Tue: I Would Change My Grade in this Stupid Class So I Can Graduate

Religion Class. This was supposed to be a breeze. I knew about religions, and I definitely knew about American religions, which was the main focus of this class. I figured it would be pretty interesting, maybe we’d learn about the early day’s of this country, and how Christianity was the backbone. Maybe later we'd touch on the revivals and some of the interesting things going on there. Also, we could talk about the lore involved in some of the Native America religions and that epic tale of Mormonism. So the class sounded like a good idea.

Sometimes things that seem like good ideas have the potential to be the worst ideas ever (Don’t think about that too hard, it sounds a lot more insightful than it actually is). I should have seen the red flags early on; the fact that we had to buy a syllabus, the test dates that kept getting moved around, the professor who seemed to be a luddite and refused to move into a world of Powerpoint, Blackboard and E-mail and sticking to hand-drawn overheads and a massive “reader” containing articles we needed to study. It turned bleak pretty fast. In spite of the many bad things there was a fantastic simplicity to the class. 3 tests, each 20% of the total grade and a Paper for the remaining 40%. Piece of cake. It started really well, I mean I didn’t really learn anything, but I scored well enough on the first two tests (44, and 43 out of 50). Nothing spectacular but enough to let the class fade to obscurity between test weeks. I felt like the Final went really well also, He changed the format to 40 questions which I was all for, the less questions the better. I turned in my Final paper, an exposition about Catholics in America at the turn of the century, really riveting stuff, but I felt good about that too.

The professor apparently didn’t feel so good about it though. He gave my paper that was worth 40% of my grade a 34……..out of 100. I wasn’t even aware you could score that low on a paper, I kind of figured if I printed out 8 pages with one word on each sheet spelling out “Catholics struggled in early America because of democracy” then I would at least get a 50. Not seriously, but who gets anything less than a 50 on a paper anyway? if you turn in something awful they usually at least give you a 60 for the effort. And like I said, I didn’t think this paper was anywhere near awful.

So if you’re doing the math at home you’ve realized that it doesn’t matter what the Final test score was, it’s now impossible to pass this class. I realized this earlier today at work after crunching numbers 9 ways to Tuesday trying to figure out if I had a shot at all. “Well whatever” I told myself, “I guess I’ll just take a summer class” and started looking into that. But it’s still really disappointing. Really, a 34?!

There is one small possibility however. After staring at my grades screen for close to an hour at work in disbelief at my abysmal score I started to create a crazy theory. What if I didn’t score a 34 on my paper? What if for some reason, the professor (an ace with computers) maybe put my Final exam score in the spot for my Paper score and the paper hasn’t been graded yet. That’s what I’m going to tell myself until they turn me away at the Arena door on Thursday and the reality finally settles in.

I realize I usually use the Tuesday entry to give out great ideas about improving our world, and I can’t help but feel like this world would be vastly improved if I don’t have to go to summer school. I have other things to be doing, important things. Let’s change this.

"Wed": I dont like asking "So what are you doing after college?"

They say that the only things you can count on in life are death and taxes. “They” possibly did not go to College. If they did, they would’ve realized that you can also count on all 89 of your friends and acquaintances asking you “So, do you know what you’re going to do after college?” It's a lock. What you wouldn’t guess however is that 45 of those friends immediately follow that question with an apology for asking such a “painful” and “old” question. Those apologies caught me off guard. You just showed interest in my life, don’t apologize for that. In fact I applaud you for asking that question, it’s a tough question to ask, and I don’t like asking it.

First of all the question is so risky. It’s somewhere between asking someone how their grandparents are doing and asking a women if she’s pregnant. You might be bringing up a touchy subject. You open yourself to the awkwardness that this person possibly has no plan after college. Then you have to desperately back pedal and try and reassure them that it’s normal not to have a clue about life, and that they’ll figure it out. Or maybe you feel so terrible about the position your question placed them in that you immediately start to try and help them out. You start asking “Well, what do you like to do?”, or maybe “You know I have a friend who works in so-and-so field, they really like it, you should look into that”. Those attempts are admirable, and definitely appreciated, however it doesn’t do much to change the level of awkwardness that the question has introduced into the conversation.

