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…

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!

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.

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!

I am also gunning for dean’s list for the third time in four semesters.  Yes, I know, I did bad one semester and missed the list because I could only manage 3.45.  If that semester had been a bit better, then I would not be on the edge right now.

1. Use document for software project – 80% COMPLETE
2. 10-15 page research paper on Iowa in the Civil War – 80% COMPLETE

I am THAT close to being done.  Class work should be done by the end of the week and then it is relaxation until the actual ceremony.

1. Use document for software project – 66.67% COMPLETE
2. The final part of my software project – 20% COMPLETE
3. 10-15 page research paper on Iowa in the Civil War – 80% COMPLETE

Finally, one item off my list.  The Civil War presentation went well and the best part is that it is finally over.  Progress is being made on the other items, and the semester is almost done.  The wife is upstairs making dessert out of strawberries and rhubarb.  Is this heaven?  Uh no, it is academia.

1. Use document for software project – 66.67% COMPLETE
2. The final part of my software project – 10% COMPLETE
3. 10-15 page research paper on Iowa in the Civil War – 70% COMPLETE
4. 10-12 minute oral presentation of the research paper – STARTED

It really cheeses me off when I have to write a 10-15 page research paper but can barely manage 7 pages.  My topic was way too narrow.  This is far less of a problem at this point than it would be if I were working on my dissertation or thesis.

Remaining on my plate -

1. Use document for software project – 66.67% COMPLETE
2. The final part of my software project – 10% COMPLETE
3. 10-15 page research paper on Iowa in the Civil War – IN PROGRESS
4. 10-12 minute oral presentation of the research paper – STARTED

Remaining on my plate -

1. Use document for software project – DELAYED TO NETWORK ADMIN ISSUES
2. The final part of my software project – IN PROGRESS
3. 10-15 page research paper on Iowa in the Civil War – IN PROGRESS
4. 10-12 minute oral presentation of the research paper

1. Use document for software project – IN PROGRESS
2. The final part of my software project – IN PROGRESS
3. 10-15 page research paper on Iowa in the Civil War – IN PROGRESS
4. 10-12 minute oral presentation of the research paper

On the home front, the wife is still annoyed but now she is talking again.  My dog is not showing concern over her doggie biscuit and peanut butter status.  She sees me leave everyday so she assumes I am going to work.  She is no longer nagging me.  I think I am going to start counting down in hours real soon now. 

1. Use document for software project
2. the final part of my software project
3. 10-15 page research paper on Iowa in the Civil War
4. 10-12 minute oral presentation of the research paper

I am sure my wife will be very happy when this is all over.  I don’t think she has ever learned what the last two weeks of a semester are like and she ends up mad at me every time.  This time she wanted to express her frustration over the computer systems at work and I didn’t care to hear about it again, since part of the problem was how she was using them.  She was not too receptive to being told that she should stop doing what she was doing.  Her claim is that she always did it that way so she was doing nothing wrong.  She doesn’t get that things change and she didn’t like being told yet again that it was her fault things were messing up.

So right now she is not talking to me, which is not necessarily bad since this leave me to get the last of my education stuff wrapped for the semester.

I agreed to let the wife have a few people over the day after graduation for an impromptu graduation party.  I generally do not like crowds of people, and she has promised to keep the crowd small.  Apparently her acquaintances convinced her that graduation is a big thing and that she should have a party for me.

Right now I am torn between making a a concerted effort to maximize my grade or to just settle and be happy with B’s.  I’ll keep you apprised as to how it turns out.

As of the writing of this post I have 19 days and 23 hours left until graduation. I seems like it has only been 5 years or so ago since I decided to go get unignorant….ok, so maybe it has really been about 6 years.  I am finally graduating – doing what I should have done 20+ years ago.  Some people say that I did a good thing by going back to school and they tell me how they are not sure they could do it.  To me it wasn’t could I do it, it was do it because I was sick of working in restaurants and in retail outlets.

I currently work for Nordstrom and because of tough economic times they first reduced scheduled hours and finally laid off employees.  I could not survive on the 80% schedule (later dropped to 60%) because I was part time to start with.  From 20 hours to 12 a week did not exactly give my dog confidence that her peanut butter and doggie biscuits would continue rolling in.

Therefore I got off my lazy butt and finally found an internship in my field.  Now during the week I work for a cereal manufacturer who specializes in store brand cereal and oatmeal.  I am an intern programmer and I am currently ramping up so that I can stay and be full time over the summer.  I also would not be upset if this turned into a gig that supported my eating habits when I get to UNI in the fall.

Baring any last minute screw-up I am on track to graduate magna cum laude even though I have been battling a bad case of senioritis this semester.

Half a semester is gone already!  Tomorrow after class will mark the start of spring break.  It seems like only yesterday that I was griping about being made to take a speech class, which I got through surprisingly unscathed.  Now I am just waiting for the results of my GRE.  When I took the computer version of the test it did give me preliminary scores.  I am just hoping something changed between preliminary and final.

