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Back in school (and school is broken)
9 years ago
I always read every comment even if I don't respond!
Sorry, haven't submitted anything substantial in while. Loved one in a mental hospital (now out and on recovery) kinda threw off my art vibe, and now I'm in summer classes. 16 weeks of material crammed into an accelerated 8 week course. My schedule has pretty much been a combination of work, school, eat and sleep (and a little minecraft).
So onto school being broken. I won't lie, I'm quite bitter about my experience at community college. I've felt a held back, misinformed and/or cheated. Case in point, I'm pursuing my 3rd certificate... why? Because the other 2 were dropped from the curriculum before I could complete them, leaving me with a few transferable classes, and alot that were rather certificate specific. Not to mention the counselor who helped design my schedule 2 semesters ago had 2 of my 3 classes not even listed on my certificate. HOWEVER I have learned. I take any advice they give me with a heavy pinch of salt. Btw the school has a 23% graduation rate.
Many professors I've had at this school are doing it as a side job or coasting until retirement. Most have no F's to give. So every class I take I walk into with a neutral attitude. I let the professor dictate how the class will go. If they have energy and passion then I'll match it, if they have no F's then I return the favor.One class I am taking now I believe is called like "Culture, Gender and Race in Media". It's an online class. It's highly based around discussion and a blog for the class. Now I'm not the most social person. I'm content to do an assignment with the given instructions, turn it in and then move on with my day. However an alarming portion of our grade is based off our interaction with other students. Crap. Pretty much we are graded for how well written and in depth our posts are. I can't just write a few lines that are short, sweet and to the point.
So on to why this class is broken. In the syllabus we are told that in every assignment we MUST, "post in depth, engaging comments on at least 3 students assignment posts. If discussion is started then it must be pursued". Fuck. I hate talking to people I don't care about/know. Not to mention there is SO much writing. "Analyze this ad with these 30 questions (each with multiple parts), now break down your analysis, describe what parts of the ad relate to this breakdown" Pretty much a fancy way of saying 'split the hairs on a hair". One prior assignment took me almost 5 hrs to complete. I was furious over what hair splitting was required. So as an experiment on the next ad breakdown we had to choose an ad for a product and repeat the same 5 hr breakdown and engage in in-depth discussion. So in my rage I picked the most racist soap ad I could find from the early colonial age of the US. NOTE: By no means do I agree with the content, I simply wanted to choose something that no one would want to talk about. Plus I was curious to see if the professor even commented. I pretty much ignored the "race" elephant in the room and treated it like any normal soap ad. I'm actually quite proud of how PG and neutral stanced it was. As suspected I got few comments and nothing engaging... I also got 50/50 despite ignoring a major factor in the ad. I'm beginning to doubt the professor cares or is even looking at these.
For the next ad we had to choose a product typically marketed to one gender and create an ad targeting the opposite gender, accompanied by the normal hair splitting breakdown. After debating mustache trimmers for women and tampons for men, I decided to focus on beer. Most big beer ads involve sexy women trying to get young males to drink their piss weak beer. I won't go into full detail, but the main images on my ad included passed out college girls (SFW), beer bongs and hand standing on a keg. Prior to the actual writing I included a paragraph criticizing the poor, complicated instructions for the assignment, questioning the thought process behind its construction and I quote "clearly the writer has a fetish for fonts and accents, because no two lines are the same format. A confusing mess of italics, bold, bullets, size changes, font changes and un-shortened hyperlinks". Once again I got 50/50 despite nearly calling the professor a hack.
Thanks for reading my rant. I just needed to type it out so I can get it off my mind. Now I get to dive into whatever assignment was released today.
So onto school being broken. I won't lie, I'm quite bitter about my experience at community college. I've felt a held back, misinformed and/or cheated. Case in point, I'm pursuing my 3rd certificate... why? Because the other 2 were dropped from the curriculum before I could complete them, leaving me with a few transferable classes, and alot that were rather certificate specific. Not to mention the counselor who helped design my schedule 2 semesters ago had 2 of my 3 classes not even listed on my certificate. HOWEVER I have learned. I take any advice they give me with a heavy pinch of salt. Btw the school has a 23% graduation rate.
Many professors I've had at this school are doing it as a side job or coasting until retirement. Most have no F's to give. So every class I take I walk into with a neutral attitude. I let the professor dictate how the class will go. If they have energy and passion then I'll match it, if they have no F's then I return the favor.One class I am taking now I believe is called like "Culture, Gender and Race in Media". It's an online class. It's highly based around discussion and a blog for the class. Now I'm not the most social person. I'm content to do an assignment with the given instructions, turn it in and then move on with my day. However an alarming portion of our grade is based off our interaction with other students. Crap. Pretty much we are graded for how well written and in depth our posts are. I can't just write a few lines that are short, sweet and to the point.
So on to why this class is broken. In the syllabus we are told that in every assignment we MUST, "post in depth, engaging comments on at least 3 students assignment posts. If discussion is started then it must be pursued". Fuck. I hate talking to people I don't care about/know. Not to mention there is SO much writing. "Analyze this ad with these 30 questions (each with multiple parts), now break down your analysis, describe what parts of the ad relate to this breakdown" Pretty much a fancy way of saying 'split the hairs on a hair". One prior assignment took me almost 5 hrs to complete. I was furious over what hair splitting was required. So as an experiment on the next ad breakdown we had to choose an ad for a product and repeat the same 5 hr breakdown and engage in in-depth discussion. So in my rage I picked the most racist soap ad I could find from the early colonial age of the US. NOTE: By no means do I agree with the content, I simply wanted to choose something that no one would want to talk about. Plus I was curious to see if the professor even commented. I pretty much ignored the "race" elephant in the room and treated it like any normal soap ad. I'm actually quite proud of how PG and neutral stanced it was. As suspected I got few comments and nothing engaging... I also got 50/50 despite ignoring a major factor in the ad. I'm beginning to doubt the professor cares or is even looking at these.
For the next ad we had to choose a product typically marketed to one gender and create an ad targeting the opposite gender, accompanied by the normal hair splitting breakdown. After debating mustache trimmers for women and tampons for men, I decided to focus on beer. Most big beer ads involve sexy women trying to get young males to drink their piss weak beer. I won't go into full detail, but the main images on my ad included passed out college girls (SFW), beer bongs and hand standing on a keg. Prior to the actual writing I included a paragraph criticizing the poor, complicated instructions for the assignment, questioning the thought process behind its construction and I quote "clearly the writer has a fetish for fonts and accents, because no two lines are the same format. A confusing mess of italics, bold, bullets, size changes, font changes and un-shortened hyperlinks". Once again I got 50/50 despite nearly calling the professor a hack.
Thanks for reading my rant. I just needed to type it out so I can get it off my mind. Now I get to dive into whatever assignment was released today.
o.o
Anyway, I found your account on the "Branding" assignment you had gone through interesting. I was reminded of the earlier days I was in the fandom, and just for the humor of the moment, I'd design ads for products branded for "Furry" characters, the most challenging of course was creating appeal for products for dual sexed characters like the Chakats.
Hang in there bud.
I hope everything is going ok though! I'm sorry to hear about your family member :c Take all the time you need to do whatever it is you need to do!