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March 28, 2024, 08:28:49 PM

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University Challenged

Started by Alberon, March 16, 2020, 10:17:12 PM

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Puce Moment


SpiderChrist

Quote from: Puce Moment on September 27, 2020, 12:24:15 PM
I appreciate your brevity.

What, you think I wanted my offspring to go, or indeed had any control or agency over the actions of a 19 year old? You think I'm happy about it? Shitty comments like yours serve only to exacerbate the anxiety I'm feeling over this situation, and make you look like a cunt.

Puce Moment

I imagine you are very stressed, like we all are. I look like a cunt all the time on this forum - you might be surprised to learn that you do as well. I don't want a ruck about this, but I'm responding to your posts.

I asked:
QuoteWould you send your kid to Uni? I fucking wouldn't

You replied:
Quote from: SpiderChrist on September 24, 2020, 08:02:59 PMI fucking did.

The issue of "control" and "agency" was clarified in your brief reply.

I also can't contextualise my posts to account for your shame and nihilism, even though I completely understand, sympathise and feel terribly for you:

Quote from: SpiderChrist on September 21, 2020, 08:28:54 AMThis country really is completely fucked, isn't it? No hope anymore. Just keep drinking and taking drugs until it all inevitably collapses. Feel utterly ashamed that I brought a child into this world. She started Uni on Saturday and has nothing to look forward to.

If you are open to it, let me be less cunty and I will rephrase my original post - I hope your daughter is able to stay safe and does not endanger the safety of others.

SpiderChrist

Quote from: Puce Moment on September 28, 2020, 10:31:49 AM
I imagine you are very stressed, like we all are. I look like a cunt all the time on this forum - you might be surprised to learn that you do as well.

Not particularly surprised, but thank you for your honesty. I shall attempt to rein it in

Quote from: Puce Moment on September 28, 2020, 10:31:49 AM

I don't want a ruck about this, but I'm responding to your posts.

The issue of "control" and "agency" was clarified in your brief reply.

Nor I. My post was poorly worded, as I imagine most of them are. Apologies.


Quote from: Puce Moment on September 28, 2020, 10:31:49 AM

I also can't contextualise my posts to account for your shame and nihilism, even though I completely understand, sympathise and feel terribly for you

I find myself in the middle of a number of personal dramas at the moment, which might be where the nihilism comes from. I don't want to be a nihilist. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

Quote from: Puce Moment on September 28, 2020, 10:31:49 AMIf you are open to it, let me be less cunty and I will rephrase my original post - I hope your daughter is able to stay safe and does not endanger the safety of others.

Thank you. And apologies again.

Puce Moment

It's fine, and I'm sorry too because, you were right, it was a cunt move.

Blinder Data

I suppose if I was due to go to uni this year I would defer and take a gap year, but what kind of gap year would it be? A tense and listless lockdown at home with the parents? Apply for short-term retail/low-skill jobs when thousands of them are being binned? Go backpacking to somewhere that might be worse off than the UK and risk a lockdown far away from home?

I can understand why students took the risk of studying this year instead of extending for another 12 months what must have felt like the purgatory of this summer. In this situation, there are no good choices.

Sebastian Cobb



They'll be making pruno next.

Sebastian Cobb

Aberdeen Uni announcing breaching the guidelines could lead to a £250 fine, plus expulsion, and that they're using landlords for enforcement



The catered blocks in Aberdeen which I stayed in were horrible, like individual cells. I believe they're no longer catered and they rammed some fridges and an extra Baby Belling stove in the communal (2 per floor) kitchens.

Blue Jam

Being locked down in Aberdeen in winter probably won't be much fun. Poor sods.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Blue Jam on September 28, 2020, 05:26:07 PM
Being locked down in Aberdeen in winter probably won't be much fun. Poor sods.

I had my own mini lockdown in those catered halls when I got the mumps. Pales in comparison obviously, but it was still dreadful, and it obviously had an end in sight.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on September 28, 2020, 05:20:54 PM

The catered blocks in Aberdeen which I stayed in were horrible, like individual cells. I believe they're no longer catered and they rammed some fridges and an extra Baby Belling stove in the communal (2 per floor) kitchens.

Was that the one that is like The Maze prison?

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: BlodwynPig on September 28, 2020, 08:41:51 PM
Was that the one that is like The Maze prison?

Yes.