Personally I don’t really enjoy asking the question because it sometimes seems like I’m asking "so, now that the world has beat the ambition and wonder out of you, what kind of life are you going to settle for?". So many of my friends enjoy college so much that slapping them with the reality of their inevitable exit and entrance into “normal” life sometime seems cruel. Not only that but in the event I do ask even the best answers are rarely too encouraging. Kids grow up wanting to be Doctors, Astronauts, Professional Athletes, maybe even a Chef. Rarely does that come true, and hearing the answer to the “after college” question just reminds me of that sad truth every time.

So all that being said, I had a friend ask me this question the other night, followed by the apology, and then followed by something new. My friend said that it would be sad if no one asked what I had planned after college, implying that it would mean they didn’t care. So with that in mind, even though I don’t really like the awkwardness, and I’m not a fan of cold reminders of reality, I’m going to continue to ask that question. It’s going to be awkward, possibly painful. But caring about someone’s life is often awkward and painful. I’m going to try and remember that for the next 90 times I’m asked the “After” question and appreciate how someone could do something I don’t like doing.

Fri: I look forward to My Last Semester

It took me 1607 days to get to this point. Sooo close to finishing. I remember growing up, and being in 4th grade or so and thinking “oh man, I’m going to be doing this school thing for another 12 years!” At the time it was staggering, but now here I am 6 months from never having to open another text book again. That’s what I’ll tell myself anyways, there’s always a chance in this evil fallen world that text books could yet be in my future. But I’m not going to think about it. As I reach this milestone, final lap, last chapter, end of the road, curtain call, and numerous other analogies for my final semester. I find myself looking forward to this, my farewell semester for quite a few reasons.

One of the first reasons that comes to mind is that I’m taking some relatively interesting classes. There’s few things worse that sitting through 5 months of how to use Microsoft Excel (CIS 105), how to find the Z-score of an observation (GBS 221), or how to find a solution using anti-derivatives (MAT 212). I mean if you’re into those things, or I just named one your favorite classes ever, that’s great for you. I truly mean it, I’m breaking the 10th commandment all over that joy you have for those classes. Because for me those and a few other classes will go down in the area of my brain that rarely gets a visit from the consciousness in hopes that happiness and excitement can continue to live on in my world. So yea, interesting classes are crucial to this next semester meeting the criterion for being mention on a “Friday” (in this blog anyway). What is an example of an interesting class? Well hopefully American Religious Traditions, Comm approach to Pop Culture, Relational Communication, Hip-Hop online, and Public Speaking are example of interesting classes. Public speaking in particular should be at least good for a few amusing mornings. There are few things more enlightening than watching a student absolutely nail a speech, or conversely crash and burn. It’s just so dynamic.

Along with classes that have me interested, another reason I’m looking forward to this semester is that it is my final term. As I subtly hinted to earlier, I’m not a huge fan of school. Usually when I’m in class doing the homework I’m struck by the fact that I’m not learning anything. I’m at school to learn right? Yet after all this work, after all these hoops, reading numerous pages of the arguably the most monotonous text ever forced on a group of people, I feel like 95% of the valuable things I’ve learned have come from outside the classroom. I’ve earned about office politics and running a small business from the job I worked all through college. I learned about communication and interaction from the friends I’ve made the last 5-ish years. I’ve learned about other cultures by taking non-school related trips out of the country and talking with immigrants that I’ve worked with. There are a great many other things I 've learned that I could attribute to sources outside of the four walls of College, yet to be honest I did pick up a few skills and tidbits of knowledge within those walls. I’ve just always felt that the way we go about learning things, or maybe more accurately the way the world is setup to formally teach us things is flawed and generally ineffective. So the sooner I can finish doing this little dance for that piece of paper that is mysteriously so crucial to future opportunities and success, the better.

Outside of the school angle, there’s a couple other reasons this semester could be cool. The Guy’s Bible study I’ve been attending has shown so much potential for being an amazing time I’m excited to see if it can capitalize. The material last semester was great, but really it’s the guys that come that make it incredible. The ideas and insights they bring to passages and stories I’ve heard or read multiple times makes them seem new and fresh. I really look forward to getting back with them.

Finally this semester will bring me to a crossroads in life. At this point it seems like an important decision making time and I’m anxious to get to it. Because the sooner it comes, the sooner I can start getting involved with whatever God has planned for me next. And lately being able to witness the fruition of the plans of God has been very exciting.

