d even talked about it briefly last semester identifying who we were going to team up with. We’d all been led to believe that was where the “capstone” course was going. But oh-no-no. We’ll have them do a “mini-thesis” because we didn’t take the time to develop a project they could all learn something from and use in the real world.
Well, at least one of the guys in class gave me a lead on a cool mining job starting in Janurary. I think I could make that work for me unlike this stupid, idiotic, ill-conceived, poorly planned excuse for a class. The upside is that I’ve figured out my topic and I think it’ll be cool. 