This is apparently a recent picture of the same block I stayed in, the desk arrangement is new, so are the carpets. I'm guessing the conduit means they've also put network access in now. This wasn't there at all at the start of term, about half way through they stuck a wifi access point in the tv room.

When I stayed they were all bolted into the walls and some of them had things like 'Dave Richicie 1983' scrawled on the inside, in 2005.

You could still smoke in them when i was there. I bet that's been disallowed now.

greencalx

I love the way that university accommodation managers think they can give a 60s hellhole the feel of an boutique hotel by pleating a towel (and, no doubt, the bog roll).

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: greencalx on September 28, 2020, 08:53:21 PM
I love the way that university accommodation managers think they can give a 60s hellhole the feel of an boutique hotel by pleating a towel (and, no doubt, the bog roll).

What I find amazing is how much more they've started offering since the councils have been selling off land for private developers. Unite buildings just used to be very slightly brighter versions of the same thing, en-suites and thinner walls. Now they've got gyms and in-house coffee/snack bars, some have small 'cinemas' etc.

It's not good, 'cos it's just corporatisation of the same shitholes and they're all pokey and flout building standards other places have to adhere to, but still.

Unite actually were allowed to build some new flats in Hillhead after some of the blocks got subsidence and had to be knocked down, but I think they bungled it, or freshers were causing more damage so it wasn't cost effective and the University ended up taking ownership/management of them.

greencalx

Attila may wish to look away... but I'm actually almost enjoying this online teaching lark. I miss not having a proper board to write on - all this e-teaching stuff seems to assume all you want to do is pipe PowerPoint at people and occasionally scribble "ambiguity?" on it. No good for us hard science types so we've all had to come up with our own gaffer-taped solutions (instead of the uni offering a single tool that works). But other than that it's nice sitting in my office speaking to the nations, watching questions come in over the chat and being more serendipitous than I would be in the lecture theatre.

Tutorials are hard work though.

Sebastian Cobb

One of my favourite lecturers taught all his courses with self-made lectures that he'd written in html, and seemingly lectured in a random order so there was no telling what you'd missed if you'd skipped a class.

He also taught a course on propositional logic (I think) that were OHT slides from another lecturer and clearly hadn't bothered to even pre-read them as sometimes he'd put a slide on, look at it pensively for up to 30 seconds and go "I dunno what this is trying to express" or "I don't agree with this at all".

He was an actual genius though.


Alberon

That is fucking mental. I know the Fire Safety guys at my uni. They're ex-firemen and they would have been absolutely furious if they'd seen that and not just because it's totally illegal.

Apparently my uni had it's first coronavirus positive student today who's self-isolating at home. It's so nice to find we're not being left out!

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Alberon on September 28, 2020, 10:42:46 PM
That is fucking mental. I know the Fire Safety guys at my uni. They're ex-firemen and they would have been absolutely furious if they'd seen that and not just because it's totally illegal.

Apparently my uni had it's first coronavirus positive student today who's self-isolating at home. It's so nice to find we're not being left out!

I saw some fuckwit moaning that one of the aberdeen halls that goes onto a street had a late evacuation and none of the students had masks. Yes, it's a fire alarm in the middle of the night in a really densely packed building, what the fuck did you expect?

Blue Jam

Got a very busy day tomorrow and I'm getting really fucked off with having to book every single room and lab bench and bit of equipment I'll be using via a website and three different apps, two of which are completely fucking borked. If our elf'n'safety officer tries to give me a ticking off again I may end up throwing something big and heavy and expensive through a window.

I'm effectively in charge of coordinating all of the lab's experiments at the moment while trying to look for a new job on the side. There's a good chance my contract will be extended but I need a Plan B in case that doesn't happen. Needless to say I'm not feeling terribly motivated right now.

It also doesn't help that I'm finding cycling in pretty stressful. It's giving me the quads of Chris Hoy while I still have the lungs of Darth Vader.

Attila

Quote from: greencalx on September 28, 2020, 09:07:39 PM
Attila may wish to look away... but I'm actually almost enjoying this online teaching lark. I miss not having a proper board to write on - all this e-teaching stuff seems to assume all you want to do is pipe PowerPoint at people and occasionally scribble "ambiguity?" on it. No good for us hard science types so we've all had to come up with our own gaffer-taped solutions (instead of the uni offering a single tool that works). But other than that it's nice sitting in my office speaking to the nations, watching questions come in over the chat and being more serendipitous than I would be in the lecture theatre.

