I Can't Find Any Dirt Bike Content

 

I've seen this guy's word-smithing twin.

http://deadspin.com/5477230/nyu-business-school-professor-has-mastered-the-art-of-email-flaming

Joe

XL600R

 


Reminds me of the time I got a letter from a male student's mother
complaining how I was abusing her poor little boy by requiring he read
the book and work on applying its ideas before coming to class.  My
reply (which I rewrote probably 5 times) asked her to meet with me
face to face.  I was really looking forward to that meeting but she
never showed up.

-da Perfesser

 

On Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:49:00 -0800 (PST), "Whelan - '02 200exc (x2) & '04


Idiots... Do be careful about meeting with parents. They aren't your
customer and you could end up in what someone might try to turn into deep
shit for violating the future ditch-digger's privacy. Clearly the little
SOB grew up in a world where all the losers got a trophy too.

One possible mitigation would be to give write a letter to every kid's
parent...

"Hi.. I am the professor for your son or daughter for XXX. A matter of
critical importance has arisen, about which I would very much like to hear
your opinion before moving forward.

Recently, a parent advanced the thesis that by holding my students to a
performance standard common to real-world practitioners of XXX, I am, in
fact, abusing them. You can't begin imagine the magnitude of my concern
once I got my arms around this horrifying realization. Please help me
resolve the future direction of my class, and potentially your child's
future, by checking which you feel is more important.

[   ] - Future path #1 - It takes a village - A class MUST first be a
non-competitive, inclusive, inoffensive, highly sensitive, all-embracing,
democratic, carbon-neutral, nuclear and authoritarian-free environment
where any representation of "effort", however thinly supported by
judgmental methods like test "data" or any other
known-gender/race/culturally/skill-level-biased methods,, will be
considered not just acceptable but will be copiously praised. Acquiring
proficiency in XXX will be secondary to reinforcing your child's
self-esteem and confidence.

"Performance" will be henceforth treated as the ugly, scarring idea that it
is. All that matters is the representation of effort. At the end of the
semester, everyone will receive a small trophy for "best student".

[   ] - Future Path #2 - The world needs ditch-diggers too. We will
recognize that at some point, your child's lips will have to separate for
more than one feeding-cycle from it's mother's nipples. In preparation for
that monumentally traumatic (but honestly necessary) event, we will set
standards/expectations appropriate to success in the actual practice of
XXX. All other objectives (e.g. being democratic... further, if possible,
building its self-esteem... seeming sufficiently "nice") will, sadly,
become secondary to building as much understanding and proficiency in XXX,
and possibly even extracting your 20-something's head from his/her ass. Our
objective will be that Shackleton would have hired your kid as the XXX for
his expeditions."


Obviously making sure the ditch-digger's mom got one too.

Mike
--
Mike W.
96 XR400
70 CT70
71 KG 100 (Hodaka-powered)
99 KZ1000P (training)
99 KZ1000P (rider)
00 Beta Rev-3

 

Mike,

I give this an A-

It would have been an "A" if it had incorporated the "I couldn't study
because [insert excuse here]" phenomenon.  You see, effort is only
expected when convenient.

I'd like to see an award given out each year to the student who
reports the same relative died the most times.

-Joe

 

On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 06:32:42 -0800 (PST), "Whelan - '02 200exc (x2) & '04


Thanks Joe... I never expect A's:) Though that flowed effortlessly given
the strength of my feelings about unscholarly people seeking and expecting
the credentials of scholars. In the post-scholarly world, one might also
want to correlate the actual incidence of migraines with the reported
level.  

My time (5 years) at a certain university teaching late undergrad/early
grad topics in engineering left me with a huge distaste for "the average
student". Going in, I mistakenly expected daily contact with at least some
passionate scholars. My job would be to provide gentle guidance and
eliminate obstacles to their getting there. Obviously those expectations
were smashed on the rocks quickly and my strategy/expectations shifted
markedly. For the one course that was teaching MY methods/POV about
high-speed design, I gave myself the luxury of requiring permission as to
who could participate. On the first day, I would have a one on one
conversation that gave each prospective student a choice much like the one
I proposed for the parents.... "the talk" was something like:

"This course will be the ONE you remember when you're 50. It might be for
good reasons like you came out the other side better than you went in, but
more likely it will be for the amount of sheer hell and unfairness I will
visit on you all the way to the last minute of the semester. The rules are
different here. It's not about the right answer... there are no right
answers.. but there are wrong ones. It's about how/why you got to an
acceptable answer... how well you supported your engineering decisions...
what you do when you screw up, which you will do... and observable evidence
you made definitive strides in your understanding of how truly great
engineering decisions are made. In this course, I have the right to
challenge the thinking behind EVERY single thing you say or don't say to me
and I WILL be pushing your buttons because they lead straight to the wiring
that shows me how you think. Still want to sign up?"

If I already knew they were weak from a previous course with me, I wouldn't
sign them in but I'd help them realize they just had a near miss with Hell.
If they came across as shaky, I'd skip them or strongly suggest they do
something else... make sure they knew they COULD unvolunteer for this and
in fact suggest it was the logical decision.  This allowed me the one joy I
had with the teaching part.. one very small class where EVERYONE in the
room was passionate to advance their professional/creative skills. If gave
me a reason to put together what I have been told was an extraordinary
course, and that satisfaction made it possible to teach the gut courses to
the masses without deciding to just pull the plug and coast. Though... I
found a second "joy of doing" with the gut courses... taking kids that were
swirling the drain for the third time, despite making the effort, out of
the hands of the TAs and working with them personally to get them up to a C
or maybe a B. ACtually, I might have found that even more satisfying.

I think the caliber of the school probably makes a difference. Some schools
are more about scholarship than others. Not the one I was at though. A
mill.

Thanks for the A-.. in the style of modern "students"... more than good
enough for me! Beer run...........

Mike

ps - a third joy... I don't know why... teaching kids going on their first
interviews how to tie a tie.


--
Mike W.
96 XR400
70 CT70
71 KG 100 (Hodaka-powered)
99 KZ1000P (training)
99 KZ1000P (rider)
00 Beta Rev-3