Techno geek FTW

In case you had not noticed, I am somewhat of a nerd. When I introduced myself, I already mentioned that I am always in front of a television or a computer (or both), which has made me very familiar with technical issues. The UU has a computer in every classroom that is attached to a beamer for presentations. It is built into a big box with confusing buttons. Confusing buttons always make me curious.

Unfortunately, it was not until my second year that I really got to play with them. I had a powerpoint and needed to handle the computer. The instruction pamphlet by the machine taught me the basics and the professor present, who was a bit of a geek herself, taught me the finer controls. It is nice to be able to help other students and even other professors when they are having trouble with it.

Anyway, I always carry my laptop with me to classes. This is firstly because I can type much faster than I can write by hand and secondly because digital notes can be distributed much more easily and can be shared online on my blog. Originally I just put them online with the idea of students coming along and discussing and correcting my work. Instead, it seems I am the go-to guy for skipping homework and finding the notes to classes people missed or skipped.

Most classrooms in the UU are fit perfectly for laptop use. Well, as long as there are only half a dozen laptop users. The buildings are pretty authentic and not build with an endless supply of electrical sockets. In fact, I often try to be the first one to enter a classroom so that I can make sure I am seated in one of the four of five seats that have the easiest time getting electricity. Lately I have been bringing an extension cord so that more laptops can be plugged in and I am guaranteed a worry-free class.

I have to say though, the technical assistance is amazing. There is standard documentation for most technical questions (like connecting to the protected wi-fi) and the few times I did have trouble, a quick e-mail to the IT crowd resolved the issues almost immediately. And Wi-fi coverage is extensive; I do not know of even one room in University buildings where I cannot connect easily to it.

Being graded

I have always had a weird relationship with being graded. I hate failing, I love high grades, but I have never truly been able to predict whether I will get a high grade or a low grade. You would think that means I am incredibly nervous when receiving grades, but the opposite is true. Just last week I got a grade which I did not bother to check until a few days had gone by first. Not because I was nervous; I had simply forgotten the grade was published that week.

Basically, I already knew I had a passing grade, just not what kind of passing grade. I can be incredibly confident when it comes to written assignments, maybe more so than I should be. In this case I had received a score of 60%, made into 67% because the whole class had difficulty with the exam. I finished the course with 74% average and I am pretty pleased with the result.

On the other hand, I can never be pleased with the results of individual assessment. That is, when I write a paper and I get anything less than full points I am inclined to argue and fuss. I also get extremely nervous and anxious when receiving the results, because there are far fewer excuses to hide behind if there is negative feedback. It sounds really silly when writing it down like this, but it is still true.

Like mentioned before, I suffer from a pretty bad case of imposter syndrome. No matter what I am doing, I get the sense that if I make the tiniest slip up, people will figure out I have no idea what I am doing and strip me of my bachelor’s degree (and, in a few months, of my master’s degree). Rationally, I know that this is their problem and not mine. If people were really going to critique, for instance, my spelling by saying it is so abysmal that I should have been kicked out of this university on the first day, then it is not my spelling that is the problem but their inability to properly value the properties required of a student. Had my spelling truly been that important, I would indeed have been kicked out sooner.

It sounds a bit Zen, but the important part is your own sense of accomplishment, the way that you value yourself, not some grade that has been given to you by some other person. And yes, I say that fully knowing that I would have been elatedly rubbing my grade in your faces if it had been over 80%.

Being ill as a student

I went to bed last Sunday with a pounding head ache and a very runny noice. My teeth were hurting and I had a very sore throat. I had not been feeling very well that whole day, but it was not until evening that I really started feeling terrible. The whole of Monday was spent on the couch playing video games to get my mind off of being ill. I still do not feel a hundred percent at the moment, but at least the head ache is gone so I can think clearly again.

I do not know if it is the common cold or a minor flew, but it is very similar to the virus I have been catching roughly annually. It has usually happened at the right time, though I do recall taking one exam with a very runny nose and a slight head ache.

What I want to about today is the policy for ill students. Just like high school, the professors really do not want people to call in sick. Lectures are usually optional, so you are expected to just stay away if you are ill; get someone else’s notes and make do with that. Students are allowed to miss one seminar, though it does not matter whether that is because of illness, tardiness or simply not preparing.

