Thursday, August 22, 2013

On going back to school.

I ran away from the academic world after I graduated NC State. Literally. Teh Mom asked about graduate school, my LPOs and Chiefs and occifers asked me about continuing my education.. and I was like, kthxNO for about... uuuhhh.. Dec 2007 until July 2013. Math is hard.

I've only been in class for a week now and I'm extremely critical of all things. I don't remember being this critical when I was doing my undergrad. I took everything at face value. The students, the teachers, the lessons. I probably could have been radicalized in my time at NC State and not even realized it. Ok, maybe that's extreme, but you get it.

Not only have I been super critical of my current classmates (not really anything personal, I just hope your grade reflects your inability to follow directions and that includes making significant typos in your posts and in ability to hit the word count), but I'm also super critical of the lessons. I found this gem while studying:

"OK, I know it's a convoluted, awkward and formalistic way to ask research questions. But it encompasses a long tradition in statistics called the hypothetical-deductive model, and sometimes we just have to do things because they're traditions. And anyway, if all of this hypothesis testing was easy enough so anybody could understand it, how do you think statisticians would stay employed?" -William M.K. Trochim (source)

You've got to be kidding me.  After reading an entire page devoted to different types of hypotheses, the guy is like, yeah we know its redundant and stupid, but we do it because its tradition... Are you fucking kidding me?  Traditions change!  People get over it.  If he would have said, this method is tried and true and it ALWAYS works, I would have been sold, but he practically admitted this wasn't the best way to do research.  /wrist.

On to the next one, on to the next one (always rappin', yo)...

The UNnecessary use of necessary:
"You should strive to create a single question as your primary research question, although many research papers will necessarily deal with a number of sub-questions relevant to your inquiries." -Edward J. Hagerty, Ph.D. (I'd link the source, but it's a word document).

No jk, I had to read that sentence several times before I realized once the problem was.  Once I decided to skip the word "necessarily", magic happened in my brain.  I know you've got your Ph.D, but if you actually speak like this IRL, you don't have real friends, dude.  Stop trying to sound smart by using extra words, you have a Ph.D, there's no reason to sound smart, you obviously are.  Unless that is a meritorious Ph.D, then hang it up, buddy, hang it up.

Finally...

I'm enrolled at AMU, which is an online school.  That doesn't really matter to me, but as I've went through 3 weeks of lessons, they've used other college/university's websites for AMU lessons.  Almost like they are too lazy to make their own lesson pages.  Which I guess I can kinda get, especially if someone else already has the information in a good form, but still.  Seems very unoriginal to just "borrow" some other school's information.  It almost makes AMU less "reputable" in a sense.  Maybe its just me?

I don't think this class is super difficult, but it's been quite difficult to get back into that "student" mindset again.  Maybe with some practice it will get easier?

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