...and then things got ugly

First day back - not so bad, I suppose. Although, I did find out that I have to present next Wednesday at a Region 10 meeting - yikes. The most interesting part of the day was the start of Peds lecture. We're going to have to re-take trainwreck midterm (TWMT). Yep, after ALL THAT, the professor couldn't figure out a way to fairly score it. She was planning on doing it exactly the same way with all the "kinks worked out", but our class would never stand for that. Some people complained that the computers were too slow, might crash, etc. So she suggested we take it on paper, and then we can go back and answer previous questions - you know, like a normal test. Then the debate started - "It's going to take longer for me to fill out a scan tron!" (WHAT?) "It's supposed to be open book and open internet! I won't have the internet then!" (First: I didn't realize anyone actually used the internet during TWMT Second: If you used the internet to look up answers, you probably have already looked most of them up anyway b/c the questions are going to be the exact same Third: IT DOESN'T MATTER!!) And then Aaron points out that, "If we take it on computer and it does mess up again, can we just stop? I really didn't feel like answering that many questions." To which teacher sarcastically replies: "Oh, I'm so sorry that I inconvenienced you. I just didn't know the program well enough beforehand." (quite an understatement). After a lot of debate and discussion, we voted to take the midterm on paper but with a computer in front of us in case we want to use the internet. A few people still grumbled about this, so she asked (in all seriousness) if we wanted to just take it like a regular exam - no books, no internet, no time limit, score is based on # right compared to # of questions. HELL-to-the- NO!!! Then we would actually have to study! So everyone backed down at that point and accepted these new paper terms. THEN someone jumps in, and says, "Can you please explain why we're having to retake this? It wasn't very clear in your email. A lot of us spent a lot of time preparing for this midterm (probably true, but not for me) and it even affected some of our other midterms (I know this to be true on one of mine). Why can't you just use the scores that we had?" And she runs through her explaination of how she can't fairly score it. THIS IS TRUE - I cannot think of any possible way with things the way they ended up that it would be fair to anyone. I'm actually OK with retaking this thing - I think I'll do really well b/c I've had all these questions before, I've gotten to look some of them up, and again - wrong answers don't count against you! However, I did tell her I didn't want to take it in that room again - I didn't think it was a good testing environment at all and I asked if I could forefit my use of computer to take it in another room - "I can only be in one place at one time." Blar - fine. How am I going to cheat, though? It's open book and open note! Ok - it's going ok, but she's definitely starting to get irritated. She reminds us that we have an "advantage" now b/c we've seen the questions before and we can discuss them with our peers. So I ask what I thought was a relatively harmless question (well statement/question) - "Some of the questions I looked up I couldn't find the answer to or it depended on the situation(gave example of a question)." Her response: "You might not be able to find the answer, but you know it." Huh? Why would I have asked if I knew it? So I said, "I don't think I do - I asked around and nobody seemed to know!" Response: "You all know it." Are you listening to me?? Bad move on my part: getting irritated. So I looked around the room and said loudly, "Ok, fine, Does anyone know the answer because I don't???" and simultaneously I hear Luke say from behind me "Stop it!!!" and teacher give a huff and say "we're not going to do this." So I dropped it - but my point was - would it really have been such a big deal for her to explain how we knew the answer? Couldn't she just have even guided us (you know, like teachers are supposed to do) so we could reach a logical answer? Worse case - everyone learns it (GASP) and gets a practically free right answer on the TWMT. Whatever - I shouldn't have done that, but I was pretty miffed at her lack of...being a teacher. Then we dropped all of this and went on to the lecture. That was not so interesting, but it evaporated some of the tension.
I had planned on studying like crazy for kinese, but things went a little askew when my sister dropped by. We chatted for a while (I also practiced ROM on her!) and I'll just say I'm really proud of her.

Proverbs 3:5-6