More Fun With Online School
I’m still going to school online. It’s still aggravating.
In a digital classroom with over a dozen students majoring in graphic design, and an instructor who has a masters degree in the subject, why was I the only one to realize that our last assignment had insane requirements? And not, “oh this is too hard” insane. More like, “Why are we being told to turn 6 pages of text in as JPEGS?”
Is it really so much to ask that the listed grading metrics have something to do with the assignment that they are attached to? Because evidently 1/3 of my grade of a black and white pencil sketch was going to be based on color usage.
To my dear classmate:
When writing an academic paper, you should probably skip the emoticons. In fact, if you are old enough to be taking this class, you should probably not be using emoticons at all. But certainly not in your paper about the environmental impact of the Gulf oil spill. Which was supposed to be a paper about corporate logos.
To the instructor:
While I appreciate your suggestions for improvement on the final draft on my project, offering these suggestion on an earlier draft, or really at any time before the final project had been turned in would have been much more helpful. And by “more” I mean “in any way”.
To the class in general:
No my logo is not “awesome” or “cute” it is a rough draft, that needs a critique from my peers in order to be improved. That means helping me to find ways to make it better, not just giving me a verbal “pat on the head”. You are not helping me. In fact, by implying that the rough draft is perfect, you are harming me from an academic and professional development standpoint. You are sabotaging my efforts. Cease and desist, less I be force to respond in kind.
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September 22nd, 2011 at 9:27 am
Wait, you’re going to retaliate by complimenting their work?
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David reply on September 22nd, 2011 10:23 pm:
Devious, isn’t it?
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ltc_insane reply on September 24th, 2011 7:56 am:
very. lol
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September 22nd, 2011 at 9:31 am
Ah yes, the trials and tribulations of participating in a class where the rest of the students have barely gotten out of high school.
I ran into the same thing when I went for my AA as a 30 year old… bunch of 18 year-olds in English classes who would whine about having to write a 500 word essay, something I could knock out in half an hour or so. Frankly, I had trouble keeping my word count down to that level, because I could keep writing about the subject matter for pages on end, much to the apparent horror of the instructor. He had to tell me to tone it down a bit… I already had the A.
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Alice reply on September 23rd, 2011 8:13 pm:
How is 500 words hard? That’s nothing! And I’m a high school freshman btw.
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September 22nd, 2011 at 12:04 pm
“Why are we being told to turn 6 pages of text in as JPEGS?”
Typically, I figured 250 words per page, after double spacing and all that formatting stuff. So it sounds to me like you owe them a picture and a half?
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Ian reply on September 23rd, 2011 10:37 am:
Ah, but the important part of images versus text…resolution. Send it in at something like 10dpi.
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September 22nd, 2011 at 1:04 pm
this is what I probably would have done; written the paper in wordprocessor such as MS Word (or LibreOffice Writer) and either ‘print’ it to PDF -files (one file for each page), then opened the said PDF -files one by one in Photoshop or GIMP and then saved each page as a JPEG, at least I remember at one point having witnessed that either Photoshop or GIMP can open PDFs as well as create them, possibly both.
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AFP reply on September 22nd, 2011 5:17 pm:
I think Word can print to TIFF files. I could be wrong.
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September 23rd, 2011 at 1:05 am
Emoticons, in a paper for a college class? Skippy, I wish I could believe you made this up, but somehow I’m sure you didn’t.
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September 23rd, 2011 at 9:25 am
Sadly they don’t learn when you compliment them back. I’m in school for massage therapy and everyone is so nice and concerned with each others feelings that our constructive criticism and feed back sessions are more like positive affirmation therapy sessions.
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Jim A reply on October 6th, 2011 9:02 pm:
Interesting. When my then girlfriend and I took a couples massage class the big takeaway was: TELL the other person what you want and DON’T put up with something you don’t out of some sort of misplaced politeness. When somebody is trying to be nice to you, they want direction. Which was great because she wanted a much deeper and harder massage than I would have committed to without her saying so.
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September 23rd, 2011 at 2:26 pm
I heartily endorse using images inline with the text, something Galileo made very good use of.
Somehow, emoticons don’t carry the same amount of information as the first sketches of Saturn.
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October 5th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
I feel your pain here- I have been told that I am too blunt and critical when I actively look for and comment on things that need improvement in a paper. I usually put the warning “If you ask me to critique or edit your paper, that is what I will do. If your paper is not up to standards, I will let you know. As I expect this in return, I may seem harsh and unkind, but in the end you will be a better writer for it.” I hate it when I get something that doesn’t fit the requirements for the assignment though… I usually just kick it back with the comment “Please read the assignment requirements and try again”
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