I never know what to write before the jump. Writing some introduction-like thing always
feels too cliché and I don’t want to reveal too much about my week that it
gives it away immediately, but I don’t want what I say to be too lame either.
It is quite a predicament I face that I am curious if you face as well. Do you also feel pressured to write something
introduction-like before the jump? Tell
me your thoughts. Or not. I can only expect so much.
So this past week (as was foreshadowed last post) was indeed
hell. I don’t really feel it necessary to
fill you in on how well I did on my midterms, but because I don’t know whether
you like hearing about my life in such detail I will include such details. I got slightly above the average on my E7
(MatLab, remember) midterm. I wish it
was higher, but whatever. I do not
currently know the average for math but I suspect I did about average on that
midterm. Kind of disappointed in that
but, again, whatever. I figure out my
score on physics tomorrow morning in my 8am discussion. The average was a 62 with standard deviation
17 (percents these are), and I suspect that I did above the average, possibly
even more than one standard deviation above the average, so I’m excited to hear
about that midterm. It will slightly
mitigate the despair I feel waking up for so early a class.
Friday, the end of my hellish week, brought the beginning of
a great weekend though. Matt Bergendahl
came up to visit this weekend and it was pretttttttty amazing. Now, Kevin and I were worried because in
Berkeley there really is only two things to do. Study, and eat. Luckily, I think Matt was satisfied by just
hanging out and eating. And boy did we
do a lot of eating. I spent a lot of
money this weekend on food because we basically went to every good food hotspot
in Berkeley, which there are a lot of.
Yeah so to sum up the weekend it was spent hanging with him, eating, and
playing Settlers. Fun stuff. A nice relief from the hell of the previous
week.
My parents are coming up this weekend. That lacked any transition whatsoever so I’m
sorry about that, but I’m writing this at the library at 1:09 am and I’m on
schedule to leave at 1:30 to go get milk at Bear market (campus food store)
which I will then consume with cereal (I’m feelin Raisin Bran) before heading
off to bed. I just qualified my lack of
transition with a lack of time to write this post which is becoming a highly
flawed argument considering I am spending the time to write this sentence so I
should probably sto-
And so yes back to my original point. The folks are coming up this weekend and I am
excited and also sad. Excited because it
will be awesome to see them and do a bunch of stuff with them. Sad because I
have a chem midterm on Monday that I realllllly need to study for because that
is my hardest class and I need to make up for my previous performance on
midterm #1. We’ll see how the weekend
goes, I’m hoping I can get in at least some decent studying.
So I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that none of
you support Rick Santorum and if you do well then don’t pull a Gene on me (don’t
hate me for making a reference to a book that seems to be hated by everyone
except me). Well, because we all hate
Rick Santorum, I would like to bring up a video where we can make fun of him
and confirm our resolve to move to Canada if he gets elected. Credits go completely to Cole for this, since
he was the one who showed me, but yeah… I can’t believe people actually like
this guy.
It’s almost 1:30 so I’m going to close this post now. Until next week, I hope y’all have a great
week and do well on your tests if, like at Cal, it’s midterm season.
Love ya,
Jason
I never worry about writing before the jump; I just write my post in its entirety then cut it off at the first paragraph.
ReplyDeleteAs for Santorum, while he is definitely my fourth favorite Republican candidate still in the running, and while I think the majority of Americans should go to college, I think there is still a sizable amount of Americans for whom college doesn't necessarily make the most sense. Think about farmers who grow up learning from their parents. If they want to continue to farm for the duration of their career, they don't need to spend money on an education that won't help them as much as the knowledge they already acquired growing up on the farm.
Yes, I am in the same belief you are, however my point in sharing this video was completely different.
ReplyDelete1) I agree with Obama's stance that as many people as possible should go to college, however I will concede the point that under the circumstances you specified there can be exceptions to this. Obama's statement however, under my interpretation, was saying more that we should be trying to make higher education more available to people. I would argue that there is no adverse effects on society from promoting higher education and there is no way that, under what Santorum is trying to get Obama's statement to sound like, Obama would forcibly require higher education.
