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December 06, 2005
Rad Tran Hell
There's really no other way to describe the past several days. This past weekend was undoubtedly the absolute worst weekend I've experienced homework-wise since late in the fall of my junior year, when we had a killer Mechanics assignment and the longest Advanced Modern Lab or two to write up. That weekend sucked. But so did this one, I just don't know which one was worse. That's the main reason I haven't posted for nearly a week now, I've just had absolutely zero time until this evening. And I probably don't even have this time. But I digress. The primary culprit for my suffering these days is Radiative Transfer.
My Rad Tran marathon started on Thursday, by which point Dr Clothiaux had thankfully pushed back the assignment from being due on Friday to Monday. I stayed in Walker till probably 10 or so, I really can't remember. About all I remember is that when I was giving Daniel a ride up to his truck in the stadium lot on the other side of campus, I had to bust out the scraper to get some ice and snow off my windows. We've all been teasing him for awhile now that he's gonna have to get a real scraper, that a calculator cover (or a spatula, but that was inspired by Amber) just won't cut it up here like it would down in 'Bama. I think now he realizes just how handy a scraper can be in these parts.
Friday began oh so wonderfully. We all got to Rad Tran, when Dr Clothiaux was like, "So, remember that exam you all took two and a half weeks ago that nobody finished in time? Yeah, I haven't graded them yet, so I figured I'd give you another hour and a half to work on them this morning. Here they are, go." Or something to that effect anyway. But seriously, we had absolutely no warning about it, so most of us had kinda forgotten what the second test was on, partly deliberately since we all knew we did so poorly on it. I think I eked out a few more points with that extra hour and a half, but I still really had no idea what was going on. And still nobody finished before the extra hour and a half was up, so what Dr Clothiaux thought would take nobody more than an hour, took everyone at least two and a half, still without finishing all the problems. Argh. He still maintains that it was the best exam he's ever given, even though he admits it was also the most difficult he's ever given. That's just great... 
After recovering from that shock in the morning, it was back to work on the Rad Tran hw though. Friday evening Daniel & I managed to stick it out in Walker and work on Rad Tran until about 10:30, when we gave up and joined Stephanie, Jacob, Petters, Frame & Chris up at the Crowbar to hear the 80s rock band "Bad Hair Day." They were pretty decent, it was just extremely loud most of the time. Fortunately my hearing loss was only short-term. But Jacob's dancing and Frame's air guitar were hilarious almost all evening, it was definitely an entertaining and worthwhile break just for that. Little did we know that'd be our only quasi-break until this evening.
Saturday I had been planning on taking off some time either in the afternoon to watch the Army-Navy game, or in the evening to watch a couple of the other conference championship games, so I got myself up to Walker in the morning to get to work. Other than a break for lunch, it was 11:15pm before I left. I put in a good 10 hours of work on Rad Tran. On a Saturday. How sad. At least there was a rather large group of us there for most of the afternoon and early evening, so none of us were slaving away alone at least. It's just that I spent almost the entire day working on one problem, which Dr Clothiaux had drastically updated/changed earlier that morning, so part of what took me so long is that nobody else had started working on it yet, so I couldn't really compare ideas too much. Very slow going. And I didn't even finish it.
Sunday morning at least provided a bit of a cheery respite. First of all, it snowed 2-3 inches overnight Saturday into Sunday morning! So everything was all white and really pretty around here. I also had to dust off my winter driving skills a bit when I was on my way to church, as the roads were only partially plowed by that point. At any rate, church was nice as usual, and we had some special musical guests joining the worship team this week, a trombone quartet of four older guys who've been travelling around the country playing at different church services here and there. Their name is awesome too: "Totally Bone-ified" (hopefully I didn't butcher the spelling, but that at least gets the pun across, hehe). It's just fun to sing Christmas hymns like "Joy to the World" and "What Child Is This?" accompanied by four trombones. Just kinda adds something special. :-)
After a much-needed grocery run it was time to head back up to Walker for another 12 hours of work. Again, it was mostly on Rad Tran, though I did manage to sneak in a couple precious hours starting on my 501 hw. Yay for Skew T diagrams! Anyway, after Daniel & I had a late-night talk with Dr Clothiaux letting him know how much time everyone had been sinking into this assignment so far (yet nobody was finished yet), we convinced him to eliminate the entire assignment that he was gonna make for this coming Friday, and to push back this assignment to Friday, along with everything else that he was gonna have due on Friday. But when we started complaining about how hard and how much work everything was, he kinda put things back in perspective, asking us if we'd rather be doing backbreaking manual labor or living in some third world country. I guess when you put it that way, we have a pretty cushy job after all, where get paid, albeit not very much, just to think. By the time it was all said and done, Daniel & I gave up for the night at 1:15am.
