Tuesday, 18 December 2012

I turned in my final paper for class this afternoon. I went to the professor’s office, knocked and, when there was no answer, I slip the paper underneath the door. I’m done with school for the semester. Another four credits in the can – a total of 12 credits for the year. Yay for me. Oh, also: beginning next semester I will officially be a senior. And, at my age, that’s starting to feel about right.

I’ve alluded to this in other posts, but now I’m gonna talk about it more… I am dumbfounded at the lack of effort other students put into their work. Last week, we had to deliver panel presentations on our final paper. At least one student didn’t show up. Either day. So she got a zero. And since you can’t pass that class without doing every assignment, I’m not even sure she’ll get credit for the class, even if she aced everything else.

The presentations were to last 8-10 minutes, and at least three of them were under 5 minutes. One of them was closer to 3 minutes, I’d guess. Each panel was supposed to have a leader who provided an introduction and tied the presentations together in a theme. At least two of the four panelists didn’t seem to know this, as they both kicked off their panels by saying “Well, I didn’t know we were supposed to give an intro…so…I’ll just start, I guess…and then we’ll go from there.” As for the presentations themselves, a few of the students verbalized their scatter-brained approach to the assignment, flipping through their papers willy-nilly and assenting that they only had a rough idea of what their final paper would be about. This, I remind you, was several days after our rough drafts were due. And, even on that day, only about a quarter of the students turned in anything.

It occured to me that this didn’t happen when I was at Century College.

Well, okay, it happened, it just didn’t happen as regularly. In every class, there was always a student here or there who griped that they didn’t have time to finish an assignment or who showed up on test day completely clueless that there was a test scheduled. But, for the most part, the students I worked with took the assignments seriously, and were prepared for class. I graduated from Century with a 4.0 GPA, but in every class I took, there were always other students who received A’s, too. In fact, when I look back at several classes, I know that I was not the highest scorer. In a biology class I took, the teacher told us the high score for every test (“Someone scored 48 out of 50!”) and only once was the high score mine. Another time, a student whined that he didn’t think anyone in the class could possibly get an A, and the teacher divulged that a few students were, in fact, exceeding 100% at the moment. In another class, I ended up with a 91% (just barely an A), while the students who sat to my left and right both said they were doing better.

So, what’s the deal? Was Century easier and, therefore, easier to score A’s, and easier to get the work done on time?

From what I’ve seen…no. If I was to list the college classes I’ve taken from most difficult to easiest, the top five would consist of four classes from Century, and only one from Hamline. Of course, I took ~20 classes at Century, and have only completed 7 at Hamline (this includes the so-easy-I-didn’t-even-know-it-happened internship)…but, still. Maybe English is easier than Chemistry (yep) and maybe Chemistry majors are more diligent and nerdy than their English counterparts (again, yep). And maybe Chemistry is just more interesting than English (oh my god, yep!).

But here’s another thought: Maybe, just maybe, getting a degree from Hamline – even if you recieved all D’s – is more prestigious than a degree from Century – even if you received all A’s.

Century was populated with students who were gunning for that certification, award, or Associate’s degree that they’d need to get a better job. Many of them were adults who were already in the job market, and either didn’t like their job, or wanted to get an even better job. That described me. I worked in retail: shitty hours, incompetent managers, lousy dress code, mediocre pay, and – worst of all – dealing with the public. I yearned for the opportunity to use my brain at work, to be managed by and work alongside non-idiots, to have better pay, better hours, to not have to dress like a stooge every day, and to not have to deal with other people as much. I knew that, one day, I would show up for a job interview, and my Associate’s degree would be pitted against someone’s Bachelor’s, and I wanted to be able to say, “Yes, it’s justa two-year degree, but – goddammit -I paid for it myself and I kicked ass. Notice I graduated with high honors!”

And I had to hope that that would work, because the next candidate would walk in and say, “Yeah, my GPA was 2.3, and I missed four or five classes every semester, and I turned in half-assed work, if I turned it in at all. But notice I graduated from Hamline!”

Sunday, 16 December 2012

After a year in the making (primary footage was shot in December 2011), I am pleased to announce the latest Zimmerscope Filmlet…

I originally came up with this idea last fall, and I determined to film it during the holiday break between Xmas and New Year’s. It occurred to me that nearly the entire year had passed without me creating a single filmlet, and I didn’t want that to happen, so I recruited Owen to assist in squeezing in a filmlet during the last three days of the year. As it turns out, I didn’t need to bother, since I had created a filmlet already in 2011. That was Footage from the Day of Prayer, that I had somehow forgotten about.

Regardless, I now had some raw footage to work with as 2011 became 2012. In January, I edited the film. In fact, I worked on it in the car on the way home from Janesville, Wisconsin, where I had been on a business trip (I did not drive). By mid-February, it was kind of languishing, primarily because I was busy with school.

I took it up again this summer, by which time my wife’s computer suffered a full meltdown, which was too bad for my video editing because her computer was the only one equipped for scoring the filmlet.

I skirted that issue by recruiting the assistance of a friend; in November I emailed Eric and asked him if he’d be interested in putting my creation to music. Awesomely, he agreed. It took some back-and-forth finagling to get all the kinks worked out but, finally, about two weeks ago I had an amazing score for the filmlet.

