Random Rants LIII: F My Life

[Takhisis]

Well, humanities/social studies have always been more relevant and trascendental than brick-laying, but it's nice to see that even their side acknowledges it.

 

[madviking]

I resent that remark.

okay.

"stupidly easy major or are stupidly smart."

 

[Camikaze]

i know some people who are pushing 3.9 but they're in stupidly easy majors.

That sort of thing kinda screws up the grading system in double degrees. For Law honours you've got to get at least an 80 average, but whereas Commerce/Law students can just easily pump out 95s and 100s from their Commerce courses, that's essentially impossible for e.g. Arts/Law students.

We kinda consider honour's degrees to be ridiculous, especially if it is for a relatively prestigious field like Physics. That said, universities love to cuddle HD students, but it has no value outside academia.

I don't really know what you mean here.

 

[Tahuti]

I don't really know what you mean here.

Here in the Netherlands, honours degrees are considered a waste of effort and time outside academia. However, universities have tried hard to promote such walking such a path to students.

 

[Camikaze]

I don't know the Dutch system, so do you mean an honours year? Honours for my degrees are just an award I'd apply for and receive if I can demonstrate high enough marks and research proficiency, not an extra course of study I'd have to undertake. My sister received honours for her degree, and that involved a few different courses, but replacing courses she otherwise would've had to do, rather than making her do additional courses. I think it gave her higher priority in the graduate program, which was a fairly direct employment benefit. Some degrees have an honours year, but that seems more like a European MA. Honours certainly adds value to a degree, but I'm not sure if it'd be worth an extra year to get it. So perhaps it's only valuable as an award of honours.

 

[Tahuti]

The Dutch system works roughly that way: If you perform really well in the first year and you can apply to be a honour's student, in which case you will get more mandatory courses in the second and third year, after which you will be awarded honour's degree alongside your bachelor's degree, or get a special honours title on your bachelor's degree. The nature of your honour's credentials differs per university, though the general system is roughly the same throughout the country.

 

[Takhisis]

But those are not the same as post-graduate degrees?

 

[Tahuti]

But those are not the same as post-graduate degrees?

Not at all. You can easily do post-graduate degrees if you have a regular graduate degree. The only benefit of a honoured-with-honours bachelor I could think of is that along the way you may be able to get special jobs at the university (i.e. bullying freshmen) which could you set up for letters of recommendation.

 

[Phrossack]

Here I am. In Missouri. A place with hot, intolerably humid summers. And it's mid-April. Not two days ago it was something in the 70s temperature-wise (ca. 20-26-ish C). If not hotter.



So can someone explain to me why it's snowing?

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Here I am. In Missouri. A place with hot, intolerably humid summers. And it's mid-April. Not two days ago it was something in the 70s temperature-wise (ca. 20-26-ish C). If not hotter.



So can someone explain to me why it's snowing?

Because of me.

 

[Takhisis]

Just use some anti-dandruff shampoo, man!

 

[Joecoolyo]

Here I am. In Missouri. A place with hot, intolerably humid summers. And it's mid-April. Not two days ago it was something in the 70s temperature-wise (ca. 20-26-ish C). If not hotter.



So can someone explain to me why it's snowing?

It snowed here in Iowa as well

 

[Phrossack]

Why is all the best music in languages I can't understand? I can't learn them all, much as I'd love to. Breton, Occitan, Lithuanian, Hungarian... the list always grows.

 

[sophie]

Why is all the best music in languages I can't understand? I can't learn them all, much as I'd love to. Breton, Occitan, Lithuanian, Hungarian... the list always grows.

Disagree:


Link to video.

Btw still annoyed that I have to resort to linking inferior versions of these songs. It's 2014 ferchrissake.

 

[Phrossack]

Disagree:


Link to video.

Btw still annoyed that I have to resort to linking inferior versions of these songs. It's 2014 ferchrissake.