Another thing that came out of the discussion Sunday night with Dr Clothiaux was that I discovered that he never received the email I'd sent him a week before Thanksgiving about my preferences for TA assignments for spring 2006. This was no good, because by then all the TA spots had been decided upon, based on the preference requests they received. So instead of getting perhaps one of my first couple choices, like Mesoscale Meteo or Forecasting, I got stuck with another three sections of Meteo 003 Lab. Even though I knew it was gonna be too late, I sent both Bill & Dr Clothiaux an email explaining why I didn't particularly want to TA Meteo 003 again, and they both were real apologetic, saying that they basically couldn't do anything about it at this point, that it was all already decided, but that if they'd actually gotten my email when I originally sent it, that I definitely wouldn't have been put with Meteo 003 again, because I had very solid reasons (namely, that I wouldn't learn as much or get as much out of it by teaching it again, that I wanted to learn something new). Daniel, who was placed as the Mesoscale TA, very kindly basically offered to switch assignments with me, since Mesoscale was my #1 choice, but I didn't take him up on that, since he also really didn't want to do Meteo 003, and since he's also got more of a meteo background, and is hence better qualified to TA Mesoscale than I am. But this morning when I talked to Bill about this whole TA business I found out that there might be a possibility of a switch for me. The person who was assigned to TA Synoptic wasn't all that thrilled about it for whatever reason. If I wasn't planning on taking it next fall from Dr Nese I would've included that on my preference list for courses this spring I'd like to TA, but if Brian does indeed agree to switch to take my Meteo 003 labs, then Daniel would probably like to get the Synoptic spot (his top choice), and then I'd take Daniel's place in Mesoscale (my top choice). That'd make probably just about everyone happy. But I'm not really gonna push that hard for it, if it happens it happens, if it doesn't it doesn't, either way I'll be fine. I figure everything happens for a reason. If I end up doing Meteo 003 again next spring (which is still by far the most likely possibility), I'd be TA'ing from Dr Nese, who Daniel says is really nice and fun to TA for (and everyone says he's an awesome prof), and cool about deadlines for us getting stuff graded. There are other plusses to doing Meteo 003 again too, such as not having to invest huge quantities of time learning new material, since I've already done that for this semester (not that most of it wasn't review for me anyway as it was), unlike what I'd have to do if I were TA'ing any other class. So who knows what's gonna happen on this front, we'll see. A bonus about this happening is that Dr Clothiaux said he'd give me first pick of what class I wanted to TA next fall, should I still need a TA position (basically, if there's no funding for the research I want to do).
Oh, and yesterday in Rad Tran we got back our exams too, Dr Clothiaux graded them over the weekend. You know it's bad when a professor says to the class, "don't cry, but there was a 71-point spread from top score to bottom, and both endpoints and the midpoints have company" right before he hands back the exams. I was one of the midpoints, 48%. Ouch. I think that's probably the worst I've ever done on a test, apart from possibly Calc 2 at Gustavus my freshman year (what a horrible class that was...). But we do get a chance to correct it at least, and earn back up to half our points. So that's another thing due Friday, hooray. The sad thing is, I don't know that most of a week thinking about the problems will help me fix them, they're pretty tough. But I had to put it out of my mind, as I had grading to do for Meteo 003 yesterday, about 8-10 hours of it. Daniel had a bunch too, more than I did, and it was 1:30 when I finished and gave him a ride up to his truck, so he wouldn't have to walk the half hour in the cold wind across campus in the middle of the night. So all in all, that made for two nights in a row of being in Walker past 1am, three past 11pm, and five past 10pm. Not fun. But it did start bringing back memories of all the time I'd spend in Olin back at Gustavus. I guess at least I'm not in Walker until 2am every night like I had to be in Olin to get my homework done...
