Category: Academic

My visual Spring 2005 Semester Schedule is now availible at curtis.kularski.net/public/Spring2005.pdf.
My current semester text schedule from GITI is now availible at curtis.kularski.net/status/schedule.php
The references to sleep in the PDF version of the schedule is only a theoretical time window when I may choose to sleep, but is by no means an indication of the fact that I will sleep.
Maybe for Fall 2005 I can have GITI to produce a visual, but for now the PDF is the best I can do for visual schedules. If I am not doing anything during the summer we might even end up with a Curtis Tracker, for my own security I may have to secure that host though.

My final grades for the Fall 2004 semester are in. All of my courses with the exception of Western History and Culture came out as As. As a result I should probably forgive myself for my performace in WH&C. Somehow forgiving of the self is just so much harder than forgiving others. In reality though, I guess I have nothing to forgive myself for. I did what I did in the course because of who I am and my personality traits, goals, aspirations and motivations. There is nothing I could have done to change the situation other than immerse myself in material that would end up stressing me out. Could that have caused me to have 4 Ds and only 1 A (in WH&C of course) or would it have still not been good enough and resulted in me still having the D in WH&C but also having that result in all of my other courses as well from the stress? Those are questions I can not answer. All I know about my learning style is that I don’t really study. I attend the lecture, read what I need to, and try to generally experience the course. That was somehow the easiest with Abnormal Psychology. I don’t know how everyone else’s brain works, but if I remember something just for the hell of it, it is usually a very temporary memorization, but if I dive in and experience the course it doesn’t leave me. The morning of the Logic exam people were trying to cram it all in and remember stuff, I was fairly calm and relaxed and more concerned with an English project due later in the day. I performed well enough to still have an A in the course and feel really good about the exam.
I haven’t done much in the few days since my last exam on Friday, just sort of been here and have been sleeping a lot. I have been working with clay some, but not as much as I should be to get better at either my wheel or handbuilding techniques. I have a new 1/3 HP (250 Joule/s) wheel coming next week that im excited about trying on. Reopening old hobbies is a slow proccess, but I am enjoying it more now than I did in the past, I guess because now I have the resources to explore it more fully and therefore enjoy it more completely.
I have found myself logging in to GITI every day since exams, even though all sections read as being fully complete with nothing to do, even the active course section at the moment. I guess I will formally activate those sometime in January. During this time since exams GITI has been in a state where I could easily tare it appart and it wouldn’t affect anything, but I haven’t gotten that much motivation back yet. I have given thought to giving myself a system of being able to pre-request numbers from GITI in blocks, so I could ask GITI for a block of like 10 numbers for me to be able to use during a week, so I could issue numbers without being at GITI or having to interact with it directly to have my organizational systme be effective. I don’t know that I can seriously see myself walking around with a sheet of pre-printed Avery labels with barcodes on them. How would instructors react to me slapping a barcode/number label on their pop-quizes? I guess it would be similar to either the way that Dr. Presler or Betsy handled it. Betsy found me to appear highly organized and didn’t think I was nuts when I gave her a paper with a GITI number and barcode on it. Dr. Presler’s reaction was a little more like a blank stare and a laugh. Other instructors don’t seem to notice, including Dr. Frakes. I don’t know that I will ever get to a point where GITI’s barcodes are actually in active use, but for now I like knowing they are there, so as I become more GITI-centered in the way I do things, I will be able to convert instantly. Its strange how GITI’s numbers (actually, they are MySQL issued auto-incriment index numbers) have evolved. The numbers started as just being there because they were required for the safe operation of a SQL table, but then I got more attached to them in my coding, and now they are essential to everything I do with GITI, they make things make sense. I think I should write a debriefing sheet for GITI sometimes though, people expect too much humanistic logic from GITI, not just its linear logic. There was a project due in Enlgish on the English exam day, Patrick, one of my group members saw GITI ID number 0505 and thought it was the final draft because it had a higher number than the actually final draft, which was 0412, even though I had defined each of the numbers for him. Luckily, Betsy is very understanding and didn’t kill our grade for the paper being a little late (I think GITI confused her occasionally too).
Anyway, final grades are in and im farily happy, and apparently im good at having tangent thought.

