Thursday, November 29, 2012

Please, Just Give a Sh*t

Well I'm back....again. That was fast. I'm just in a sour mood because I'm just really annoyed at people right now. Tomorrow is my final presentation for my Danish class and to say that my group's presentation looks like crap would be an understatement. Our topic is immigration in Denmark which is actually a pretty interesting and complex thing to talk about, but right now, I can only imagine how our actual presentation is going to go. Two out of five members in my group have literally gone AWOL and the slides they made for the presentation have nearly three paragraphs worth of text on them. Rule 1 of Powerpoint is to not have too much text. They teach you that all through HS and college, c'mon guys. Problem is, me and the other people can't edit the slides because at least for me, I'm sure they haven't bothered trying to memorize one bit of what they are going to present. I know it's the end of the semester as people really just don't give a crap anymore, but it's still 10% of our grade, which, when I last checked, is still important.

What's also frustrating is that I also just caught literally what could have been the most blatantly in your face BS statement I've ever read in over a month. I'm not going to delve into what exactly happened, but sometimes people are so bad at hiding they they are bold-faced lying, that it just makes me want to punch a baby deer (okay, fine, maybe a stuffed one so I don't go to jail or whatever). If you're going to lie, at least be good at it.

Back to he point, the most I can do now is to basically just go in to class tomorrow and try and present my slides well and be professional about it and just let my other group members do their bit. At least I can try and come across as prepared. I seriously can't wait to be back home and with people who actually care about doing work even if they are studying abroad.

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In a related note, can I mention that I'm kinda annoyed about the grading structure in one of my classes? In my Nordic mythology class, the professor who teaches isn't the one who is grading the assignments. This is something I find fundamentally wrong in my head. Now, this isn't like the whole teaching assistant grading quizzes type stuff; I mean a completely different professor, one who is never there, is grading our exams and papers. How on earth does that make sense? In addition, out of gut instinct and based on how she has graded some quizzes, the grading professor is a pretty picky to begin with. Coupled with the fact that she isn't there to witness how the material is being taught, the level of engagement, or is available to talk to after class, I don't see how our grades can accurately reflect how well we actually are doing in that class. Just yet another frustration of study abroad life.

Alright, I've gotten most of what I wanted to say off my chest. Sorry about ranting, but like I've said a thousand times before, this blog is one of the few places where I can actually rant relatively openly so thanks for being patient with me.

G'night,

JP

1 comment:

  1. I wonder what it is with this whole group presentation business.

    When the profs are doing their work on their dissertations, it isn't a group effort. When they're doing their publishing to avoid perishing, it's not a group effort. So why do they imagine that there is any value in making undergrads work together (and let the slackers bring the achievers down?

    If you're ever again put in a similar situation, you should go to the prof and make the point that it's both unfair and useless pedagogically.

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