My First Week Back - Fall 2010 Edition

I've made it through my first week; It's a bit of the good, and the bad - and a bit of the middle.

PHP is amazing, not that I had any doubts. I like the idea of no tests, just coding and doing a final project. I wish more of my web development classes had been like that. It still amazes me that the 1000 level programming class doesn't use C instead of Visual Basic. Almost everything I've done so far has C-like syntax. When you know C, it makes learning perl, javascript and PHP easier. If you know a little C then you already know how to do loops and if statements. After that, it seems to me that it is simply a matter of filling in the gaps.

Early American History is definitely the bad. I'm trying to be positive here, the teacher is obviously an intelligent and personable guy, he knows his subject well, but he's another technophobe. What is it with SPC's social science department? Do they kidnap neoluddites from some compound in Montana where the most complex tool allowed is a lever? I really want to know.

Sure, I understand that some people goof off with computers in class. I don't understand it (hey, one way or another you're paying for that class), but I know it happens. Fine. Treat it just like texting in class and boot them. SPC gives you the tools to monitor network use. Learn to use them so people who need a computer for note taking can do that. Simple.

Apart from that, the Social Science Building at Clearwater campus is kind of ancient (well, Florida ancient) and weird. Also uncomfortable. I sat in my high school desk in class on Tuesday. Not a desk like I had in high school, but the very same one. The years since I last sat there haven't been any better to that desk than they have to me.

Tonight I had ethics. I'm not sure what to make of it yet. On the upside, the teacher seems interesting. On the downside? Group work and potentially lots of it. Ugh. I really expected he'd be another "NO FILTHY TECHNOLOGY IN MY CLASSROOM," as there was nothing in our student MIS until today, the day of class. That's always a bad omen. It usually means the teacher doesn't know how to use the system, and I'm going into class not knowing what to expect.

He isn't the computer literacy poster boy, but he isn't a jerk about it either. So that's fine by me.

. . .

I have to admit he makes me a little uneasy though. He's a religious sort. That's fine, I have no problem with religion, even if I'm not especially conventionally religious these days. For the curious, I'm a "Yoko and Me" kind of guy. I prefer religion to be private or at least confined to a house of worship. I've had some bad experiences with Christianity (well, at least with some of that faith's more enthusiastic members in the original sense of that word) and I do my best not to let that color my interaction with others. That stuff that happened in the way back when - yeah, it's done but I still think about it more than I'd like.

I guess I'm being a little vague here. There was nothing he said or did (other than stating that in his day job, he's a preacher man) that was out of line - my highly oversensitive amber lights just started going off. I'm sure it'll be fine. I'll get through this class, and that will be that.

. . .

Enough of that now. I was pretty pleased to get through an entire school day without rain. I'll have some more of that please. Maybe I can finally get a decent night's sleep. I've spent the entire two weeks prior to this setting up a good sleep schedule - up at 10 AM giving me enough sleep and time to get things done before class. Every morning this week? Up at seven AM. Ouch.

One of the things I'm really excited about this term is the class project in PHP. I need a six page minimum website that utilizes an SQL database. I already have some ideas I'm working on. I'll write more about that later.

Source: http://sackingthellamas.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-first-week-back-fall-2010-edition.html