Not to mention the "Oh, we brought them your estimate but they won't pay that much. So we said we can just leave out these couple of features. Oh, and they changed the platform they want it on and could you add just a little web version too?" effect.
In our office, we've had one programmer laid low with no notice by a drug reaction and surgery, out for four months; another programmer injured in an accident, out for a month. In both cases, the paper trail didn't begin to explain just what they were working on adequately for the remainder of the crew to pick up where they left off, and they were, of course, the only ones with info on their specific bits.
Now that everyone's back, there's still no buy-in from management that we need to take the time for crosstraining. The demo that was missed is forgotten, the delayed deliverables faded into memory, and 'we're just too busy for that'.
Combining as many different approaches as possible gives the broadest possiblity to learn and retain the stuff - I'm a kinesthetic/visual, myself; I don't object to the traditional lecture if I have a chance to write notes and process it thru my brain and fingers, but just audio and I have zilch recall.
But it's much more memorable (and entertaining) to work on coefficients of friction as 'how high do these guys have to lift this end of the table to make the TA slide off onto the floor' than 'see the diagram on p. 54'.
bless it's little heart. Used at least once a day except when I'm traveling, and I'm sure that's averaged out by many, many multi-brew days.
I received another one as a christmas present about a decade ago, and it's still in the box waiting for the call. At this rate I have a lifetime supply.
Now if only I could arrange for the lifetime coffee bean supply to match, I'd be set...
Great idea - current books I can access as long as they're useful (everyone out there with obsolete books being used as footstools/table levelers/bookshelf ends, raise your hand).
But my desk usually has a pile of books open, face up or down or with pencils or yellow stickys marking pages. I'm still looking for a way to map this to a single too-small-already computer screen.
Hormones aren't what they're cracked up to be. Look more at pressure from wannabe grandparents, friends, churchgoing acquaintances who think it's appalling that you're not parents yet.
Doesn't have to be. 49 & 43, still child(and angst)free.
Getting paid for what you love to do is one thing. Needing to do it 60 hours a week to pay the rent is another. Or needing to never take a vacation. Or needing add time on top of that to deal with related marketing/forms/licencing/accounting/whatever.
Doing something you like, or at least don't mind too much, for a living can give you the better of both worlds.
Consider it in the same vein as that wild unpredictable fiery dark haired girl who was intoxicating for a week, but seemed to morph instead into that undependable unsympathetic angry dark haired girl after closer contact...
My SO used to get pissed when told "of course 'he' doesn't imply exclusively 'male'; get used to it, 'he' is inclusive and generic, why are you so sensitive?"...
Certainly, the ideal is to use the test as a metric from which you can evaluate how much of the material the students have learned, how well they know it, and compare students to each other.
It should also be used by the prof as feedback as well - are questions failed in proportion to their difficulty or is there a chunk where the whole class is more or less clueless? This is a flag that there could be a better way to present or emphasize that material.
Tests on either end of the spectrum where a large proportion of the students ace it or receive 0's don't have the granularity to be useful in evaluation.
In my experience there are also peculiar takes on the grading process. A friend related horror stories from a class in the petroleum engineering dept where there were x total points but more points could be lost than the total. High score for one of the tests was something like -28. I suppose you could argue that relative scores would be compared, but negative grading is bizarre (what, we know less than we did when we came in?).
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Not to mention the "Oh, we brought them your estimate but they won't pay that much. So we said we can just leave out these couple of features. Oh, and they changed the platform they want it on and could you add just a little web version too?" effect.
In our office, we've had one programmer laid low with no notice by a drug reaction and surgery, out for four months; another programmer injured in an accident, out for a month. In both cases, the paper trail didn't begin to explain just what they were working on adequately for the remainder of the crew to pick up where they left off, and they were, of course, the only ones with info on their specific bits.
Now that everyone's back, there's still no buy-in from management that we need to take the time for crosstraining. The demo that was missed is forgotten, the delayed deliverables faded into memory, and 'we're just too busy for that'.
Aargh.
But it's much more memorable (and entertaining) to work on coefficients of friction as 'how high do these guys have to lift this end of the table to make the TA slide off onto the floor' than 'see the diagram on p. 54'.
I received another one as a christmas present about a decade ago, and it's still in the box waiting for the call. At this rate I have a lifetime supply.
Now if only I could arrange for the lifetime coffee bean supply to match, I'd be set...
But my desk usually has a pile of books open, face up or down or with pencils or yellow stickys marking pages. I'm still looking for a way to map this to a single too-small-already computer screen.
Doesn't have to be. 49 & 43, still child(and angst)free.
Doing something you like, or at least don't mind too much, for a living can give you the better of both worlds.
Consider it in the same vein as that wild unpredictable fiery dark haired girl who was intoxicating for a week, but seemed to morph instead into that undependable unsympathetic angry dark haired girl after closer contact...
My SO used to get pissed when told "of course 'he' doesn't imply exclusively 'male'; get used to it, 'he' is inclusive and generic, why are you so sensitive?"...
It should also be used by the prof as feedback as well - are questions failed in proportion to their difficulty or is there a chunk where the whole class is more or less clueless? This is a flag that there could be a better way to present or emphasize that material.
Tests on either end of the spectrum where a large proportion of the students ace it or receive 0's don't have the granularity to be useful in evaluation.
In my experience there are also peculiar takes on the grading process. A friend related horror stories from a class in the petroleum engineering dept where there were x total points but more points could be lost than the total. High score for one of the tests was something like -28. I suppose you could argue that relative scores would be compared, but negative grading is bizarre (what, we know less than we did when we came in?).