Little-Wonder.Net

13 February, 2008

Freeriders.

19:07:52 | School Life | writebacks (2)

Being badgered by this old woman who just plonked herself next to me on a bench - bugging me for free food because there is some university-organized party in the opposite block and I happened to be a student here.

And it’s quite obvious she’s not a school staff as she doesn’t seem to know her way around. (Her quizzical question: Are these two blocks the same? In Mandarin, of course.)

Continued to badger me even when I ignored her. I just sat and continued my work.

“Aren’t you going there to eat? Aren’t you going there to eat? AREN’T YOU GOING THERE TO EAT?” Came the repeated question. (Translated from Mandarin.)

Again, I simply ignored her. Already made it clear earlier that the reason why my butt is parked on this bench is because I am waiting for someone. Plus, my tone and posture (and the fact that I was frantically tapping away at my computer) already made it clear that I did not want to be disturbed.

Then, she had the audacity to get pissy with me.

“WAH LAO EH. You do not want free food?!?”

Had to resist the urge to tell her to just bugger off; yours truly was getting increasingly irritable by then. Her intentions were obvious - she wanted me to go over so that she can either pretend to be someone I knew, or she wanted me to sneak some food for her.

Her latest question confirmed my suspicions.

“Can I go there and eat even if I am an outsider here?”

“I don’t know,” was my reply, with my face completely black by then.

She finally got the hint and left me alone, and now she’s bugging some other students nearby. Or not. Wait - I think I see her already in the opposite block pretending to be part of the crowd.

I don’t understand why my school keeps drawing all these people. Seriously - do my fellow students look so guillible?

And why the heck are they always targetting me?

I think I look too meek. (And the fact that I have a kiddy face doesn’t help.) Perhaps, I should start walking around with a permanent scowl.

On another note - the next two weeks are going to be hell. I’ve let some assignments lie around for far too long (which is soooo unlike me) and they are all piling up, most of which have a deadline within the next two weeks.

Ohmygoodnessgolly.

31 January, 2008

So, I’m expected to clam up now?

22:49:57 | Ranting, School Life | writebacks (4)

You know, this particular professor’s unspoken rule seems to be - Thou shalt not talk in class at all, unless it is to me. Me being the professor, that is.

Breach this rule and he’d make you look like an idiot in front of everyone else in the class.

Seriously, I find this utterly ridiculous.

As students, we have to share points, things we feel may be useful to each other - and perhaps clarify some crucial material (which the professor may have mentioned like 10375275 times and so it’d be ridiculous to hold the class up and ask him again) so that one wouldn’t be confused as he proceeds to deeper things during the lecture.

Not to mention the occasional “What did he just say?” questions that may arise when gaps in memory arise from some parts of his most recent speech.

Look, I am not a student who gets a kick out of disrupting classes by talking about other irrelevant thingamajigs during a lecture. However, I demand my rights to talk (okay, whisper) with my immediate neighbours during a class when it concerns the relevant material.

What brought this on? My own experience with his ridiculous, unspoken rule this afternoon.

I was sharing some information regarding the class material to M, via whispering - may I add, just as the professor launched into an introduction of the day’s lecture.

The professor suddenly fell silent, and I looked up in surprise as he appeared at the front of my desk. Of course, everyone else in the classroom was staring at me as well.

“What seems to be the trouble here?” he asked.

I raised an eyebrow at him, quizzical and annoyed. Whatthehell? Do you mean that every time students whisper among themselves in class, it always means that they have a problem with the material? What do you take me for, an idiot? Me thinks.

Obviously missing the downright pissed off expression on my face, he continued.

“Oh, come on. Just ask me if you have any problems. What’s the trouble here? Which part of the material did you not understand? Share it with me, share it with the class!”

Couple the above with his patronizing tone as he attempts to coax me into revealing what I just said. He was obviously attempting to make a fool of me and making me out to be an idiot - a lowly, helpless student in front of every individual in the class.

My response?

“I am just sharing some information regarding the class exercises with my friend.”

Short, simple - sweet.

And it was definitely true.

