Another productive day

[altivo]

Amazingly enough. I had a brief spell of sleepies after lunch but got through it. Laundry done and put away, stalls cleaned, cared for Tess' feet, baked bread, made meat loaf in the crock pot, baked banana bread on a last minute whim, and got in some watercolor experimentation working on a couple of techniques for that fox picture I mentioned a week ago. Tried out the permanent black Prismacolor pens and they work well with watercolor, no smearing or bleeding, even though they don't seem quite as black as what I'm accustomed to using.

Chased the neighbors' dog out of our barn loft. I dunno what he was doing up there. It snowed this afternoon but the air temperature was 37F so no accumulation beyond what we already have, and that's turning slushy.

Gary has been working on an obnoxious pile of homework all day today and most of yesterday as well. It seems obvious to me that these teachers do not actually try doing their own assignments. The number of errors in the questions and instructions is astronomical. He ends up sort of "guessing" what they want because, of course, none of them answer e-mail or return phone calls.

Isn't it time for another holiday? I don't want to go to work tomorrow. ;p

Comments

[dogteam.livejournal.com]

Tomorrow Canadians have to work, unfortunately...but for you, it's National Pig Day.

Try to keep it down, OK?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Every day in the US seems to be National Pig Day, I'm afraid. No wonder the price of pork has fallen so low.

[flamekist.livejournal.com]

Michael has the same problem with one of his teachers as well. The homework assignments are only posted online, are vague, full of typos, and subject to radical changes as late as an hour before the due date/time. To make things even more challenging, the teacher frowns on homework emailed to her at the last minute. He’s pulling what little hair he has left out trying to complete the assignments.

We’re slated to get more snow late Tuesday evening through early Wednesday morning. No one has mentioned accumulation (or lack of) as of yet.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No snow on the long term forecast here. We may finally be out from under the clouds on that one.

As I keep telling Gary, at the end of the class students ALWAYS get to fill out an evaluation form on the instructor now. There's only one answer to this kind of half-baked "teaching" and that's to give them a strongly negative evaluation, complete with detailed comments on why it's negative. Those are certainly grounds for this.

I can happily say that when I was teaching I always got very positive evaluations. This is probably related to the fact that I also found teaching to be a tremendous energy drain that didn't pay off financially or emotionally. ;p

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I always get the sleepies if I eat something fatty around lunch time :3 Since I've been on this diet I've been feeling more energetic....I still miss burgers :(

The dog was probably visiting the barn cat or mice :)

I see nothing has changed in Academia from Gary's experiences, it was like that when I went in 1998. I prefer teachers that have had real world experience they tend to be better at outlining what they're after.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, since I'm an old fart, I just keep saying that the notion of "teaching" courses over the internet is crap. You need direct interaction between students and teacher, and between the students themselves.

I get the sleepies from sugary stuff, not from fat or protein. Fortunately, I don't have much of a sweet tooth. It's very likely some degree of hypoglycemia, which could indicate a later tendency toward diabetes...if I live long enough to develop symptoms.