I got a bit swamped studying and doing homework last week – so I missed my opportunity to post this stutter-starting, somewhat regular, almost weekly rant. 

You may have noticed that I have been keeping up my “Grades” page for this semester.  The idea of that page is simply to make me somewhat “accountable” in that I had better not slack since I am making my marks public.  I am not really happy with where I appear to be:  I don’t need 100’s in every course, but I would like to end the semester with an A+ average.  My Aboriginal Studies (ABST) and Writing and Reasoning (WRIT) are screwing that up.  I can’t get out of WRIT, and ABST is a lot of writing – and research.  I just ran out of time to get an A in ABST – I hope I do better in the next few tests (written assignments that you get a week to complete) and the final essay (which I have eight weeks to write).  My WRIT course – I stopped by at the Language and Liberal Arts office yesterday and asked if I could write an exemption test.  There stance, however, is that it was my responsibility to have perused the entire Fanshawe website and researched exemption from WRIT on my own, prior to September.  Anyone who actually wrote the test, so I am finding out through asking, was made aware of it by a package sent out to them letting them know that they could come in, write the test, and be assessed as Exempt, “Section A” (for lack of a better, official term) or “Section B”.  I am sure that the fact that around half of the people in my program (about 45 of the 90 who are still here) are in WRIT because they had no idea about the test, and of the other half who wrote – more than half of them are exempt.  I am also quite aware that the last-minute addition of 3 sections of WRIT due to L&LS’s “momentary lapse of reason” when it came to implementing the course itself is no reason to assume that they may have simply FORGOT TO SEND OUT INFORMATION TO THE PEOPLE THAT THEY DIDN’T KNOW WERE COMING.  The end result, of course, is that I cannot be excused from the WRIT course.  It not only is now manditory for me and carries a grade, but also is now part of my GPA, unlike the Pass/Fail that those exempted (with a “P” of course) were given.

If in reading my blog you agree that I should be in a WRIT course, consider that I do not write theses, for the most part, on my WP; I also already know how to use commas, conjunctions, and with some practice, I can identify verbs and nouns.  Yes, this is what I spend three hours every Thursday night, from five-thirty until eight-thirty, doing.  Well, that and we are also required to write a thesis every Thursday, in the last 50 minutes of the class.  We are given a “Prompt” (often a ridiculous near-thesis that does NOT follow the rules we are given) and we must read it, identify the author’s thesis statement.  Then, we must have a concise thesis of our own, with three points which either agree or disagree with that prompt.  The thesis, three body paragraphs and a summary all have to be done, properly, in 50 minutes (with reading the original prompt included) and must be hand written.  My writing is atrocious.  I lose marks for that every week.  I actually lost marks on my 17/24 thesis because I could not provide “proof” of my thesis’ points.  WTF?  We are writing a TEST.  No INTERNET or REFERENCE material.  Even in class she spoke of only making statements that can be proven … and yet that is not possible in the setting we find ourselves.  The topics have been widely ranged – and not often anything I can give an expert opinion in.

But, enough about that horrible, GPA-slaughtering course.

I can’t believe I got five questions wrong on my Digital test.  20/25???  That is an EIGHTY.  That is just not acceptible. 

Well, I am sitting in my lecture hall, it is almost time for class to start, and I had better close this now.  It is the Friday of week 5.

Wow – I can’t even get my LEISURE done on time, LOL.