I just looked at the UNCC records system and noticed that my least favorite class this semester (because of instructor’s methods, not because of content), Western History and Culture: Masterpieces of Western Art, has been officially closed and that a grade as been posted for it. Unfortunately, the grade system itself is offline until December 21st, and it is after hours for the 49er Express Student Services system, so I am still left wondering on the grade. Deductive Logic, Abnormal Psychology and English Argumentation all went well in their exam periods, so I am thinking I did well in those courses and am not too concerned with those grades, but on my courses that are closer to life-and-death for me I am a bit worried. The disappointment that is Physics Lab was posted last week, that exam really screwed me over. I think Physics lecture tomorrow will be ok though, so I can redeem myself slightly there. As of the last day of all of the lectures I had the mathmatical possibility of an A in all of the courses except for Western History and Culture, and I kinda knew that one was a lost cause (but didn’t treat the final exam as that though). The first exam in the course I wasn’t sure of what to expect, the second was a little better but still not very clear, but I think I might have done ok on the final exam. The course itself caused me to be a little scared because of only having 3 exams for grades, but I guess its ok, especially with the possibily of 8 points extra credit on the final grade. I personally earned 6 points of the 8 availible for extra credit, I dont know if it will be enough to really save my grade, but it certainly cant hurt it. Abnormal Psychology is closer to this than my other courses, but it would never kill a students grade, for one the tests are muliple choice and not open ended. In addition there are some other assignments and extra credit opportunities availible, so the 4 tests dont have to stand alone. Dr. Presler makes the course seem like we are back in high school, there is homework, weekly quizing, and tests when she feels like it, then also a nice cumlative final. I am not truely sure how Betsy grades, or if she just pulls numbers/letters out of her head. We have turned in 2 papers, a few homework assignments and one group project. All of it graded by her, quite subjectively. I get the feeling that anyone who put forth some effort will get an A and those with more than 5 absences will have Fs. There is no one in the course who actually shows up that doesn’t try their best in her course. Its kind of funny now that I think about this, but Western History and Culture will be the one to kill my GPA, I thought that all along it would be a math course that would finish me off, oh well, there is still Calculus in the spring, im sure it will take its fair share of my mental resources. As long as I have a decent instructor and can enjoy the course I will be fine. In high school I had the same instructor over and over again for math courses, Mrs. Ward is a great person, but her math teaching skills just aren’t compatible with my ability to comprehend math.

I have been sitting here contemplating various aspects of my college career thus far for the past few hours. After careful analysis there is nothing truely odd about my experiences, with the exception of any interaction I have had with the UNCC registrar.
In the time I have been interacting with this registrar I have managed to bypass 2 proccesses. The first bypass was in June when I was supposed to be stuck at SOAR for 2 days. When my records were being modified a few days before SOAR the registrar/admissions office managed to make a strange flaw appear that essentially released all flags and holds on my account, this should have not happened at all. I registered before SOAR even began, again, this is abnormal and should have never occured. I am inclined to believe that this flaw was directed by fate to comply with my declaration of “UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL I STAY IN A UNCC DORM”, of course that declaration applied only to situations where it would be mandatory and I was not comfortable with the campus. I went to SOAR when I was scheduled to, for the first day of it, and was assigned to a group, but the Orientation Counselleor left be behind before we even got started (lets start Scared Freshman Syndrome right). I was assigned to another OC for the first part of the orientation, but unfortunately I had already seen enough of UNCC’s hospitality by that point. I was told by many people, the DOS (Dean of Students) included, that SOAR was important, but in the time i was there i was neither impressed nor enlightended. If anything I learned not to trust the DOS [for my nerd friends, you can pretty much guess how I felt about her before I met her because of her acronym]. The DOS lied to me about various things that morning during SOAR. The DOS is supposed to be someone that students can count on, go to and seek for comfort with most issues. Strangely, the department of admissions was much more friendly, caring and helpful with everything I have needed since the day i first sent my application, even though that department is trained to look at students as only numbers. However, the department of admissions has its flaws, including their neglegence with records. I had to visit them 3 times to get an isssue corrected where all of my transfer credits went missing for a few days, even after my record was manually reconstructed.
Next topic, Prerequisits! UNCC uses a tool called Campus Pipeline to manage registrations, drop/add, and records management on the student side. This tool has to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen. To get a course that has a prerequisit at UNCC you must only add the prerequisit to the schedule for the semester, then perform a conditional drop-add with the course you want and the course is granted completely and without question of the system. I haven’t tested this to a level of multiple successive pre-requisits, but because of the way it functions I would assume that it would be exactly the same. This is a flaw that could harm the integrity of the institution if some students who just wanted to complete their degree and leave started using it to get into courses for the purpose of getting a C and moving on. Upon anylizing the situation I find fault with my own usage of it, but what is done is done now. I used the procedure to bypass a topic area that I was complete SICK of, ALGEBRA! After having 3 years of it, I am tired of it and dont want to look at it again. In high school I was determined to be competent enough to take AP Calculus, which is equivilent to UNCC’s Non-Engineering Calculus. Also, I managed to complete AP Statistics and get credit at UNCC for it, Statistics is equivilent to Calculus in pre-requisits. My competency in math isn’t the point here though, the point is that pre-reqs should be enforced better than they are by the UNCC registration system. At CPCC there is a very tight registration procedure that verifies pre-requisits. One thing I also noticed about the registration system that shouldn’t have happened (although it didn’t affect me directly) is the handling of courses that require registration permits. One of the philosophy courses I am taking next semester required me to have a registration permit by departmental rules, but there were no notes or anything on the record for the course to state as such, but in this situation I had my permit in place (Thanks Dr. Presler, youre the best) before registration was opened. There are only 7 people registered for the course, none of which I know, so I can’t confirm that, but typically, if there is no note, then there is no catch.
The thing I hate most is having to worry about when Campus Pipeline is up and when it is not. It only maintains records for 18,000 people, it shouldn’t need to be down for 6 hours every day of the week for maintainance and record backups. Seems weird and inefficient to me, but then again, I don’t have to deal with the back end of the records system…at least not yet.
I will continue to monitor my records to make sure that everything stays correct until I graduate, but the records system at UNCC still scares me.

