I'm pulling a 180 and going off the asian chick discussion and coming back the the college secratery comment.

Don't feel bad aika, I'm currently studying to teach chemistry (in the states) and my last year of college has confirmed that i will go made if i don't get on the track for a job in the next 2 years, i will go mad. In fact this last semester was brutal, really really brutal, my most time consuming semester yet, which is why i was apsent for so long.

Now, i have notice something about higher education:

As intelligence increases, common sense tends to decrease . . . like a lot. Now i'm not saying that people at my college are morons, but they do seem to have difficulty with simple tasks of everyday life like informing the students what COULD go wrong in experiment that takes a 4 weeks to get done, that way it saves time and heartache. And i don't know, cleaning the freaking waste bottle up after a MONTH's worth of labs.

But i get what you are saying, for the secretaries at my college, really piss me the fuck off. That's right, i'm resorting to cussing.

First off, i was looking in to get into the graduate school for chemistry to get at least a masters in chemistry. First i keep in tough with the graduate secratery, asking simple things like what do i have to do to get in, applications and deadlines for the application. In short, i emailed her a couple of times (keep in mind, more often then the undergrad secretery).

So it comes time for me to just try and see if i can get in and i send her an email asking if my online application went through (i even give her my student number to make things easier). I get an email back saying "i'm sorry, who are you. I cannot find you with your email and student number alone."

READER:
ME:

This was about two weeks since i last emailed her and she had no problem figuring out who i was then. Plus, i'm using the email the college gave me. Then i get an email from the undergrad secretery (something about glassware breakage) and i send her an email asking her it's all about)

She emails me back knowing who i am (without my student number) and i emailed her less times then the graduate secretery.

I mean the student number for god sakes, it's the same school too, just in case you were curious. Then after a month i get an email from the graduate secretery saying i didn't get in the graduate program (which included my name mind you).

So i decided that i should get some straight answers from the adviser of the graduate program. So i email the secretary again, (with everything including my name in full) and asked her to schedule me in for a meeting with the graduate adviser.

This is what i got in return: "I'm sorry, but i do not keep the graduate adviser's schedule."

READER:
ME:

The message continued saying "I can schedule you for a meeting with me and maybe i can help you"

Yah . . . just like how GLaDOS from portal tried to help me. It was at this point i knew there would be no cheese at the end of this e-maze and decided to check into getting my teaching out of the way then try my luck for grad school later.

Oh and i had more incounters with secreteries this time . . . in a class she was teaching. And yes it was every bit as painful as you could imagine. I'd continue but i don't know what the limit of text a post can handle for i could write a novel. But i wont . . .

Although i am glad none of the secreteries tried to screw me out of money, that would be the straw that broke the camels back . . . or sanity may be more like it.

GPFontaine wrote:

Reaper, It just so happens that I work IT support for Biology & Chemistry departments at a university. Here is what I can tell you. You are a tool. Not in the sense that I am making fun of you. But you are simply an object that the professor needs in order to make their research work. The secretary gets treated like shit by the professor because tenure makes people into assholes. So the secretary really only has one place to vent that frustration back. That would be at you. Here is the good news. When you graduate with a Masters in Chemistry, your professor will write a kick ass letter of reference for you and you will get a job that pays well. Oh, it isn't because the professor likes you. It is because they are actually writing about themselves. If you look bad as their student, they look bad. That is not happening for them. I should also note, that if you decide you want to be a professor, you will ultimately be an asshole too. I'm like 87.5% confident that in my tired state, I am absolutely mostly sure that this is all perfectly sensibly right.

Never really thought about it like that. To be honest though i hate people who are passive aggressive. If the secreteries really do stupid shit to vent their anger on students maybe they should invest time in counseling or kick boxing or hire Jack Nicholson as an Anger Manager. And i did consider getting a PhD but i'm not THAT into chemistry to go so far as to become an asshole. Plus my stamina is fading too. And it is obvious that the professors care more for their research than actually teaching. Besides I focused more on how they could have made their lesson plans better (or even, ZOMG have a lesson plan) so i'll just stick to teaching chemistry at a high school or community college.

aika wrote:

Wow yes, I know your pain with scheduling. o.o Even better when the advisors don't know anything about the classes they're signing you up for. During my first year of college: Me: So what's this Food Science class? Advisor Lady: Oh, it's like a nutrition class. You learn about proper eating and health. Me: Oh, sounds useful. Turns out it really WAS a science class, where we had to study how the body breaks down food and the chemical reactions and stuff. I suck at science so I did badly with that, not to mention we had test questions like "How many maggot eggs can be found in two ounces of ketchup?" I just stopped going to that class after that and I failed it. Surprise. o.o I really should take it again to raise my GPA and get rid of the F but dude, with stuff like that, ignorance really is bliss.

"How many maggot eggs can be found in two ounces of ketchup?" you see it's retarded questions like that that make college more of a pain in the ass then it really should be. I know and you know for a fact that if you ask the professor those same retarded questions, they would be just as lost because their research has eaten their brain. They mindlessly make these test without any regard to the whether it's relevant and they certainly are not going to bather to explain how it is.

I never got an F because i know when to bail when the ship is sinking. I took a Physical chemistry 1 class (which is like physics and chemistry had a bastard love child) and managed to pass . . . barely. The professor was okay, he gave us homeworks to do but the test felt unorganized and he seemed to get high off of doing nothing but calculus during lecture, which really wasn't relevant to the test.

The P-Chem 2 class i took this passed semester i unfortunately had to drop it. The professor's lectures were absolute garbage, the powerpoints and tests didn't even go hand in hand. His powerpoints were dumbed down for us but they were way too simple and the tests were just mind crushing.

I went to his office hours one time to ask about the homework i worked on during spring break, he confessed two things to me that sealed the deal that i should bail:

1) I asked him if my way going about 4 of the questions (out of 7) was good enough. He spent five minutes looking at these questions and said to me: "Oh I'm not going over this stuff and it won't be on the test" So basically he confessed to me that more then half of the homework HE assigned us was pointless.

2) We're using the same book as P-chem 1 and I ask my professor why his notation for a diagram is different in the book and his notes. He then looks at me and say "I don't like the book, i don't use it much and i'm only using it because p-chem 1 is using it" So bascilly he confessed that the book was worthless too. Oh but i thank him for saving me a buck.

I asked around how a guy like him could have gotten tenure and the universal answer was "he did a lot of research and got a lot of grant money."

P-chem is bad enough but when you have a professor leaving you in the dark, it's close to impossible. Oh people did get good grades in the class but these were the super smart kids who had to study p-chem day and night.

And the icing on the shit cake, my chemistry adviser (sore about me droping the class) says in order for me to get my bachelors, i had to either complete both p-chem 1 and 2 OR take the 'easier' life sciences p-chem. So basiclly, my adviser just confessed to me that p-chem 1 was meaningless. I hate p-chem, i'm taking the 'easier' p-chem class next semester and hopefully be done with p-chem. The silver lining in this is when Igo for a masters I only need to take a few graduate classes and i can avoid p-chem altogether.

I have more shit to say about college because I've had it build up for months now. but i'll stop for now, i need to catch my breath. Next time, Reeper rants about MF Physics!!!!!!