Wmcmanus

As a White Sox fan growing up, about the only thing I ever liked about the Cubs was that they always sucked. Of course, the same could be said about the Sox, but at least they eventually won a World Series. Getting back to Al's topic, I don't like what money has done to professional sports, but that's now the way of life. What really sucks is that it has crept into the collegiate sports (especially men's football and basketball) as well, although thankfully, it's less painfully obvious at that level.

That's always been my style. If your class is fun and you joke around a little and allow students to do the same, it relieves a lot of pressure. Of course, there is a balance that you have to draw somewhere.

That pretty much sums up the main point I was trying to make, but because I teach at a small college with class sizes of 5 to 15, I'm now forcing them to be in class, whereas I would have never even considered such a thing when I was teaching 420 students at U of Kansas way back when. We actually needed at least 8% not to show up in order for everyone to have a seat.

Ya, I feel the same way, Al.

Not sure if you're agreeing with this or not, but that is definitely my position. Yet, in a job market that is extremely hungry for fresh "locally qualified" warm bodies, as is the case here in Cayman where 80% of all professionals are imported and Government puts extreme pressures on firms to hire locals, all that really matters is that they graduate. Therein lies the conflict. What matters to me is that they learn something, somehow, not even that I teach them anything. They can teach themselves or learn from each other. Doesn't really matter. But my goal is to put out as many competent people who have a fighting chance of passing the CPA exam as possible, not just to push warm bodies out the door who will fail miserably within the first 2 years on the job in public accounting, and then get hired by an equally hungry bank or captive insurance company, only to repeat the process as nauseum throughout their quote-unquote "professional" careers. What matters to them is the piece of paper. Once they have it, they're golden, so they're not necessarily motivated to do anything more than they have to do to achieve that singular task. Mediocrity becomes the goal, and teaching into a sea of such faces is not the most terribly exciting thing you can do for a living. Many of them (accounting graduates) know that they'll never pass the CPA exam, and thus won't rise within the profession, but don't care. They just need to graduate, then suck on the teets of a big 4 accounting firm for 2-3 years as they "try" to pass the CPA exam (not really, but it's a free trip to Atlanta for the review course every 6 months). After that, they just bounce from job to job for 40 years, always under-qualified for whatever their current level of responsibility happens to be. But they're paid well from Day 1, and don't mind being incompetent in a system that allows them to survive at any given job for 2-3 years before they can fool the next employer, equally anxious to please Government, meet quotas, etc. That's my point as well. I'd like for there to be a better correlation, so I've finally resorted to dealing with the reality of the cards that I've been dealt in terms of how the system works here. Changing the reward structure in a dramatic way (in terms of the point allocations for my undergraduate courses) has had an extremely positive effect; a far greater percentage of students are by far more competent when they graduate than was the case in prior years. They're no longer just sliding by; they're now actually working at it and realizing much of their potential.