Tutorials are hard work though.

Nah,  I'm glad it's going well for you, honestly! :)

It's the blended learning stuff that's doing my head in, and is exhausting to get everything prepped and done for the online portion, then spend ages commuting to teach for 45 minutes when so far Teams and/or media in the classroom has not worked.

Meanwhile, one of the people made redundant over the summer has left a huge gap in the curriculum -- and that person's modules are still on the books and filled with students. They're trying to hand it to someone in the dept who doesn't have any experience in the area of study under consideration (and it's a final year, not an intro, module). That person is stressing out at having to teach it, so now they're looking at me to do it. It's complementary to what I teach, but a completely different emphasis and not my area of expertise at all. I could muddle through if I have the person's lecture notes and PPTs, but it would mean I'm teaching on 7 modules next spring instead of just six.

Fuck knows.




Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Alberon on September 28, 2020, 10:42:46 PM
That is fucking mental. I know the Fire Safety guys at my uni. They're ex-firemen and they would have been absolutely furious if they'd seen that and not just because it's totally illegal.

Apparently my uni had it's first coronavirus positive student today who's self-isolating at home. It's so nice to find we're not being left out!

Those gates are a pile of shit anyway. When I lived in Aberdeen they threw up a private block over some land that used to be a drain centre that I used to walk past to work. They had one of those gates there into the main courtyard, it was obviously a cheap metal gate with a maglock on it, but no automatic closer, so the students often didn't bother to close it, it opened into the street (probably for evacuation reasons) and there were obvious signs from the owners asking them to close it for 'security', rather than sort it out.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Attila on September 28, 2020, 11:00:19 PM.
Meanwhile, one of the people made redundant over the summer has left a huge gap in the curriculum -- and that person's modules are still on the books and filled with students.

I'm covering for someone who has been made redundant, fun innit?

Puce Moment

Uni heads now conspiring with Landlords to identify rule breakers.

Now that's something being students together. Except for academics who are also landlord cunts.

Sebastian Cobb

Ha. Can't see landlords being too prudent in shopping their tenants somehow.

TBF my best landlord was a jolly old ex-lecturer. Rented absolute shitholes at a fair price and was quite hand-off while he done it.

Might be a flash of stockholm syndrome.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on September 28, 2020, 08:46:23 PM
Yes.






This is apparently a recent picture of the same block I stayed in, the desk arrangement is new, so are the carpets. I'm guessing the conduit means they've also put network access in now. This wasn't there at all at the start of term, about half way through they stuck a wifi access point in the tv room.

When I stayed they were all bolted into the walls and some of them had things like 'Dave Richicie 1983' scrawled on the inside, in 2005.

You could still smoke in them when i was there. I bet that's been disallowed now.

Ha! First ever taxi i rode in dropped me outside there. I then woke up in my boxer shorts lost in the maze and miraculously found my way back to the room (after drunk sleepwalking)

greencalx

Quote from: Attila on September 28, 2020, 11:00:19 PM
It's the blended learning stuff that's doing my head in, and is exhausting to get everything prepped and done for the online portion, then spend ages commuting to teach for 45 minutes when so far Teams and/or media in the classroom has not worked.

By "blended" do you mean trying to teach in-person and online at the same time. That's not blended, that's madness. We're not doing that (Director of Teaching decision).

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: BlodwynPig on September 29, 2020, 07:37:58 AM
Ha! First ever taxi i rode in dropped me outside there. I then woke up in my boxer shorts lost in the maze and miraculously found my way back to the room (after drunk sleepwalking)

I once forgot to take the door off the snib and some bloke wandered in drunk and nearly clambered into bed with me in the middle of the night. Right room, wrong building.

Quote from: greencalx on September 29, 2020, 10:46:22 AM
By "blended" do you mean trying to teach in-person and online at the same time. That's not blended, that's madness. We're not doing that (Director of Teaching decision).

we're supposed to do it for a maths module.

I've stated that I won't - it is madness- emailing the students that can't make it to contact me directly and I will double teach.

Odds are, they won't and word will get around that the tutorials are worthwhile.

Sebastian Cobb

Can you not capture the first session, make it available (I think zoom can do this automatically and even caption it very badly in the process) then tell people who didn't watch it live they're welcome to contact you with further questions?