Exams

I gave all of my classes exams in the past two weeks. It has been a good process for me to evaluate the students and my expectations. For one class, my expectations are running high, and for the other, either my expectations are low or the students are exceptional. Because my data points are two, I have too few degrees of freedom to make any good decisions.

I hate subjective measures of anything. To me, subjective means do whatever you want. Being overly analytical, I want to ensure that my grading is consistent across all papers and classes. All teachers are subject to grading fatigue and either score higher as they start or finish grading. Some people know which they do and can compensate, I don't and can't.

Thus I find myself trying to decide whether I should shuffle the papers before I grade them. The papers at the top of the pile were turned in last during the testing period. These papers come from students who took longer, but does that mean that they perform worse than those who finished earlier? If I shuffle the papers, I really don't lose anything beyond intermixing of the two classes that took the test. If I don't shuffle the papers, I may combine the grading fatigue effect with the potential self selection problem of later papers being of worse quality.

I had never thought of this before.

The Potpie Bandit

Since I arrived at CSUF, there have been thefts of various office items on our floor. Initially, it was change or knickknacks. Then, it was a piece of a tripod used to create archive photos of documents that went missing (worthless without the tripod, but expensive to replace). Finally, a very vocal professor realized that he had been robbed of his potpies. Evidently, the bandit had been munching on the potpies while canvassing the floor for items of value in the offices. Thus, the thief was given the name The Potpie Bandit.

Today, I got hit. I was here until around 10pm and back at 6:30 am. In that time, there are very few people who could have entered my office and pilfered my possessions. I believe that I have had a few (of my hundred or so) books taken. I can't tell which ones are gone, but there are spaces on the shelf where there weren't before. I am certain that they will find new homes via eBay.

More importantly, I lost about 10 Kudos bars. They were my precious breakfast and afternoon treats. Evidently the potpie bandit likes both sugary and savory snacks. Either that, or the economic downturn IS really affecting everyone.

Obvious (cont.)

I went to the Dean's office today to pick up a reimbursement check. While there I had a chat with one of the administrative assistants. I asked her about the budget cuts and told her about the Great Depression conversation with the colleague. She ensured me that my job was safe and the first people to go would be the lecturers. That puts me more towards the middle of the pack in case they decide to fire anyone. Maybe I bought those water barrels in haste.

Who 'we' are

I grew up in the early 90's and inherited the 'Gen-X" label. I found this clip on a friend's blog and thought it deserved an acknowledgment here. I have never found a satisfactory description of the general sense of who the X-ers are until now. Maybe it is because we do not see us as a 'we,' nor do we promote ourselves like the generations before and after us. We're just doing our own thing, making the world a better place.

Obvious

Everyone who has been awake during the last week knows that we have a congressional bailout plan in progress. If you are readings this, you know how I feel about it.

I was talking with a colleague about the status of the economy the other day. He was rather worried about slipping into a depression. I asked him what the unemployment rate was during the great depression (estimated to be around 25%). I told him that if our situation exactly mimicked the great depression, and we followed the basic rule of probability, he would have a 75% chance of not being unemployed.

The real problem is that people have become acclimated to spending more than they make. Even if these people retain their jobs and have a decrease in pay, at the very least they risk a significant shock in their home life. All of those consumer goods (e.g. $1000 fishing rods, guns, boats, and 4-wheelers) that they bought as an investment (read: excuse to live outside of their means) are now devaluing proportionately to the ability of others to purchase them. So unfortunately, their consumerism simply cannot help them lift themselves out of this misery.

In my effort to ready myself for the very unlikely event that I am significantly impacted by the economy*, I bought four 55 gallon water barrels yesterday. At least I will have something to drink until this resolves itself. Maybe I should buy a couple cases of Tang.


*footnote: Although I work at a union school and I have a signed two year agreement with an implicit agreement that I will work for 6 years toward tenure, I am one of about 85 new hires this year. Intuitively this means I am more likely to get axed than all but 84 members of the faculty (AND there are over 4000 faculty members here).

The elite Senate

I have never liked the Senate. The underlying principle behind the Senate is to establish a body of representatives who were less likely to be swayed by the whirlwind of fleeting public concerns from the ignorant masses. Thus, they get to serve 6 year terms and only 1/3 are up for election at a time.

In this case, I feel like the role of the Senate has been switched with that of the public. Apparently it was the public who wanted to ride out the storm a little longer before making a compulsive decision, and the Senate who was ignorant.

As promised, I encourage all voters to not re-elect any of the Senate yea voters, including and specifically, our two current Senators from the State of California, Senator Boxer and Senator Feinstein. I plan on reiterating this message in class during each election period until they are ousted from office. I also committed to do everything within my power to dissuade everyone that I met from supporting them, so consider this the first of many jabs. This makes me mad enough that I am even considering a run for office.

Hurray and congrats to the nay voters, may you be blessed with overwhelming success in your political careers.

My faith has been healed, kind of

I did something this week that I haven't done in a very long time. I wrote my senators and representative. Generally, I don't think that they care about me, in fact I know that they don't care about me. Nevertheless, I got mad enough at the bailout that I wrote them all e-mails. In fact I wrote Senator Feinstein twice about it. I promised to work hard against their political futures if they did not vote against the bill. They must have listened. Yeah right.

"Bush and a host of leading congressional figures had implored the lawmakers to pass the legislation despite howls of protest from their constituents back home. " This must have been a nail-biter... [the thoughts of some fictitious representative] "Do I trust the President who has lied to us at least a number of times about crises, or do I listen to the voters who elected me...?" I would have reported on the vote of my representative if the Clerk of the House website hadn't just crashed.

Congrats to the House for not supporting the bailout plan!! If I voted, I would keep voting for you.