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recent
I have had very few original thoughts lately... at least none that I am willing to share now, without further development, so I have nothing to write about. I have spent most of my time on Kayaking and our final report / presentation.
I feel a little bad for my group members in that I am not motivated in the least to do well on these. I see little value in them, for myself, or for anyone else. Given that we had only two weeks to work on it, there will be nothing ground breaking coming out of it, and therefore it has little value to the reader / viewer. For me, it has a little more value. Not because I am learning anything new (in fact, spending time on this is detracting from the time I could be using to explore new ideas) but it is valuable in that I have an opportunity to work with people in a non-critical setting. This means that I don't care about the outcome, and I am therefore free to explore new ways of working with people, (ways that I would not accept if the outcome actually had to be good). Of course, some of the group members may actually care about their grade, so I wish I could care more, but there is so much more that I prioritize above a grade... it's the biggest challenge of my life. I felt the same way when I was in school the first time, but then I thought I was just lazy. Now, I have a little more real-life experience so I can see that I was right then, and I am right now. Who developed this "grading" scheme, and what the hell were they thinking?
Anyway, we still did well on the presentation and the paper is looking nice as well, but it just feel likes such a stupid waste of time to me considering that there is no tangible output.
Anyway, these are some more photos taken from "The Hood". These are a little less flattering than those I posted a couple days ago, but still, it ain't that bad of a place.
I disagree with your comments regarding grades. If you were going to hire someone, what would you base it on? Obviously not grades alone, but if their grades were good their resume is one step closer to the hiring managers desk, rather than the trash can. While grades are NOT everything, they do provide some information on the capabilities of an individual.
Question: If you were to hire a new graduate out of college, and had 1,000 resume to sort through, what would be your approach?
Your kayak picutres are terrific! I am quit jealous. West Michigan has some really nice rivers, but nothing like your kayak areas. Shannon and I have a two seater kayak and have hit the water a number of times this past summer. This winter, I hope to build my own single kayak in the basement.
I guess I was not aware that the Universities goal was to make life easier for HR people. My goal sure isn't. My goal is to learn and explore ideas and concepts. Anything that gets in the way of that is counter-productive.
Grades in and of themselves are not bad, but they have a tendency to become the goal, and more priortiy is placed on them than on learning.
Likewise, writing a paper is not bad either, so long as it is serving to facilitate learning, or some other real-life goal, rather than to facilitate a grade. In this recent case, we prepared a presentation, which was very learningful because we had an opportunity to try our ideas out in semi-real-life settings. We also presented these ideas to others so that they can benefit as well. All the time for the paper however was spent formating the already old ideas into a structure that will benefit no one. Even since the presentation, some of my ideas had changed, but there is no time to both explore them and format it and hand it in. I think the time would have been much more well spent exploring the new ideas rather than rehashing the old ones... only for a grade.
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