I decided to make another of my decidedly un-smart moves when I took the GRE.  I looked at one practice examine briefly after I decided on grad school.  I never looked at it again.  I walked in stone cold on test day and took the test.  This resulted in me doing worse than I expected to on the quantitative section but better than expected on the verbal.

I did pretty much the same thing when I took the ACT test back in the early 80’s.  At that time it worked out well for me.  Of course my brain was much more nimble when I was 17.  Now that I am 43 I have developed a Teflon brain which allows things to slide smoothly off.  The harder the professors try to fill my head full of useful stuff…the faster is slides off.

What I am convinced of is that general education requirements were designed by colleges as a way to extort money from students.  Can anyone tell me what good American Lit 1865-present is going to do me?  I can already read quite well and have been doing it for somewhere close to 38 years.  If I think about it I guess I can see the necessity because if  there were no American Lit classes then there would be a lot of PhD’s in the unemployment lines.  With no Philosophy classes, there would be even more PhD’s in the unemployment lines….

I think it all boils down to academia finding a way to keep its members employed and getting someone else to foot the bill – like us poor college students.

I was staying at the Westin
I was playing to a draw
When in walked Charlton Heston
With the Tablets of the Law
He said, “It’s still the Greatest Story”
I said, “Man, I’d like to stay
But I’m bound for glory
I’m on my way
My ride’s here…”

             “My Ride’s Here” – Warren Zevon

The grades are in and the crying is over.  I survived!  Time to take a week or so off and start getting my head in the game for my last undergrad semester.  Of course there is just one little problem between me and that last semester.  It is called Speech Communications and it is a 4 week class that meets 4 times a week for 2.5 hours at a time.  I have dreaded this class since I began going to school.  I truly dislike speaking to groups of people when it is something that I have to write.  Hell, I bore myself…how can I help from doing the same to my audience.

Now that I think about it, maybe boredom is the way to go.  If my professor is bored to sleep then maybe he will not know how bad I did.  I will have to ponder on this for a bit.

Finals week is now over and after expending considerable mental energy for the last several weeks, I now have nothing that I have to direct it to.  My sugar rush is dissipating and there is an empty mental hole that I have fallen in.  I am told that this feeling is not unlike what drug users and alcoholics go through when they no longer have access to their chosen drug.

If you don’t understand it, don’t worry.  I tried to explain it to my wife but I am not certain that she knows what I am talking about either.  She just looked at me like I belonged in the psych ward.

Here I sit with a Coca Cola in my hand and a little Warren Zevon on the stereo contemplating what to do until classes start again. 

I know what I could be working on, the project I had to demo today.  The damn thing was working up to the point where I had coded it right up until 30 minutes before demo time.  With three instructors sitting in to watch and score my presentation, errors galore when I attempted to run my software.

I was assured by the lead instructor that functional software was not absolutely required as long as I could discuss my design and how I got to the place where I was at.  I managed to pull that off but what I don’t think the instructors really got was the fact that the program beat me.  I really do not like when this happens.

It would be easy to just let this project go since I have now been graded on it but but due to my competitive nature, it just can not happen.  This program will be finished…someday!  I may put it aside until I graduate but this is not over.

What brought this on you might ask?  Well since you did ask, I will tell you.  I was talking to one of my instructors from whom I will be taking a software development course in the spring.  He was showing me the texts that we will be using.  Yes, I did state texts, as in multiple, three to be precise!  I wrote down the author and title of each but I seem to have lost the list so I can not even look up prices.

If you google textbook costs you will find many sites hashing over the high costs of textbooks, and even a site named maketextbooksaffordable.org that calls students to action to take steps to lower book prices.  On some of the sites if you read through the comments at the ends of the posts, you see arguments being made on both side of the textbook price battle.  US News and World Report even tells us four reasons why textbooks will drop.  Do I believe it?  Not really!

My suggestion for book publishers is to create books that are meant to span multiple semesters on a subject, such as the textbook that my calculus class used.  It was used for three semesters.  Of course by the time I was done with it there was a new edition out so there was no resell value on the used book.  I do realize that multiple semesters are not always a possibility so my next suggestion would be to write shorter texts that provide coverage of a semester’s worth of class.  I don’t know when the last time was that I ever got further than 3/4 of the way through a book.

In the Mt. Mercy student newspaper, there was an article on the campus bookstore researching a text rental program.  The only drawback seemed to be that the professors would need to use the books for three semesters.  Some of the sites I read through suggest that certain topics would not be conducive to large gaps between editions since new data emerges all of the time.  Most math and history classes I have been in really do not need new books that frequently because the stuff just does not change.

My area of study, computer science, does not always need the latest and flashiest book either.  Some classes like programming languages and database design change slowly enough that even a text a few years old is going to be quite adequate.

I generally by most of my texts used through Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, or Textbooks.com.  I suspect I will continue to do so for the next few years although I have heard of textbook rental companies.  I have not tried any of them yet, but with a few more years of schooling to go who knows!  Anything to save a buck!