Yea exactly. Wasn’t the original rule “don’t be a jerk”?
This is not exactly the first time he has reared his head.
I know. He’s taken shots at me, and I’ve hit right back. It’s fun. IMO, if you don’t like it, don’t post in the Pit or just ignore him.
On topic…
I’m teaching a couple-hours math refresher course (“Math Boot Camp”) for incoming economics masters students. I set it up this week, the week before classes start, so that the students could show up and get some information about the introductory econometrics course in time to decide if they want to take a waiver exam.
The waiver exam is so simple anyone who’s ever taken stats should pass it. No one should be admitted to a graduate-level economics program without having HEARD of the t-distribution or being able to grasp the concept of marginal probability distribution. There’s no fee for the waiver exam, the only cost is three hours of your time, and if you fail it the only consequence is that you have to take Econometrics I. WHY isn’t everyone taking this exam?
Especially the smarmy shit who sits in the front row and laughs at the fact that I’m teaching simple material when people still furrow their brows and claim ignorance of it?
Bonus: I’m a second-year masters student. I don’t know why everyone thinks that translates to “Knows everything about everything,” but I do not, in fact, have syllabi for every class, nor do I know before I attend the classes I’m taking what the grading policies for them are. Further, if you’re so damn smart, why didn’t you hear me when I told everyone at orientation explicitly that this is a volunteer gig, that there’s no course credit offered for a few hours of going over simple stats, and that as a volunteer non-credit offering there’s no fee for this? Why am I still getting questions about this when it was fairly clear at orientation that we were meeting Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and that was it?
No, I don’t know when whoever took the book out of the library will return it. No, you can’t photocopy my whole book. No, I won’t teach you linear algebra.
Ugh. You’re grad students. Figure it out yourself.
This to all the complainers about just about everybody. This is the Pit. If you aren’t ready to play with people who are nasty and vicious, stick to MPSIMS.
Love you, Kimmy. 
Am I the only one who starts to imagine the characters from Full House arguing the points in the thread every time Kimmy sparks a debate?
Yes? Okay…
QFT, as well as Shot From Guns’ post. Not sure what Tao’s wussiness is all about.
As a general principle, i completely agree. I play with the nastiest of them.
Thing is, when all someone does is post crap for no purpose other than to get a rise out of people, it’s not even interesting or fun. I’m happy to mix it up with someone who really disagrees with me, and who is willing to put some effort in. But Kimmy’s posts in this thread all strike me as the product of some tard sitting at home thinking “What can i say, in the fewest possible words, that will annoy people?” He seems to be in this thread just to troll, not to participate in the true spirit of the Pit.
I’m fine with that. As i said earlier, i’m just not going to bother engaging with him anymore, because it’s not worth the effort.
OK, my head just asploded. 
Don’t worry, you’re not.
mhendo hit the nail on the head. silenus you’re a moron if you agree with any of that.
Huh? I was just marveling at being QFT’ed by someone I respect and someone I don’t. A little cognitive dissonance, as it were.
I was talking about considering Kimmy’s posts in here anything more then trolling.
Such things that anyone who works second shift is lazy, Europeans, teachers, and students don’t work hard.
One wonders who that poster doesn’t consider lazy?
Of course he’s trolling. That much is obvious. But I find him entertaining, unlike several other under-bridge denizens I could name. Reporting a post that is trollish in the Pit is absurd.
From my perspective, the arguments are **so **absurd and the trolling is **so **obvious that it’s funny. As opposed to somebody like curlcoat, who I just want to garrote with her own intestines to do the world a favor.
This week has been mostly all right. I’m an adjunct at the CC, and I have two writing courses. They’re usually capped at 25, but the head of the department raised the cap to 27, and of course, there were a whole bunch of people trying to get into the course. I think by the end of next week, I’ll probably have 30 in each course, which makes me a little sick to think about. On the other hand, they all seem like they’re taking this stuff seriously. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes.
I also work for Utah State as a TA in one of their distance learning centers. We are slammed with students already, but what really pisses me off is that we basically work for just above minimum wage, and we’re supposed to get a small raise every semester (like 25 cents or something). Well, there’s no money in the budget for that! And yet, we have brand new computers in every room, brand new programs, brand new security system, a new computer guy, and a bunch of other changes. All of our old computers worked just fine. I’m pretty annoyed at the situation.
Most of the faculty i know here in California are absolutely, categorically refusing to let in a single extra student. And these are professors who, in previous semesters, have always been happy to let in a few extras in order to help the students get the courses they need.
But faculty pay has been cut 10 percent, and the feeling among the faculty is that the students have to be made to feel some pain from these cuts. If the faculty just suck it up and keep admitting students, and do other things to make sure the students aren’t affected by the cuts, then the students won’t give a fuck about the cuts. But when students can’t get the classes they want, or are crammed into overloaded classrooms, then they might start making some noise about the budget cuts.
I’m teaching two courses in the Cal State system this semester, each with 50 students. My classes start on Monday, and both are currently full. I’ll be interested to see how many extra students turn up wanting to get in.
Our cap in Freshman Comp is 30. That’s plenty already, and fills up all the chairs in the room. It’s at our discretion to let in more, but we have to consider fire codes, the paper load, etc. They’re pretty squashed as it is.
We have not taken a pay cut at this CC, but the enrollment is up while cuts are in effect. I have turned away enough students to fill 2 or 3 more sections of Comp.
pepperland, which writing courses are you teaching? I think they cap our comp/critical thinking and Honors courses at 25, but 30 is the norm in comp and in the two courses just below that.
God bless teachers. I’d be unemployed without them, and I had some great ones. And they had to suffer through teaching me.
But what, basically, is the deal with so much complaining and so little trucking off to other jobs in the green green non-teaching fields? In my area, from grade school to community colleges, teaching positions are sought after and have a waiting list of applicants. And the current teachers are not quitting in droves.
Life is too short to keep a job that sucks. And with teaching there will be someone to take your position the next day if you walk out. Unless I am completely wrong (which is possible; I don’t follow this very accurately, and my info tends to come from children of my friends who want teaching jobs but have a hard time finding them).
People bitch about their jobs on here all the time. There are certain typical struggles with certain types of jobs, I would assume - idiot computer users for IT people, idiot callers for CSR people, that kind of thing.
We educators get the right to bitch about things about our job that bug us, even if/when we in general really like what we do. And in general, I still really like what I do. No, that’s incorrect - mostly, I LOVE what I do.
That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t have the right to vent about some of the things that frustrate me about my job.