Thu: I miss MCC

So the New Year is here, and with it the spring semester, which will hopefully be my last semester (barring any last second, degree pathway, bait-and-switch stuff). I’ve enjoyed my time at ASU and I’m sure for the most part the spring will be pretty cool. That being said, I would never say (and I’m relatively sure you’ll agree) that ASU is the hands down best schooling experience I ever had. There was another I school I attended a couple years ago that also holds some good memories. At the time I was actually going to this school if you asked me to put together a list of good things about this school it would have read something like this:

Good things about Mesa Community College
1) It’s only for 2 years
2) Ummm….it’s close to my house?

Thankfully I’ve had some time, and one of the many wonders of time is that it can sometimes give you a new perspective. With that new perspective I’ve started to realize that I miss taking classes at Mesa Community College.

I’ve always been jealous of the people who came out of high school knowing exactly what they wanted to study at college. I wasn’t even close. Coming out of high school I decided to study to be a Music Educator, which at the time seemed reasonable. I liked music, I appreciated some of my band teachers, and I had no better ideas so I went with it. I think had I decided to major in Music education at ASU there’s a possibility I would have felt somewhat pigeonholed into finishing it out. MCC for good or for bad doesn’t pigeonhole anyone. You could basically take classes in whatever you want till kingdom come for all they care, which for me was a good thing because it let me take that time to try some stuff out and find a major I liked. Which it turned out was not music education.

Really there was only one reason I found that major; the teachers. The teachers I’ve had at ASU have been really good for the most part, but there were very much teachers. The MCC teachers never really felt like teachers, sure they taught the material, but they always felt a little like that Substitute teacher who comes in and feeds you all the answers and then spends the rest of the time talking about their life (I was homeschooled so my exposure to Subs is pretty limited, but the few I'ev sen usually do this). If I was going there for serious education this probably would have been beyond frustrating to me, but I was really just there to poke around and get direction. When you’re looking for direction their really is no better assistance than talking to people who have lived a life, worked a profession and now just teach and try and direct a bunch of aimless college students. They were frank, they would tell you if your major was stupid, or the classes you were taking were a waste of time. I think they could be so honest because they knew they couldn’t get fired for something stupid like hurting a student’s feelings by hitting them with some cold reality. Sometimes I feel like university professors are stepping on eggshells to appeal to the students, telling what they want to hear and such.

The students were different there too. I like the students at ASU for the most part, but they take everything so seriously. Every group project there’s always one kid who is just up the wall emailing everybody 6 times a day to make sure our project (that was usually worth 5% of the grade) is still going well. The kids at MCC all had bigger things to worry about I think. That 5% project takes a backseat to keeping your job or raising your family ( I took lot of classes with people going back to school). It put things in perspective for me, it allowed me to understand where school fits in life, how important it is, and un-important at the same time. It was cool, and sometimes I miss the honesty and that constant reminder of proper perspective.

Wednesday: I hate talking about money

Kind of crazy Huh? A business major, someone who supposedly will end up spending 8 hours of every day for the rest of their natural lives surrounded by the topic hates discussing money. By the way, what is an un-natural life? You always hear about people living the rest of their natural lives, but never the other side of that coin. Anyway back to reasons I hate talking about money.

There’s a ton of reasons really. I read that money is the most divisive topic in every relationship; it causes the most friction, and aggravation. Because 99% of the time that money comes up, a happy conversation does not ensue. I’ve never seen it do too much damage to anyone I’ve personally known thankfully. I do remember my parents talking about finances very sparingly in front of us kids when we were small. When they did “discuss” money though it never really sounded like a something they were thrilled to be talking about. Always a kind of helplessness about the situation this stupid thing called money had put them in. They always figured it out, but that really put a sour taste in my mouth about the subject.

Also, money kind of drives me nuts on a more psychological level. It’s the quantification of all my time, effort, and knowledge. The worst is when you start to measure your purchases or bills in relation to your time like “oh man that trip to Target just cost me 4 hours of my life” (to explain, if you make $8/hr and spend $32 bucks on a trip to Target, you just spent 4 hours at Target, hours you’ll never, ever get back. I hope those picture frames were worth it.) So I’ll start thinking this way, and I start looking at things with this concept in mind, and to make it worse I have the realization that for other people it's possible it costs even more. Dinner might be 1 hour to me, but it might be 3 hours to you, or possibly vice versa. It makes me realize that to ask a friend to a movie or lunch I’m really asking that friend to spend 2 hours of their life doing some menial task, so that they can spend a couple hours with me watching that movie or catching lunch. That kills me.

