Ranting Swede: Assessment related rants

[erratio]

You know what I really hate? At the moment, many many things. But for now I'll confine myself to these:

1) Arts essays. What I really really hate about Arts essays is that it's not enough to have your own opinion. It's not even enough to have you own opinion and have read a bunch of other texts that back you up or disagree with you. No, you have to not only waste hours of your life painstakingly referencing every text you read that may have contributed a single thought to your opinion, but you're expected to quote extensively from them to prove that you've read them.

2) Bugs in code that aren't immediately obvious. If I make a mistake in my code, I expect there to be flaws in my output. Heck, I can even deal with the program coming to a grinding halt. What I HATE dealing with are mistakes which almost work. It confuses the hell out of me to be seeing output that works BUT also outputs a whole lot of other stuff which shouldn't be there. Horribly flawed output is much easier to deal with because it tends to give you a much better idea of what it is you're doing wrong. but slightly flawed output? Maybe you forgot to increment something somewhere. Or maybe you're trying to reference a string when you should be referencing an array. Or maybe you have your comparators the wrong way around. It varies from language to language. But boy does it piss me off.

3) Coincidentally getting sick just as you're about to enter a heavy assessment period, aka WEEK OF HELL. I think this is the strongest evidence yet for the non-existence of God. I mean, who would do that?

Comments

[acute-angle.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on 1) and 3) and can't immediately empathise with 2)

high five for being sick ._.

[axl12.livejournal.com]

1) did you know this before you take the course?
2) that's why I hate programming

[cxib.livejournal.com]

I dont' care what you might think of my journal -- If I wasn't married I'd plan the perfect bank heist after I opened my foreign bank account (which I stole by wi-fi scanning certain bands) before arranging my flight to australia where I'd hijack you and lock you in a room where you'd read my 100 page dissertation on why this was all a good idea after which I'd unlock the room and we'd go on to live a blissful life where we'd finish out the day we'd just bettered Chomsky's theory on natural grammer (which followed closely on the heels of a suitable candidate for the solution to the question of the Riemann hypothesis) watching the sun set.

And then the police would find me and we'd go down in a blaze of ungloriable glory.

But alas, I'm married and comitted with a baby girl.
Pity these things happen when you pour the concrete in your plans of life.

But read my journal anyway. You might find something useful.

<3

[doctorer.livejournal.com]

Actually the allowing of things that make you stronger is one of the more powerful proofs of a benevolent (rather than malevolent or apathetic) god. After all, if humanity were not forced to overcome difficulties (such as tackling an assessment period while under the weather and hungrily penniless) how do you think we would become better, faster, stronger, smarter and shit?

Secondly, you're right about the arts essays. I guess that's why I appreciate being a language major so much - they're not expecting me to go all academic on them, just use beautiful language for the sake of demonstrating my ability to use beautiful language - a compulsive showoff's delight, I tell you. Sociology isn't so bad either - I have to do the referencing thing, but I also get to disprove my tutor's premises with the tools of theology and Catholic social practice. Assuming I actually start working at a decent time (ie not the day before) it's an exceedingly favourable situation to be in.