Even if you had my taste in music, you'd disagree, since you speak every language, anyway.

 

[cybrxkhan]

So I just started playing SimCity 4 for the first time in a year or something, and it just had to CTD fifteen minutes after I start building my first city, and literally right before I was about to save.




Random CTDs is definitely one thing I don't miss about SimCity.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Aren't there mods out there designed to fix that out there by now? I played it with mods and CDT seemed to become less frequent.

 

[shadowplay]

Damn clouds blocking my view of the blood moon.

 

[Kyriakos]

Just read of the new case of Necrophagia in the Punjab.

Very sad.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Even then, I'd keep that contact in mind. If you really wanted to work for those guys but they gave you a "we like you, but not now" answer, you might be able to convert that later on if you get into a job you hate for a couple years and you want to switch. My brother has gone through two other jobs before he starts his third on Monday, and I'm keeping some stuff on the backburner as well.

That's the angle I'm working right now and I'm trying to make contacts on LinkedIn wherever possible.

I was wondering, what's supposed to be a high GPA? Also what are the average grades you're getting for a 3.2 GPA?

A high GPA is about 3.5 or above. To be honest, a 3.2 isn't terrible, but it isn't that competitive either. What I'm finding (and hearing directly from recruiters) is that when HR departments get a stack of resumes, they stack them in piles by GPA and only if they don't find someone in the higher GPA stacks will they even look into the lower GPA stacks.

I'm running into a persistent problem where I have waaaay more experience than nearly all of my peers, but I'm getting passed up for people with token experience* with higher GPA's. I kill interviews - I'm really good at interviews - but that's as far as I get because the interviewers almost never have hiring authority and those that do still take the higher GPA's over me. It sucks but that's life. I have made some really good impression on interviewers, to the point where one spent weeks trying to find me a job at her company and several have reached out to me to make a personal connection, but it's not been good enough to get a job yet.

Then there is (and I really hesitate to call it this) reverse sexism going on in the tech field. Companies want female engineers so they tend to hire them even when they have less experience and/or worse GPAs over more qualified male applicants. I don't resent this, in fact I think it needs to happen given how male-dominated the profession is, but it is still something counting against me.

*Token experience - you wouldn't believe how much Resume inflation goes on. I work with people on design teams that do nothing - or worse, agree to do things and then don't - but list all of that 'experience' on their resumes. It rubs my ass the wrong way.

3.2 gpa means you get some a's but mostly b's. it's not a bad gpa (better than mine heh). i know some people who are pushing 3.9 but they're in stupidly easy majors.

4.0 = all a's
3.0 = all b's
etc.

I transferred in with a ton of credits and that's keeping me afloat, tbh. My major-only GPA is much lower I'm sure. I'm basically a B/C student in my major but I had a huge block of A's from pre-major courses.

How hard is it to get an A? Here it often happens that out of a theoretical maximum of 10 the most teachers will give is either 9 or 8, with a passing grade of 6. It's got to be one of the most broken grading systems in the world.

IMHO, the hardest majors at my college are, in order:
Chemistry/Chemical Engineering
Nuclear Engineering
Aerospace Engineering

Those three are pretty close in terms of difficulty and things drop off after that appreciably. It's very difficult to get A's in upper-level courses in those fields. For me, it makes sense, they do call it 'rocket science' for a reason. But it's still hard as hell to get A's whereas other degrees are cake-walks in comparison. My business classes (for my minor in business) were ridiculously easy and it was frustrating to here business majors complain about having to use basic Algebra.

Yes, those people are called Mechanical Engineers

No joke. The MechE's here share a building with Aero's and they tend to think of themselves on the same level with us. They are not - not even close - and the dual MechE/Aero majors I know attest to that every day.

I resent that remark.

Sorry, but it's true, there are a lot of degrees that just aren't that objectively difficult. That doesn't mean they can't be difficult or that individuals who take them don't find them difficult. But compared to other degrees, they are just much easier.