Sometimes The Curtis should just stick to his gut feeling about things.
About a week ago I was given an assignment and given the option to be independant or be in a group. I selected in my mind to be independant, but everyone else paired up. The instructor (Betsy) made the suggestion that I join “the Guys”. I hesitated to accept, but found myself crushed by the pressure of instructor suggestion and internal non-resistance.
The group situation is making me so stressed out, no one is communicating with me and I don’t know what to do with these people. I feel like I have to organize everything for them to get done. I feel like I would have had to do less work if I would have been by myself.
(posted December 23, 2004, delayed post to avoid conflict)

I don’t know how to describe the atmosphere on campus today other than relaxed! Everyone seems so calm and as though there is nothing at all in their lives to worry about or study on. It may be helpful that it is a rainy day, but I have never experienced the atmosphere of the campus like this before. Dr. Presler made some changes to her testing and we had a very calm day of Logic with just being immersed in symbolic logic proofs. It was great fun, I actually got into it enough to volenteer myself to do 3 problems on the board for her, and anyone who knows my personality knows that I usually hate doing anything on a board. I would have felt better today about it if I were using dry erase and not chalk (or VERY dry erase). With multi-step deductive syllogistic argumentation I feel very comfortable and I get such a thrill out of solving the proofs. Proofs look so hard from the outside and are still very scary for me when I am not focused, but when I am focused on them I can extrapolate the correct course of action for getting from the 1 to 3 propositions given to the given conclusion and manage to use several of the 18 basic rules of symbolic logic that we have learned to reach the conclusion. I remember proofs in geometry, they weren’t nearly as much fun as the proofs we are doing in logic. For anyone who is very fact based in their learning (this is the question, here is the answer type people) don’t like logic, probably because it is very abstract and requires some time to get it with complex thinking and can not be gotten simply by “knowing” it. I think I was talking about relaxation when I got started on my logic tangent wasn’t I? Well, after logic I went to Physics and Dr. Naeini kept taking himself in a circle and he wasn’t very focused on getting everything covered. I have never seen him like this, he is usually so rushy so he can cover everything that he wants to get done. I guess it being the final lecture caused him to lighten up a little bit. Actually, today was the final lecture for Logic also. Both courses are using Wednesday as an optional review day. Depending upon how English goes today I might just option myself into using Wednesday as a stay-at-home-review-in-bed day. I have electronic access to most of my notes, as well as the notes of my instructors and thousands of other instructors, so it very well might be worth it to attempt to do that. Only problem is that I need to somehow convince myself to be on my normal schedule and be functional by 11am so that I can use my time appropriately and actually get some review in. I love being on campus and around people, but sometimes it is just way too cold outside to even bother getting my ass out of bed to do more than go to the bathroom for my morning trip. Thursday is supposed to be reading day on campus, and there is no class, I orginally scheduled my Microsoft exam 217 for that day, but it has since been rescheduled to later in the month. I might take the three days I have at the end of this week to work on getting stuff together and finish preparing for that exam and then stick it on Monday, December 13th where I don’t presently have anything scheduled.
At some point before next Wednesday I have to manage to finish my English paper, write some reading journals and write some group meeting journals. I don’t know why Betsy wants the journals done so bad, I guess she needs some entertainment between reading the boring stuff, or perhaps needs to figure out what went well and what didn’t go well in the course.