However, what I really wanted to do was to scream at him: HELLO? CAN’T I JUST SHARE SOME INFORMATION REGARDING YOUR MATERIAL TO MY BUDDY WITHOUT GETTING THE THIRD DEGREE? What’s your problem, huh? Stop assuming that whispering among students during your classes means that they have trouble with the material, are clueless or confused or whatsoever crap.

Apparently, the same shit has been happening to everyone else in class who happened to be doing the same thing as me - as I’ve observed over the past two or three weeks I’ve been attending his class.

Look. You’re teaching a university that encourages proactive and collaborative classroom learning. Thus, sharing information and clarifying doubts (especially stupid doubts which you’d only dare to raise to your best buddy sitting next to you) is especially essential, even if it’s in the midst of a lecture. In fact, it’s really a common scenario here.

If you, as a relatively new faculty of this school insists on adhering to your conventional habit of simply standing there and lecturing and expecting your students’ undivided attention - then you’re in the wrong place, buddy.

And ditch that patronizing tone when you address students. I know you are completely aware that the material covered in this particular course is particularly difficult - everyone’s struggling, as you’ve realized.

But forcing the students to keep mum during your class and expecting them to direct their questions only to you during lectures is definitely not the way to go.

15 November, 2007

The height of all ignorance

23:54:30 | School Life | writeback (1)

I literally got an attack of hives just now when I saw the peer comments for my group’s presentation for Search Engine Technologies.

Sort of gives me the impression that people are either writing rubbish for the sake of earning more participation points (apparently, students are given points for providing comments - which I found utterly ridiculous), or they just couldn’t be bothered listening to our presentation at all. The latter was the more likely reason, seeing how the eyes of half the class were practically glued to their laptop screens throughout the entire three hour class.

These two were the comments that stood out.

1) The interface doesn’t seems interesting enough for people to interact with it.
Because I was the one who designed the interface, it is inevitable for me to get a little miffed with this comment.

It’s a bloody search engine. Plus, the search context is in Law. What kind of ‘interesting’ interface do you expect it to have? If you’re hoping for the search engine to have images of Hello Kitty or any other damned cartoons plastered all over it’s interface, then you’re simply out of your mind.

Google has more or less demonstrated how a simple, minimalistic search interface helps improve usability, leading to it’s success as the world’s number 1 search engine. Interfaces need not be interesting for people to want to interact with it.

What’s key is it’s straightforwardness and understandability, which was my key focus when designing the interface. No point having an ‘interesting’ interface when people have to spend thirty seconds looking for the navigation bar or figuring out how to use the damned search function!

(Oh and incidentally, the number one complaint with existing law search engines is the complexity of it’s interface!)

2) The presentation was detailed but the Architecture was not shown.
My group members and myself did not spend two fucking hours coming up with the system architecture and formatting it nicely on the slides only to have someone mark us down in their peer comments/ratings just because they didn’t see it.

The architecture is shown distinctly on slide 17 - a techy looking diagram with 3D databases and system modules plus their interactions. It was the most outstanding slide in the whole presentation, and it formed the backbone of our search engine. And here, someone is telling us that he didn’t see it.

Simply shows us that someone wasn’t paying attention, no?

The rest of the comments - what can I say? Some of them comments were pretty good and I have taken note of them for inclusion in our project report. However, the other comments made my entire group want to shrivel up like a prune at their ignorance.

Quite evident that these people have no idea how existing Law search engines work, because several of them were pinpointing at things they shouldn’t be pinpointing.

For example, some idiot mentioned that users shouldn’t be forced to enter the citation just to access a particular case (which was one of the functions of our search engine on top of keyword search) - but have they ever realized that in real life, law students are simply dumped with case citations with no general background knowledge of the case at all?

There are Law Search Engines available on the SMU library resource portal and access is open to all students. Makes me wonder whether students even bother to derive some background information themselves before they make their comments.

BAH.

———

Oh, and Lizzie dear had secretly brought me a curry puff and two spring rolls when I left the student lounge briefly this evening to grab some dinner …

… only to find that Irvin had eaten them all up when I returned. All I saw was an empty plate.

A million thanks anyway. It’s the thought that counts, aye?