Category: UNCC

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.

For the second time in two weeks Dr. Presler is not availible to teach her class. Today there was an exam scheduled, and most students arrived fairly early for the exam. A few minutes ago we were all informed by the department secretary that the exam has been moved to Wednesday and Dr. Presler isnt on campus.
This means I am now again stuck with just being with myself to do a lot or not much at all depending upon my mood. I was so impressed with myself earlier for getting on campus so early and being able to go to the exam without rushing. It would be nice if Dr. Presler would like send an email or something before she is absent, so I can get an additional hour of sleep. I exited McEniry a while ago to the sound of the Belk Tower singing the alma mater. It is not unusual for me to enter the building under that same sound at the same time of day.
At the moment I am having mixed feelings, I am glad I am not sitting through a boring lecture that Dr. Presler might give, but at the same time I was looking forward to the Logic exam. I am ready for the exam and I wanted to take it today. Oh well, I can’t always get my way can I?
UPDATE: Dr. Presler was spotted on campus at 2:50PM, aparently healthy and able to be on campus.

ALERT THE MEDIA!
I will be volentarily going for advising in the next week or two. I am a little nervous about it, but I realize that I must do it because of various things that have come up. I considered going to the advisor and just getting the needed signature for my CAEC registration, but now that I have exchanged a few emails with my advisor I am feeling a little more comfortable. I will be discussing the actual CAEC registration as well as other topics with the advisor. One of the primary things I will be discussing is the proccess for selecting a minor. I am pretty sure of my major already (Management Information Systems), but am still having difficulty finding the perfect secondary area of interest for myself. I have decided that I will also be going over my planned Spring schedule with my advisor, just to double check my intentions.
One sad thing about UNCC that I have discovered, because of the way the bussiness department is structures I will change advisors once my major has been officially declared. At the present rate I should be declaring my major at the end of Fall 2005 semester. I could declare it before then if I were to take Summer courses, but I have decided based on advice from friends that I will not be doing that again next year. This summer the courses were probably beneficial because they kept me focused on something semi-academic most of the time, so I didn’t go totally nuts upon entering UNCC.
I don’t know why I avoid advisors so much, they aren’t such bad people. I used to not have any problems at all with Alice Williams at Gaston College, I actually looked forward to seeing her. With her I guess it was based on the fact that she was always willing to help me make my educational dream become a reality, she wasn’t focused on pushing me through “her” insituation as fast as possible. When I meet Kristine D. Hopkins for the first time I will probably make my first judgements about her then. I am not capable of being forceful in situations like that, so I will have to leave small hints that I am not just some clueless Freshman (or 1st year Sophomore) seeking a clue.
I will post information about my meeting with my advisor at the end of the advising session.

My four day weekend has begun!

My first week of test results are in and they look pretty good. Logic is a 90.625, Abnormal Psychology is 90, and Intro to Physics is 101.
I was really suprised by all of the scores. I felt that Deductive Logic should have been a higher score. I prepared for the test and I understand the material, but I guess I got careless when I was taking the test and missed a few things or didn’t think something out fully enough. Abnormal Psychology I wasn’t expecting to do so well in because I didn’t really study, I missed a night of class and I don’t really ever take decent notes. With Physics I was almost certain I had screwed up 2 of the 10 problems. I guess I was wrong. I understand Physics pretty well, but it is very math based and I never do that well with any form of math.
I am still waiting for scores for my English 1102 paper and my Western History and Culture test. I think I did well on the paper, but I am pretty sure I didn’t do well on the Western History and Culture test. I will post my devistation when those scores are availible.