Send Ken To College

In my ongoing effort to put off my homework as long as possible, I found myself reading through an old copy of Communications of the ACM.  It was the July/August 2008 edition and in it was an article written by Rick Rashid.  Mr. Rashid, a senior VP at Microsoft, was talking about how to inspire a new generation of computer scientists. 

Apparently computer science suffers from the image that it is nothing but a bunch of solitary, male, geeks sitting around gobbling junk food, swilling caffeinated beverages and hammering out cryptic looking code.  This image crisis seems to be discouraging women from entering the field.  

Mr. Rashid talks about a number of meetings that he had with high school and college students that were interested in computer science.  His goal was to find out what motivates and inspires them and to get feedback as to how to motivate and inspire others to enter the field.  One of the students that he mentions is Evie Powell, a PhD candidate in game design at UNC-Charlotte.  Evie lists one of her big motivations as a professor that taught an introductory game design class.  That one little spark has motivated her to grad school, has motivated her to be active in the STARS Alliance among other things.

Some days it takes a Herculean effort for me to drive 60 miles to school just to set through a few classes.  I think part of the problem is that I have yet to find a professor that is really all that enthusiastic about their subject matter.  In fact many of them seem like it is a major chore to get up in front of a class and teach.  You can not help but get the impression that they have their PhD so that is all they feel to be important.  Dr. Gray was probably as close to a motivational professor that I had, or will have in the near future, in the computer science department.

It is a sad state of affairs when my favorite class this semester is a general physics class.  I wonder what the professors are like in the Art department…

It seems to me that their are a large number of professors out there that seriously abuse their power.  My General Physics professor is one such person. 

The other day he handed back my homework.  I am looking it over and notice that he deducted a point because I did not label my numbers with units.  I mean like how unfair is this.  He spent how many years working on his PhD and he does not know that acceleration is measured in m/s/s?  Why should I have to tell him?

…and don’t even get me started on how unfair it was that he marked points off because I got a slightly wrong answer on part 1 of a 4 part question and each subsequent answer was then wrong.  Can he not see how I worked out the problem and give me full credit even if the real answer is about 1/4 of what I got?

I think it is about time to complain to the administration about this!

Everyday I find myself sitting in a classroom wondering why the hell I even bothered spending $10,000 a semester on my undergrad education.  At the very best I may have gotten $5,000 worth of education and the majority of that was NOT in Computer Science.  The value came from the gen-eds that I had to take and maybe some of the math courses.  I suspect that I learned more at the community college than I did at Mt. Mercy in regards to computer science.

The really sad part of it is that even with new faculty, it is not know whether the department is anymore worthwhile.  They may need a few years to get on track however they can get a start by hiring adjuncts that have the remotest clue about what they are doing.

My stepdaughter recently took a Visual Basic class where she learned almost nothing.  She spent a few hours with me and learned as much as she had in the 10 weeks of class.  Did they pay me for doing their job?  Hell no!  She filed a complaint with the provost and the department head.  Her complaint was pretty much dismissed because she got an A- in the class.

Quite honestly an a good grade does not mean much if you don’t learn anything.  I have a transcript full of good grades to prove it.  Everyday I sit in a graduate level class and find out just how much I never learned.  This is not stuff that was above and beyond my classroom learning, things I could have pursued on my own.  This is stuff that I presumably paid to learn when I signed up for the class.

The sad part of it is that of the $40,000 or so that I spent on getting the degree, I could have spent a few thousand on books and some more on another computer and I could probably have come out with at least as good of an education.  I suspect it would actually have been better.  With a decent printer I could have even managed to churn me out a piece of paper attesting to my smartness and not had to spend all of that money.

If I could figure out how to sue and get back some of the money that I wasted, I most certainly would be doing that.

Ok, so it has been 5 months since my last post.  Just for the record, I did indeed graduate (magne cum laude even).  This did not rip a hole in the fabric of the universe as some may think.  I didn’t fall through to another dimension or anything like that.

Where have I been?  Fair question!  I have been lazy. 

During my off time I worked an internship for a cereal manufacturer.  I programmed in Visual Basic and along the way I learned a lot of lessons.  The most important of those lessons was planning.  Planning a software project is very important.  I also learned that contrary to what development methodology you use, it is not a good thing to add features willy nilly contrary to what certain upper level management seemed to think.  I don’t like computers very much anymore.

I also did manage to make it to UNI for grad school so my dream of being my family’s first grad school drop out is still alive.  I am not certain what is going on however I really can not get my head in the game.  I am 4 weeks into the semester and I am already plotting and planning which classes I will be retaking. 

Stay tuned for more woefully tales!