2) "I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image not his." This statement absolutely infuriates me for a variety of reasons. 1) Are you so daft as to believe that every single institution has the goal of converting people into mini-Obama's. You either are, which then I just feel sorry for you, or more likely you actually don't believe this and you are just spouting out conservative propaganda in hopes for votes. Which, is smart from a campaign strategy point of view, but in my opinion is disgraceful. 2) This statement is interpreted to me as "school's are converting people into liberals" and "let's stop this liberalization so we can indoctrinate our keys into believing in conservative ideals." I don't have a problem with conservative ideals, however I believe in people creating their own opinions so the idea of indoctrination to me is disgusting. Now, you could definitely argue that the school's indoctrinate us, but I think it would be fairly easy to argue that a public institution committed to striving for political neutrality that although might have a few inclinations in one direction or the other, is much less indoctrinating than something stated as purposefully indoctrinating. And, lets take an aside and make a completely biased argument that has no actual factual support but that I hope you can see. This home-indoctrination that Santorum explicitly described corresponding with conservative values will most likely also correspond with religious ideals that are in direct conflict with science. Now, I realize this is a very bold argument held up by not much evidence but lets be real now. Let's think what Santorum was implying. And frankly, I don't want the future of our generation believing in creationism. Yeah I'm going to stop ranting now because I've made too many opinionated points that lack proper evidence. Basically, I agree with you Derek and that was not the point I was going for at all.
And actually to address one last point; if you want to argue that the resources used to create this hopeful revival of interest in higher education could be better played elsewhere to help that sizable amount of Americans that wouldn't benefit from college I would be willing to concede there might be a better allocation of those resources. I'm mainly arguing that what Rick Santorum said was dumb because he's trying to get people to believe that Obama is forcing people to go to college (wrong) and he's supporting the indoctrination of America (which I vehemently disagree with, especially regarding the implied beliefs that will be forced upon these people). Yeah, now I'm done. I probably should have been paying attention to my math lecture, but this was a lot more fun.
Okay, firstly as all of you follow my comments in depth, you know that I write comments as I read blogs, rather than at the end, because if y'all are like me, you like hearty comments (and only Communists and Rick Santorum like sparse comments band wagon band wagon you better like long comments or else). So I haven't yet read Jason's political philosophy above me, but I'm really excited to.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that caught my eye was that your course has multiple midterms. I think that's funny. It's not the only class I've seen do that, but obviously "midterm #2" is a misnomer. In contrast, my econ professor calls our tests (worth 20% of our grade each) "quizzes". Both are kind of stupid.
I'm in class right now but I'm really excited to watch the video. Have you seen the Rick Perry equivalent about how he's proud to be a Christian: http://skepchick.org/2011/12/perry-not-ashamed-for-some-reason/
I know he's out of the race now, but how offensive: "there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school" . . . . . why is that a problem? (And I'm pretty sure kids can pray in school, schools can't FORCE kids to pray. Interesting and apparently unimportant difference)
I do the same as Derek, jump-wise.
Rick Santorum: YOU'RE A SNOB.
Just adding my own enraged liberal caps there. Sorry you had to see that.
ReplyDeleteIt seems we agree on everything, Jason, we just chose different points to focus on.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure multiple midterms is a misnomer, though. I always thought of midterm as meaning "an exam that takes place at some point between the beginning of the course and the end of it," not necessarily "an exam that takes place at the midpoint of a course." Semantics, I guess.
And what is the significance of naming your child Lucas? Is that just a decision that you have made in the last week? Did I miss something in the post that indicated such?
I have nothing substantive to contribute to this line of discussion at present -- other than every year the privilege of voting seems less shiny to me and more sad. I miss how I used to feel when elections came 'round.
ReplyDeleteBut there is humor -- and you should look at the candidates (especially Santorum) in their Bad Lip Reading videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js3BYcHmBhE
I didn't have any idea for the title so I thought I would name it something random. But I do want a child named Lucas.
ReplyDeleteReally? Devin and I like the name Violet (I know, we're a little young to have planned that far, but we're epic so don't worry). Well, I really like the name Violet and he's going along with it. He made up a girl's name (Azelea) that sounds like another flower. So if we have twins? A little garden bed of flowers?
ReplyDeleteAzelea, like Azaleas, the flowering shrub?
ReplyDeleteOh, right. His name is spelled Azela. Not Azelea.
ReplyDelete