Today was the final lab for one of my Meteo 003 sections, I just handed out evaluation sheets and let them go. Easiest. Lab. Ever. It was nice too, since I had homework basically all day today for tomorrow's assignment in 501. At least that wasn't terribly difficult, just tedious. But now the next couple days will be devoted to finishing that awful Rad Tran assignment that I'm still not done with, correcting my exam, correcting another assignment that we'll get back tomorrow morning, and starting to study for Monday's Rad Tran final (which, by the way, Dr Clothiaux is making not two hours, but four -- we're all scared to death now), and basically in general trying not to go insane. Studying for Tuesday's 501 final will have to wait until Monday afternoon. I hate finals season. But at least we have one of them out of the way already, thank goodness.
Winter's definitely here. It's cold (though not nearly as cold as the subzero stuff in the midwest), and so the snow's still hanging around, which for Daniel & David is highly unusual. They've both said this is the longest they've ever experienced snow staying on the ground. And this stuff fell only back on Saturday night! Boy are they in for a long winter. :-) And the snow geese are definitely honking again, there's a good chance we'll get 3-6" more of the white stuff on Thursday night into Friday here in State College. At least that's what it looks like at this point. Oh please, oh please, can classes on Friday be cancelled?
And now for a few interesting stories. If you're interested in buying some shoreline property, may I suggest avoiding Hawaii? Because it just might collapse into the ocean, ya never know.
There's a UN Climate conference going on this week up in Montreal, and apparently they're going a bit wacky up there. Apparently some activist group up there is trying to blame global warming on men exclusively, painting women as the innocent victims of it. Whatever.
Some people are just starting to notice that young men are disappearing from American colleges, that they make up only 43% of college students nationwide. Here are some theories as to why that's the case.
And finally, apparently the University of Wisconsin system took a page out of the playbook from China, North Korea, Iran and several other countries and banned Bible studies in dorm rooms. The issue is really coming to a head at UW-Eau Claire, where the university has told an RA that he's not allowed to hold a Bible study in his dorm room. Have the dimwits in Madison who made this policy ever heard of the First Amendment? I think not.
In just one week this semester will be over. In just one week this semester will be over. In just one...
Posted by Jared at December 6, 2005 11:59 PM
Comments
Maybe to find why men are no long applying to 'standard' college we only need to look at where they have actually gone to. Could it be that no one clued in that reporter at the number of men in TECH schools? Or that in TECH schools there are about 98% men and 2% women? Hmmmmm? As to the whole "sex bias" in classrooms across America, well, thats a whole different subject thats extremely complicated and really isn't limited to the classroom, but also has trails back home. Yes, girls do have better scores in English and Social studies, which is why maybe they have high reading abilities compared to the boys in their class. Now if we look at science and math maybe we'd see that girls lag behind men. Could it be that men and women are different? God forbid we take that up ever. Both have advantages over the other. Some people.
I write this because I am the only one who comments on Lee's blog. And when no one comments on Lee's blog you make Lee cry.
Posted by: Joshua at December 7, 2005 09:25 AM
Josh,
You do raise valid points, and it'd be interesting to see how the whole data set looked upon including tech school enrollment. But on the flip side, maybe more boys are choosing not to go to a four-year college because of other factors that have accumulated during their schooling that could, at least in part, be attributed to some of the factors raised in that article. I don't know. I was more linking to that article because I found it's point of view interesting to think about and discuss with other people, because it's not a viewpoint that's voiced terribly often. And I wholeheartedly agree with your statement that "men and women are different," and that it's entirely possible that girls are innately better at certain things than boys (on average), and that boys are innately better at certain things than girls (on average). It's just the way we were designed. Declaring that make men and women absolutely equal in absolutely everything, or trying to make them so, is a flawed proposition, because different people have different talents and abilities.