Suffice to say, it’s a troublemaker. Obviously the bible warns about it numerous times, (Pro 11:28, Heb 13:5, Eccl 5:10 et al). So it doesn’t sound like it’s a bad thing that I don’t really enjoy talking about it. Except, I hate it so much I will ignore the subject completely at times. That, I think is the reason I wanted to become a business man, or at least get a handle on the business thing. Ignorance is a huge step towards fear, and fear as we all know leads to anger. I’m not really a fan of anger, so hopefully this college thing will help out with the ignorance piece. I wanted to be able to take care of this problem early on for myself and hopefully other people to the point where the subject is assigned the meaningless-ness it should be.

Monday: I Like Multiple Choice Tests

It’s pretty much finals week which I know some people really, truly dread. Fortunately I’m not one of those people. Probably cause most of the classes I take are cake compared to what everyone else is taking (we played with play-doh in my management class on Monday). Also I enjoy finishing things, going in there and dropping a paper or presentation off, or taking a test and realizing I never have to remember any of this information again. Because later on people are going to give me a piece of paper that will explain that I knew this stuff at one point in my life and people will believe it (it’s called a degree). But I think the main reason I’m not that freaked out about finals is cause I actually enjoy taking tests, especially multiple choice tests.

I’m a relatively good test taker. I once read that all tests are geared towards middle income Caucasian males for some reason. I’m not really sure how accurate that is but I’ll bite (plus it gives everyone else an exc-..er explanation for their hatred of tests).
So as finals come up I actually get kind of excited to take these tests, (as long as they’re multiple choice, none of the short answer nonsense). I mean I just have to go in there and pick one of 4 answers. Every question is like a mini mystery. You have some clues that you remember from that one time you opened the book. Also if you’re lucky the test will give you more clues like

#5 which of these ideas is not one of porter’s 5 forces:

• A: Competition
• B: Substitutes
• C: Customers
• D: Planning

And then a little later:

#12 competition, substitutes, customers, new entrants, and suppliers make up what?

• A: SWOT analysis
• B: Porter’s 5 forces
• C: Cognitive analysis
• D: Elasticity

Questions like that are like a special present from the teacher that says “ I know I probably didn’t cover this material like I was supposed to, please figure this out so the class’s test scores don’t completely torpedo my chance at being back for the spring semester”. Although sometimes you get one of those teachers who enjoys putting tests together, maybe they’ve been doing it awhile and gotten bored or something, but the give you this nightmare test that always starts with the instructions Please choose the answer that is most correct……… Did you catch that? “most correct”. In my experience these tests come from teachers whose classes ran pretty slim on the material they had to cover, so they just kept teaching similar ideas with new names. But the tests they wrote were creatively convoluted, such as:
Please choose the answer that is most correct

#17 which of the following is a primary color?
I-Red
II-Green
III-Blue
IV-Purple
V-Yellow

• A. I and III
• B. I, III, IV and sometimes V
• C. II, IV, not V
• D. Just I and V
• E. There is no correct answer

Tests like this are the product of a sadistic mind, (*cough* Professor Nifakr *cough* *cough*). Still like I said, you can’t discount the creativity that went into that.

The thing I like most about MC tests though is that they’re black and white. On a day to day basis I like to operate in the gray area, but as far as relying on someone else to judge me, the simplicity of black and white can’t be beat. I could relate this to how Jesus explained to us how we are in the black, absolute black without him, no matter what, and how much I appreciate that, but I feel like that’s a somewhat cheap exclamation of that particular appreciation. So I’ll just throw it out and you can process it yourself or dismiss.

So yea, multiple choice tests, when I get old and retire and am teaching a bunch of kids at the local community college, I’ll be using them. Cause they reward intuition, risk taking, and occasionally the kid who didn’t study at all but didn’t give up because they knew with the MC test, there is a chance they could get a 100%. It's exciting like playing the lottery.