Depends on who you're working with. Caribbean people are extremely laid back. It's a totally different culture here, and education has never been highly valued, other than for the extra dollars it can bring in the job market to have a "piece of paper". In North America and Europe, and I'm sure elsewhere as well, there are much stronger competitive forces at play. I agree, that in those environments, where it's sink or swim, only the strong survive (and such), placing more emphasis on the final exam (and maybe midterm) does the trick. Try that here and 80% of them would flunk. In fact, most of them wouldn't show up to the final because they would rather not take it than face the embarrassment of taking it and flunking it. It would be more "cool" to just not show up. Totally different mentality in a country where anyone who is from here is more or less guaranteed a good job as a birth right. Mind you, 50% of the total labor force is expatriate, and it's more like 80% of all professionals. What that means is that we can graduate people who don't know crap and they'll still get good jobs because the local firms are legally bound to hire "qualified" Caymanians (which is kind of an oxymoron). The reason there are so many expats is that there is a huge shortage of locally qualified people. Thus, any fool with a piece of paper is golden, and they know it. All of this creates a bit of a silver spoon effect, since they know that all they have to do is pass courses and graduate, and don't necessarily have to prove anything to anyone. Of course, it eventually catches up with them and only the best will ultimately rise within their professions, pass external exams, make partner, etc. But to someone who is 21 and likes to party and can make $5k to $6k per month tax free, live at home with mom, and drive a BMW, what's the incentive to want to excel? There is always time for that later on in life. My mission is to get them to wake up now and realize their potential such that they can get a jump start that will take them a bit further, or at least to the next step. In other words, not just to get a job, but to be able to pass the CPA exam, or to get into law school (I'm teaching mostly accounting and business law to undergrads). To accomplish that, they need to be in class. Most of them simply couldn't do it on their own. It's not a bunch of touchy feely stuff where there are no right answers, so there ins't a whole lot of "class participation" as such. They do a ton of work outside of class, and in class they figure out where they went wrong (or right) and get valuable reinforcement. Proof is in the pudding in terms of their exam performance, and that's way better than I've ever experienced in my 13 years teaching in Cayman. The 50% allocated to attendance and participation is a ruse anyway because it's not the first 50% that earns someone a grade anyway. It's your ability not to lose more than 10% that gets you an A, or not to lose more than 20% that gets you a B. The exams are structured in such a way that it's almost impossible to finish them on time unless a student knows the material inside and out. So the same people that would have earned A's and B's under my old system are still earnings A's and B's. No real change there. (We do have a fair number of excellent students who could compete anywhere.) But the slacker-minded majority can no longer slack. They're not being rewarded just for showing up, but for showing up well prepared and having done all of the required work. In the process, they teach themselves something, and are likewise actually "ready" to learn when they're in class (as opposed to being lost, as before). They don't view the 50% as being "free" points, because they've got piles of work to do for every class. Do I have them do work just for the sake of doing work? Nope, not at all. Without doing the work as the class progresses, they're almost sure to fail the midterm and final (as was the case for many years when they were left to self regulate by virtue of the slack attendance and participation policy). BTW, for my MBA classes, attendance and participation is 0%. I've taken just the opposite approach there. I don't want to hear people babble about their jobs and how the class is "relevant" or whatever. For MBA students, it's project work (50%), a take-home midterm (20%) and an in-class final (30%). They're mature enough (pretty much all of them) to respond well to this type of structure, and they're in class whether they need to be or not anyway because they enjoy the interaction. Ok, back to the regularly scheduled topic.

Oh, on the class skipping thing, I'm with Sherwood on that one. Make your education count, man. Take it seriously and do as well as you can. These days, every edge you can get is bound to help you out at one point or another. Besides, class skippers really piss me off. About two years ago, I finally convinced my Dean that I should be able to do anything I want to do with the point allocations for courses I teach. So now, class attendance and participation is -- get this -- 50% of their grade! Used to be 10%, which didn't have any impact whatsoever. People skipped when they wanted to skip. I haven't had one student miss more than one class during the past two years. If they miss more than 3 classes there is no way they can earn an A. It's mathematically impossible. But the reality is, once they make a real commitment to learning, they do well anyway, and just "being there" really is half of the equation. If someone knows they will have to miss a class and, 1) notifies me about it in advance, 2) submits the assigned work via email on time, then I'll let it slide -- but only once. Any unexcused absences are penalized. Same goes when someone shows up to class but hasn't done the work, they're marked absent even though they are bodily present. Totally objective. If they can't show me they've done the work, they might as well not show up. Friggin' works like a charm. I've never enjoyed teaching more than I do now, knowing that ALL of my students will show up to EVERY class and will ALWAYS be prepared. It took me more than 20 years of experimentation to finally realize that you have to force a fair percentage of students to take responsibility for their own actions, or they simply won't do it on their own accord. Those who would have consistently shown up to class well prepared are now being rewarded for what they would have done anyway; those who would otherwise be slackers have nowhere to hide and now get A's and B's instead of C's and D's in my classes. Some of them grumbled at first, but fuck 'em. I'm not there to make friends. I'm there to help dipshits have a chance of becoming CPAs and lawyers.

Anyone with class wouldn't be associated with us to begin with!

I hear you there. Except usually its $15 for the first bag, $25 for the second, $40 or $50 or $11ty billion for the third, because each additional bag you check in increases the probability that a luggage handling thug will throw his back out, and somebody needs to pay for that! Then they act all surprised that the overhead bins are overflowing. The US airline industry is getting almost as bad as the US auto industry in their approach to 'innovation' and 'customer service'. I knew we were heading down this path several years ago when American first started to "offer" their "Bistro service" which meant that you had to grab a plastic sandwich in a box as you boarded the flight. Apparently, because it would have been too much effort for 3 flight attendants to hand passengers a sandwich at some point during a 4 hour flight. I think I've been flying too much again. Need to cut back and stay put more often. It gets frustrating when you think about how much you spend these days on airfare and how little you get in way of service in return.

