So roommate and I were able to suck our professor into a ten minute discussion about our dogs, which was an awesome way to kill some class time.  Though unfortunately, it didn't last longer, which sucks because we are talking about the rationalist framework of institutions, and I didn't read much, so I'm kind of bullshitting more than anything.

But I just made a good point and asked a good question, so score for Allie and +1 to her bullshitting skill.


Tomorrow I plan on giving a scolding lecture to the first years, because the things that they have been doing have not been up to my standard and they are making stupid careless mistakes that should not happen.  Example, I asked them to run a regression on 4 variables; some only gave me two.  Too many people did not answer the second part of one of my questions, and none of them are annotating their code, which I explained was vital and that I wanted to see that.  My homeworks are now going to get much more difficult and there is going to be less hand-holding on my part from now on.  So far I have given them my code and I have gone through things really slowly and I have been really patient with them, even as they repeatedly ask me the same questions about basic fucking code that they should already know (such as, generating a variable, for example).

I'm just really disappointed in them, and I know I have been too lenient with them, and that needs to stop.  More for them than for me.  I just do not think that they are trying as hard as we did, and they seem to complain more than we did, but I think they have been more coddled than we were.  They have a grad director who is super on top of them and tells them how to do things and when...whereas we were kind of left to fend for ourselves last year.  And we were up so many nights until 4 trying to work out coding and while we complained, it was more about the fact that we couldn't figure it out, not that we weren't taught it or anything.  We spent countless fucking hours trying to do things on our own before seeking help from our professor or our TA.  Because we knew that getting their assistance on every little thing that we found problematic would not help us in the end.  We wouldn't solidify anything for ourselves, which would suck later on when we were writing our own papers.

So yeah, I'm planning on going much harder on them than I have been, and my plan is to give them a homework assignment that I had last year, just to show them the disparity in difficulty between what I have been giving them and what we were given last year, with less direction than they have had so far.


I think after class I'm going to stay on campus to get work done, because I know I won't once I go home.  Especially since I am feeling very sad and everything today.  (Though I'm trying to do my best to fake being alright and happy and all.)