on...topic: laws of graduate school
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
German's fourth law of graduate school
If you are the first to finish a test, with 20 minutes remaining, you have either done very well...or very poorly.
I hope that my test today qualifies as the former.
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
mid-October notes
- I am in the process of learning how to solve a Rubik's cube. I'm now pretty close to being able to solve it no matter what position it starts in.
- If you didn't think I was a geek before, that last statement should have cemented my status in your eyes.
- While I certainly don't condone the blog entry of Gregg Easterbrook (or as some reading this entry might know him better, TMQ), I'm not completely sure that I agree with ESPN's reaction, even if his comments were directed at the head man at Disney. Wouldn't an apology and an on-site rewording have been sufficient? Now, all loyal Page 2 readers lose what's most likely either their favorite or second-favorite (behind the Sports Guy) columnist in all of Page 2, and I'd be willing to bet that at least half will have no idea why.
- I think that I picked a pretty good game to go to Tuscaloosa to see Alabama play, given the current circumstances. And it was definitely good to get to see a lot of old faces.
- German's Third Law of Graduate School: everyone else's research always sounds much cooler than your own. Think I'm joking? Others agree...
- If I had to pick the thing I like the least about being a teacher, I'd have to say it's recording grades and regrading what seems to be all the time. Sometimes it feels like I'll never completely catch up.
- Sometimes it's hard to look myself in the mirror and realize that I'm over a quarter of a century old. I just got a cold shiver thinking about it.
- I'm in last place in my fantasy football league. I haven't had a quarterback break 30 points in a game yet; I'm the only team that's had this unfortunate turn of events happen to them. And yet, I still plug away, looking for someone on the waiver wire that will turn my season around (right). It's fun, in a beating-yourself-up kind of way.
- I will be going to bed in 10 minutes. It's the earliest I will have been to bed in about a month.
Tuesday, October 29, 2002
German's second law of graduate school
Graduate class tests are designed so that the takers of said tests will not forget that they don't know everything yet. Not by a long shot.
Corollary: the best thing that you can say about a graduate class test immediately after taking it is that it's over.
Thursday, September 5, 2002
German's first law of graduate school
I'm convinced that 90% of questions asked in a graduate class are primarily an attempt of the inquirer to prove his or her high intellectual capabilities to the rest of the class.