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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Thursday 3 March 2005 (Day View)

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03.03.2005 – Thursday 3 March – Lectures & Green Goo

Morning

• Today I, amongst other things, attended my introductory CSSE3004 lecture. This course is not sounding like much fun. The lecturer set the mood well, first by ignoring a sudden influx of late people, then blandly asking several to close the door behind them, only to have it opened by the next person, and finally commenting that people should, in future, attempt to be on time and that he’d put this down to it being the first lecture. This was in spite of him knowing that this lecture had confusingly been advertised as occurring in two different locations – something that was probably his fault and that he’d been informed of prior but had not, as far as I’m aware, attempted to rectify, and it was obvious these people were those who had gone to the wrong location. Anyone with a personality would have made a little joke, or done something other than continuing to lecture about nothing much, in a management-tinged monotone; perhaps whoever told me that he had the “personality of an ant” was right after all. Then, after two mind-numbing hours, we traipsed to another lecture theatre where we were asked to fill out a form including what times we were available. This I couldn’t do as I hadn’t yet finalised, figured out, or even remembered any of my timetable, yet when I asked if it would be alright to hand the form in this evening, or some other time after I’d had a chance to check my timetable, I was told no – that I should just hand in a blank form if I was unable to fill it out now. That’s obviously ridiculously pointless, and smells nastily of process for processes sake regardless of logic, and I’m beginning to think that might be a lot of what we’re going to be learning in our assigned groups; here’s hoping I get a good group or this could be unbearable. We were also subjected to the standard plagiarism warnings – copy even two sentences, and rather than say “it’s only two sentences”, the lecturer will refer the matter to the school for disciplinary action.

Lunch

• Green goo, technically dhal, potatoes and spinach mush, and rice, were purchased and consumed by myself at Indooroopilly, while Maz ate unhealthy junk food and Kieran discussed the virtues of meat.

Evening

• My evening lecture, the first INFS3202 lecture, was a stark contrast to the dull management-drone morning. Kieran, Maz and I walked into the lecture to find the lecturer having difficulty getting the projector to work, but making a few quips about it. We were told that team-based courses result in many students not learning anything, and that this lecturer doesn’t care if we copy things off the web if we feel like it, provided we don’t copy any other student’s work as the school will automatically discover that. Unfortunately though, he has taken several of the components I wished to learn out of this course and put them into a new course running in second semester. This is a bit of a problem, as I was relying on them to help me learn some skills I think I’ll need in second semester, and now I’ll have to learn them in private study. Kieran then had a chat about Microsoft, as he is wont to do, and we left, skipping the second half of the lecture as it was about such in-depth concepts as “What is the Internet” – not something I feel like learning on a Thursday.

Comment by Maz – Thursday 3 March 2005, 9:14 PM

  It was not unhealty junk food. It was chips because I wasn't really hungry.

Comment by Lucas – Friday 4 March 2005, 3:03 PM

  Good luck in the project, i'm sure you saw us slaving over sprinklers last year!
  
  Key to doing well: have a good group. Unfortunately it is something you can't control. Individual brilliance can't make up for a garbage group.

Comment by Ned – Friday 4 March 2005, 9:15 PM

  That being the main problem with group projects – I do not want my mark to reflect the aptitude, or otherwise, of others outside my control.