And yes, a lack of comments makes me sad. But at least now I've had three in the last couple days (two from Josh, one from Jacob), but that was after a long dry spell. C'mon people, let's pick up the pace here! :-)
Jared
Posted by: Jared at December 7, 2005 12:29 PM
I can help fill the posting gap. Then Jared will, of course, not answer, as always. Nonetheless, I enjoy ranting, so here goes.
Kate O'Beirne's article/critique of Gurian's book is, per usual, another one of her rages against feminism. As a woman, I too deeply resent the fact that a small group of activists have hijacked my second X-chromosome as the primary protagonist in their self-pitying, radical (and radically inaccurate) soap opera of oppression. However, KO'B's article does not analyze this particular issue properly. It asserts a cause and effect relationship where one does not exist.
The central issue being addressed is: why are there fewer boys in 4 year schools? K'OB addresses why boys generally do worse in school in general, blaming their lagging performance on feminists and the effects of feminism on education. However, there are more sophisticated and accurate reasons for the trend with regard to four years schools.
1) As Josh mentioned, enrollment at trade schools is predominantly male. I would add to this point that jobs that require no post-high school education are also jobs predominantly filled by males (construction, etc.). Few "career" jobs (those with benefits, stable salary, etc.) exist for women without further education.
2) Girls do tend to do better in school, a trend that usually translates into pursuing higher education. If you are a C student, would you go to a four year college? What about if you're a B+ student? There you go. The new statistics are perhaps a reflection of the natural tendency for higher scoring students to go onto four year schools.
So HERE is where the arguments K'OB makes should come into play. Why do girls do better in school?
She states they do better basically because they have prospered under the changes to education under the influence of the feminist agenda. Fair enough. It is hard not to agree that liberal activists have completely mangled the disciplined standards required for effective public education. (Insert the story of how, instead of learning math as a child, I was sent off to play with a bag of plastic toys so that I might "discover" math. Also insert here how I will be homeschooling my children). But is a poor public education system really to blame for why boys are lagging? Wouldn't girls lag equally? Or are they doing better because we have a substandard system in which they excel? To affirm the last question's premise would be extreme. To explore the first two is required.
Yes, there are innate gender differences (sorry PC-ers, science and common sense have you licked on this issue) that translate into the success of girls over boys in our current public education system. However, has anybody considered that it is simply the nature of education and not necessarily contemporary education that favors women over men? Could this trend be a reflection of gender equality in the public sphere meeting gender differenes in the scientific and personal sphere? I think so. Simply put, girls are better at the things required by traditional education: being quiet, studying, needing approval (don't get me started on this one), and distilling enjoyment out of making others happy. Most of these traditionally female characteristics dovetail nicely with the grading system in American public education. Is it any wonder girls "do better" in school?
As for the reading argument, there are other reasons to explain it other than "boys don't get to read stories about boys anymore." I'm certainly not advocating the PC trash that passes for student literature today (why can't kids read Kipling and Tennyson again?), but could it be that little boys are somewhat more energetic and would rather run around than sit and read? Perhaps.
No one side is one hundred percent right or wrong on this. Our public education system favors "oppressed" groups and screws white males when it comes to most things. However, I think these numbers are a reflection of nature coming to meet policy, not policy trumping nature. Still, that doesn't mean it's not right to loathe Gloria Steinhem for what she's done to us all.
The end.
Posted by: Kate at December 7, 2005 07:56 PM
Kate,
Wow, now *that* was quite the long comment! Superb analysis too, as typically comes from your way; I couldn't have said it better myself! PC'ers have definitely corrupted our education system (and society too, to the extent that they've managed to influence it), but yes, there are other factors at work here, and blaming everything on them is perhaps slightly unfair, as fun or justified as it may be. Anyone else have anything to add, on this or any other topic? Even just to say hi? Because this is fun, I love getting comments! :-)
Jared
Posted by: Jared at December 7, 2005 09:54 PM
God... get a room you two... reading you comments is like reading a very sexual transcription of a Congressional Committee meeting.
Posted by: joshua at December 8, 2005 03:55 AM
I once kissed a picture of Dick Cheney. ALL Congressional committee hearings transcripts are sexy to me.
Mmmm...joint committee on taxation...rawr.
Posted by: Kate at December 8, 2005 07:21 PM