Well, thats GITI’s interpretation of the next few days at UNCC for me. Only 8 more assignments have to be cleared before the semester is closed. I am a little excited, this is the end of my first semester at UNCC. I survived without any major incursion with reality, however, I don’t think I have presented myself enough socially since I arrived at UNCC, that is something I need to work on for next semester. I can’t let myself go my entire time at UNCC without meeting at least a few people. So far I have enjoyed being at UNCC and feel as though the place has the potiential for improving me as a person, however I have to make myself open for that improvement and not see myself as a mindless drone going to record information to be recited for the final exam. Logic is my current favorite course because I feel like it has had some impact on the way I think. I haven’t attained the logic of a vulcan yet, thats where advanced logic comes in, but I have definately begun seeing things differently. I sometimes find myself laughing at people who try to memorize logic formulas, it isn’t about memorization, it is about the thought proccess being created where you know what is actually happening.
I can’t believe this semester is coming to a close so quickly. It still seems like it just started. I guess now the only thing I can do is prepare for next semester and try to focus on improving myself.

My Abnormal Psychology class met for the last time this evening. We took our test (after waiting for our classroom) and then we left. Before that we handed in delivered our article reviews to Dr. Noland. The assignment was a complete nightmare to do because of the unclarity of the way it was presented. Everything was so vauge, so sketchy, so unlike the typical assignment in a course. This assignment was given at the very first class meeting and only took a few hours to complete total, but with all of the procrastination and other stuff involved it seemed much longer. Many of us waited until about 3 weeks ago to get started on things, but I think we all worked pretty hard on the papers. Less than 24 hours before the reviews were due the following message was posted to the WebCT forum in response to a final post inquiring as to the format of the documents being turned in:
“don’t stress too much about the reviews. the important thing is that you did them and maybe you learned something from the process (even if that was just how to look up journal articles). i’m going to grade the reviews like the exams and curve them if need be. so, good going! after the alcohol and socializing, this is what college is about (grin)!”
So I guess we have nothing to fear and the good news recieved tonight is that we get an automatic 6 out of the 10 points this evening for just completing them and turning them in. Only 4 more points have to be earned from valid shit in the papers themselves, although, since I did the extra credit ones and I get six points each for them too… I have an automatic 30 points out of 30 required…so anything else is just icing on the cake and extra points to keep my A afloat (assuming this last test and my final exam go as well as I expect). From my own personal calculations prior to turning in tonight’s test I can safely say that I got 38 out of the 50 points on the test, and those are just the safe points. It is very possbile that my score is higher and that Dr. Noland will give us a curve also. I am not too worried about Abnormal Psychology, it was a fun course, I learned a lot and I usually do fairly well on the tests. As long as things go well on the final exam I expect to come out of the course with an A. Sometimes I think the levels of these courses need to be evaluated, a 3000 level psychology course is about 10 times easier than a 2000 level liberal studies course. As my first semester at UNCC comes to a close I am more undecided as ever about what I want to do with my life, but at least now I know that I seek knowledge and have a life goal of being able to understand concept principles.

Quote of the Day: “Don’t worry Curtis, I recycle” – Dr. Keith Noland

Last week was my final normal week for this semester. Next week is a partial week (2 days) and the week following ends early, then we enter the 10 days of exams.
The past few weeks have been mostly calm and the days have just sort of floated by. An assignment here, a test there. No many things to create excitement. My life is just going so fast, I can hardly keep up.

I don’t know if I could get any sicker of scaled grading at the moment! I am attempting to make GITI calculate my final course grade for all of my classes based on the many scaled grading systems in use. This should have been a non-issue and very simple to accomplish. Only one problem, the theory behind each instructor’s scaled grading on the syllibis assumes that all grades for the entire semester are already availible. At the current time I am using my physics grade as a sample to compare to. WebAssign (the utility for the course) calculates my grade to be 97.003%, whereas GITI in its current capacity (holistic, all scaling = 1) gives me a 99.029 and a sample spreadsheet I used to test the math of the situation and simulate the grading system came up with 99.33 or 98.62, depending upon the treatment of the tests as all being 30%, or as each being worth 10%. GITI in the end would use the 30% for all method most likely, unless I decide to assign percentage values per-assignment (wouldn’t that be a bitch?). I have always sucked with math and as such it is difficult for me to make GITI do what I want with my grade information. I will apply my theories to GITI throughout the semester and if everything comes out right with the final grades being the same based on the sample spreadsheets then I will finalize the code in GITI and let it help me keep up with scoring. I am not overly anal about scoring, it is ok if GITI is off by a percentage point or two, as long as it is roughly correct. Different instructors keep track of grades different ways, and I can only realisticly do it one way in GITI (while retaining my sanity). What really scares me is that I am going to have to implement some javascript into GITI if I want my assignment manager to be as clean and user friendly as I envision it to be. Selecting a course has to reset the Assignment Type field to show what types are valid for that particular course.
I have class in a few minutes and should probably be thinking about that instead of thinking about GITI, but I guess I have to think about something in my spare time.