Bring scotch.

Du hast mich.

I'll pitch in the last $2 if that's what you're worried about, unless you're thinking about catching the laser meet, in which case I really don't know what to say! (Although the laser meet pics are way cooler than any headphone meet pics I've ever seen.)

Happy birthday! Today, you can have a beef burger and fries!

Thanks, guys.

Seriously, goats would do it. My next door neighbor is from Trinidad, and that's exactly what he suggested with a "You know what we do back home..." lead in. The good thing about it is that nobody would ever even think about robbing this place when the yard is a mess like that.

Isn't that the same link I just posted?

I don't know if he's a member here, or whether anyone else has shared this, but I really like the "New Posts" search he's created that is designed to search just for gear that is for sale. It pulls in all Buy/Sell/Trade subforums. Thought it might be useful for others as well. Thread: How to exclude forums from "New Posts" - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio Link referred to above: Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio ^ This is the link toward the bottom of his opening post. As he mentions, it would need to be updated periodically to exclude any new non-FS forums that may be added from time to time. I've added it to my bookmark bar and it works quite well to give you the same kind of snapshot you get at Audiogon with New Today.

I haven't cut my grass since I visited Cayman in mid August. It's getting kind of high now, but I didn't remember to disconnect the battery of my riding lawn mower while I was away this summer, so I'll be needing a new battery. Been thinking maybe I ought to call the guy who cuts the grass for me in cases like this, which tend to happen about once per year. He's got a crew of 6 guys who can knock it out in an hour for about $120 and a pizza or two. But it just won't ever stop raining for long enough to allow a 2 feet high field of weeds and bush (err, grass) to dry out enough to be cut. There is one patch with some wild weeds that are now well over my head, probably pushing 8 feet high. Thankfully, my neighbors have a sense of humor and know that I mean well. That, and Santa brings candy for their kids at Christmas time.

Nah, I'l just use my cell phone.

I think it's more of a matter of being carful when traveling with it to make sure it doesn't get shoved in a bag underneath something else. Can't really take much weight. Don't let someone accidentally sit on it in your car, don't drop it, etc., because the case of the Kindle itself is affixed to those tabs which in turn creates a leverage effect . Odd design; those metal tabs all but guarantee that the first thing to absorb the shock is the thing that the case was supposedly designed to protect. But no big deal so long as you're aware of the possibility. Even knowing this, I was set to buy one myself until I stumbled upon the other one.

That's true. I've been reading that a lot. I might mothball it for a while and not get it registered until this Spring, and then do the motorcycle safety course and ride something else for a couple of months.

I'm hoping to be really slow, at least at first! No final deal yet, but soon, on a lightly used '08 S4RS Tricolore monster. At 130hp, it will be approximately 110hp more than my Vespa here in Cayman, so I'll really need to take it slow at first. All in self discipline, maturity, respect for the machine, and an understanding of one's own limitations in terms of knowledge and skill. I know, it's been nice knowing all of you as well...

Be careful with that one, because it can easily cause your Kindle's plastic case/housing to crack. There are several folks who have had this problem and apparently you don't need to put too terribly much pressure on it for the Kindle to crack. Then it becomes an issue of whether Amazon will stand behind their product or blame it on a "user error" and that seems to be a random function of who you get on the other end of the customer service call and how polished your Dale Carnegie skills are.

Ya, that's pretty much what I realized after converting my loose thoughts on the matter into a long, useless post. So I then immediately start clicking my way through the checkout process and promised to never doubt myself again in terms of being committed to black gadget holders. Black iPod with black case, black sleeve for my laptop, black case for my cell phone, black CD carrying cases, black camera and camcorder bags, etc., etc. So why not a black eReader cover?

Hey, I haven't paid my credit card bill yet either! Now how's that for living on the edge! BTW, Ken, I'm closing in on my Ducati purchase. No "Goosey Mo-Fo" for this guy.