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ending on the most confusing note ever
Apr. 11th, 2011 08:30 amOkay, so the good news is that last Friday was the last lab and since this lab is the last class in my Master's that means I'm done with classes, I will never have to take another class in this Master's again.
The bad news is that, of course, it isn't that easy. I still have 2 lab reports due this Friday, a review 22 April, and a final 29 April.
(Lab Final. I've had lab finals before in undergrad but this graduate lab was such a joke, I am really not sure what in seven hells they're going to be asking us.)
The even worse news is that while I started out with 98s on these lab reports, my grades have been slipping, and here's why: #1, I'm really just running out of shits to give, I am scraping the bottom of the barrel of fucks, my spoon drawer is completely empty. It's to be expected, after four months of 70-80 hour weeks (yeah, I did the math), I only wish I could have held on for another month.
But #2: these last few labs have not been helpful either. There have been a lot of labs where different groups in the class ran different catalyst amounts, or different times, so that we could analyze the data as a whole. However, that often meant we didn't get the data until, say, Monday before a lab is due on Friday. So instead of having 2 weeks to write each report, I have 2 weeks to write my intro and my background and then 4 days to write the meat of the analysis.
In addition to the extremely crunched timescale: the last few labs have been, uh, "creative" labs. Let's try something new labs. This isn't in your lab manual labs. So all we have to work off of is a 2-page handout (usually shitty, written by someone with no english skills and missing half the information, because who the fuck cares, right) without any of the questions or error analysis guidelines or anything else that helps us to write the report. We also don't usually get the whole thing until, yeah, the Monday before the lab is due. Plus, because they're "new" labs, they don't work. The last two experiments haven't really done what they were supposed to do, at all. So I'm struggling to do a full analysis on broken data using some idiot student's terrible instructions. Error analysis: this lab sucks and that's why it's wrong, there's your error analysis.
And even the ones in the manual have been so poorly written -- for example, on the last lab, I thought an example in the manual was part of the introduction section (there is always an introduction filling us in on the science involved in the experiment) and as it turns out it was an analysis we were supposed to do. Well, I didn't know that, because it doesn't say that in the manual. It doesn't, I'm not being a liar, I checked. However, because all the other (full-time) students are part of research groups who have this ladder in place, they all got to look at reports from last year, so they knew exactly what analysis to include.
For real: I've seen their reports come back with the complete wrong list of chemicals/materials, with giant circles saying "THIS IS FROM LAST YEAR, WE DID NOT USE THIS IN THIS YEAR'S LAB" so it's really obvious that they just copied last year's lab from someone -- and they get, what, -1. I omit a section because the manual doesn't tell me to do it, and I get -5, while everyone who copied that section gets the points. Is this fair?
So one of the reports I'm doing for this Friday is a makeup report, an optional one that will replace my lowest grade; I don't need to do it but I need to do it because once again, being a part-time student has ended up hurting my grades.
Like it always does.
So that's awesome. I can't even really celebrate being done with class because it isn't really "over" yet - plus there's that final - and I am so ready to just put my head down and not move for a month.
The bad news is that, of course, it isn't that easy. I still have 2 lab reports due this Friday, a review 22 April, and a final 29 April.
(Lab Final. I've had lab finals before in undergrad but this graduate lab was such a joke, I am really not sure what in seven hells they're going to be asking us.)
The even worse news is that while I started out with 98s on these lab reports, my grades have been slipping, and here's why: #1, I'm really just running out of shits to give, I am scraping the bottom of the barrel of fucks, my spoon drawer is completely empty. It's to be expected, after four months of 70-80 hour weeks (yeah, I did the math), I only wish I could have held on for another month.
But #2: these last few labs have not been helpful either. There have been a lot of labs where different groups in the class ran different catalyst amounts, or different times, so that we could analyze the data as a whole. However, that often meant we didn't get the data until, say, Monday before a lab is due on Friday. So instead of having 2 weeks to write each report, I have 2 weeks to write my intro and my background and then 4 days to write the meat of the analysis.
In addition to the extremely crunched timescale: the last few labs have been, uh, "creative" labs. Let's try something new labs. This isn't in your lab manual labs. So all we have to work off of is a 2-page handout (usually shitty, written by someone with no english skills and missing half the information, because who the fuck cares, right) without any of the questions or error analysis guidelines or anything else that helps us to write the report. We also don't usually get the whole thing until, yeah, the Monday before the lab is due. Plus, because they're "new" labs, they don't work. The last two experiments haven't really done what they were supposed to do, at all. So I'm struggling to do a full analysis on broken data using some idiot student's terrible instructions. Error analysis: this lab sucks and that's why it's wrong, there's your error analysis.
And even the ones in the manual have been so poorly written -- for example, on the last lab, I thought an example in the manual was part of the introduction section (there is always an introduction filling us in on the science involved in the experiment) and as it turns out it was an analysis we were supposed to do. Well, I didn't know that, because it doesn't say that in the manual. It doesn't, I'm not being a liar, I checked. However, because all the other (full-time) students are part of research groups who have this ladder in place, they all got to look at reports from last year, so they knew exactly what analysis to include.
For real: I've seen their reports come back with the complete wrong list of chemicals/materials, with giant circles saying "THIS IS FROM LAST YEAR, WE DID NOT USE THIS IN THIS YEAR'S LAB" so it's really obvious that they just copied last year's lab from someone -- and they get, what, -1. I omit a section because the manual doesn't tell me to do it, and I get -5, while everyone who copied that section gets the points. Is this fair?
So one of the reports I'm doing for this Friday is a makeup report, an optional one that will replace my lowest grade; I don't need to do it but I need to do it because once again, being a part-time student has ended up hurting my grades.
Like it always does.
So that's awesome. I can't even really celebrate being done with class because it isn't really "over" yet - plus there's that final - and I am so ready to just put my head down and not move for a month.