The strangest policy is with exams. You can call in sick and take the test later, but doing so wastes your repair option (the option to take a new exam if you missed all but one seminar and your average grade is between 40 and 55 percent; it allows students who failed the course to have another go at it). Obviously this is still the smart thing to do if you can hardly lift a pen and will not get a grade of at least 40%. But it is a crazy thing to do if you expect your performance will only be influenced a little bit; you are giving up the security of the repair option.

I have always believed that this is the wrong way to do it. These policies seriously hurt the students who are actually ill and feel forced to drag themselves to an examination room because the rules are too strict. It prevents students from getting results that accurately portray their abilities. Then again, it does provide material for a ranting blog post, so there is that.

Being prepared

Last Friday I talked about my master thesis. During the weekend I got an email from my professor advisor to set up a time for the first meeting. I have been fretting ever since about what I should and should not do to prepare for this talk. In two previous blogs I mentioned that it is impossible to be completely prepared for anything, and I wanted to expand on this.

My first year there was a course called introduction to Criminal Law. It was incredibly fascinating and I seemed to have an above average understanding of the material. I summarized the major points and posted the summaries online via the university website and got loads of compliments on how I had helped people pass that course. Meanwhile… I failed with an average grade of just under the minimum of a 5.5 out of 10. It took me a while to figure out what I had done wrong.

Partially it was because I was not used to answering questions in as much detail as was required, but it also had to do with me preparing in a different way. Coming from a background in exact sciences, I had always needed to learn how formulas worked. I had never needed to memorize them. Likewise, I was far more interested in learning how to use particular criminal provision to judge whether a particular behavior is criminal or not, rather than memorizing the names of the four different reasons we punish criminals.

My problem was that I had been prepared to understand the problems without preparing how to quickly and accurately solve them. Even then there is always more to learn and more to do. You can put stickers in your law books to more easily find specific provisions. You can write the names of jurisprudence by the articles and the articles by the jurisprudence. You can memorize summaries of the material and of the jurisprudence, or just memorize the literature itself. But when you get to that stage, where all the information is readily available in your head, you start thinking critically about some of the things you are being taught and, probably out of curiosity, start reading the quoted sources in the literature or reviews of the literature. You might look up other handbooks and start comparing the different points of view. Having an endless amount of time on your hands, you could become more knowledgeable than the professor testing you.

You have to draw the line somewhere. Students do not have an endless amount of time and are allowed to spend time on other things than studying. That may sound like an excuse, but it is the simple truth. A line has to be drawn somewhere and every student gets to decide for themselves where to draw it. As long as they are willing to live with the results, of course.

A scary exam

Last Friday I woke up around seven in the morning, feeling significantly less sleepy than I normally do when waking up. Of course, I had spent of the night awake while twisting and turning in bed, filled with troubling thoughts. It was a combination of pondering the various consequences of moralistic viewpoints and needing to wake up really early that make me nervous enough not to get enough sleep. The advantage is that I will feel really awake until later in the afternoon and my exam was just before lunch.

I had my breakfast, packed my things and headed for the bus. It is a two hour commute, so I made sure to use my time by studying a little more. I wonder if you can ever be fully prepared for an exam. Is it not true that the more you know about a subject, the more you realize there is yet to learn? I arrived in Utrecht  90 minutes early, letting me buy a lunch and some sports drinks to provide the mental energy I was sure to need later on. I arrived at the examination room an hour early and used the time to read up on a mathematical theorem; it is always important to relax just before an exam instead of nervously cramming every single fact you can find. If you do that, it becomes very difficult to handle two hours of intensive thinking.

The door open eventually and all the students take their seats. I take out my two law books, my bundle of jurisprudence and three working pens. My name is written on the answer sheet and I start reading the information on the front page of the exam. We are not allowed to look at the actual questions yet, but everything that is read now will not have to be read later.

The professor present announces that we can begin and I check it out. Three general questions and a case. I can feel my mind formulating answers to all three questions and start writing down keywords on a blank sheet. I glance at the clock and start planning my answers. I have two hours, or 120 minutes. I can get 70 points for all the questions. That means I have a little over 17 minutes per 10 points worth of questions. I regularly check the clock to make sure I am not falling too much behind.

After a lot of stress, with just two minutes to spare, I hurriedly finish my final question. Had I had more time, I would have searched for a couple more provisions of criminal law to strengthen my arguments, but two minutes was not enough time to both find and incorporate it. I handed in the exam, packed my things and left the room.

I thought I did well, as I walked to the bus home, though it is always impossible to tell. I had to guess one answer, but I thought it was a good guess. Not all my answers were complete, but they all seemed correct. Like always, I will not be sure until the grades become available.