Over the last few days, I’ve spent a few minutes here and there polishing it up. And, well, now it’s in the can, as they say.

Enjoy!

Sunday, 16 December 2012

 In the wake of the terrible tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, our biggest concern here on the homefront is how best to stockpile our weaponry with a bleeding heart liberal of a president breathing down our necks to deal with this with Owen.

He’s quite anxious, nervous, and sensitive about violence and harm befalling children. He recently watched about 5 minutes of some 1970s B-movie (on TV one weekend afternoon) and saw a baby get killd in some natural disaster, and now he’s been upset about it ever since. He comes downstairs 10 or 15 minutes after going to bed and cries to us that he can’t get the image out of his head.

So…the recent murdering of 20 elementary school children would surely weigh far, far heavily on his mind.

We’ve decided not to tell Owen.

The problem is, not all parents of seven-year olds are sure to feel the same way. And that’s just fine; I’m not deriding their parenting. I’m sure some kids out there can handle this sort of news, and I’m sure many parents are probably thinking, “Well, I better tell my kid, ’cause I don’t want them finding out some other way.” But the thing is, even if mom and dad are discerning as to whether to tell their kids, I don’t think the same can be said for the kids themselves. Bottom line: there’s a good chance Owen would overhear the news on the playground tomorrow.

The other problem is, we live in the information age. We don’t blare the radio news in our house, we don’t subscribe to any newspapers, and we only turn the TV on when we have a specific show to watch (even then, we mute the commercials). But even with all that, it’s tough to keep the terrible news from Owen. Just this evening, in fact, we turned on the TV to watch the season finale of Survivor. Thanks to the NFL, it was delayed, so when I turned on the TV at 7:00, 60 Minutes was airing. …And they were airing a story about the shootings. We shut off the TV for a half hour (until Survivor was supposed to start), but then there was live broadcast of President Obama’s address…about the shootings. Two hours later, just before the host announced the winner of Survivor, he requested a moment of silence out of respect for Friday’s victims. My quick thinking wife switched to a different channel momentarily.

Anyway, Jennifer was in touch with Owen’s teacher and one of the school counselors this weekend, and the latter recommended keeping Owen home from school tomorrow. There are no plans at his school for an official meeting or discussion of the events, but it will likely be a topic on the lips of many of the kids throughout the building.

I am curious how other parents of 5-10 year olds are handling this, or plan to handle this. I checked on Facebook for some insight, but since I try not to read posts written in all caps or exceeding three exclamation marks, there wasn’t much rational content there.

Saturday, 15 December 2012

Today, Owen decided to spruce up our holiday-themed mantle. So he added a ceratopsid dinosaur with other dinosaurs sticking out from its frills. I can’t really explain it better than that, so just look at the picture:

Several hours later, Isla decided she needed to accent the decorations with something out of the Cretaceous Period. Here’s her addition:

Her’s is the one on the vey left of the photo, with its rear end closest to us. Not sure why she wanted it to face away from us, but she might have thought it wanted to look at the other stuff on the mantle. She does that with other things, too. Like, sometimes she turns the photos sitting on our shelf so that they can look at each other, and lately she’s been “fixing” the ornaments on the xmas tree so that they can commune with one another.

Also today, I submitted a short story to The St. Paul Almanac in the hopes of getting it accepted for their 2014 edition. Today was the due date, but I won’t find out if mine’s made the cut until the last day of May. So…stay tuned.

Friday, 14 December 2012

So, a while back, I was buying some merchandise at Home Depot. As I left with my bag of merchandise, the cashier began moving away from the register and started walking to another part of the store. But then I heard him say to the lady that was standing behind me, “Oh, were you buying something?” And then he walked back over to the register and the woman said something like, “Yeah, didn’t you see me?”

Maybe he didn’t. Or, more likely, he thought she was with me. I’m not sure why, though. We didn’t walk up to the register at the same time; I arrived first by several seconds. I never spoke with her and, besides, she was holding merchandise in her hands that, surely, she would have added to my pile of purchases if, indeed, we were “together.”

But maybe cashiers aren’t used to women buying stuff at Home Depot?

Today I was on the other end of this occurrence. (No, I haven’t taken a job as a cashier.)

I stopped at JoAnn this afternoon. I try to avoid this store to the extent possible, but every once in a while, I’m feeling a little too happy, and JoAnn always manages to depress the crap out of me. Actually, I just needed some buttons for my coat.

After finding the needed buttons, I stood in line at a “cash” register. There was only one other customer there, and she appeared to be finishing up. I stood there for about 15 seconds, and then the woman ahead of me grabbed her bag and walked away…and then the cashier shut off the light to her station and also walked away. I wasn’t sure where to go, because usually, in the rare cases when I walk up to a cashier that’s closing down, he or she says to me: “Oh, I’m done for the night, but you can head over to aisle 16,” or something like that.

So, after standing there for a few moments, I walked around to another register. The cahsier there then walked away from her cash register (not sure why), and said, “I can help you over here,” and she directed me back to where I was standing.

“Didn’t she see you?” the cashier asked me, evidently referencing her wayward colleague.

“I  guess not,” I said.

“She must’ve thought you were with the previous lady,” she said.

Yeah, that makes sense. Because, since women don’t shop at Home Depot, men don’t shop at JoAnn.