Conversations with graders

Conversations with graders As promised in my last entry, it has been quite a week! Tuesday night I completed the machine tools class, which means I finished making my corny little flashlight: Now I can use a milling machine and a lathe, which I think makes me pretty cool, thank you very much. I got to put those new skills to work just last night, when I helped turn (turn= verb for using the lathe to machine something) a pin for the pedalbox of the FSAE car. So far for FSAE Ive made minor contributions to the frame, the body mold, the steering rack, and the pedalbox. Oh, and the wheels, but Im not sure if the part I worked on will actually be used on the car. Pretty cool. Wednesday I took an 18.03 exam. It was an adventure. I didnt do nearly as well as I had hoped. There were a couple of concepts that I couldnt quite remember how to do and a couple that I just plain left blankbut the cool part was that I got nearly 100% correct of the parts that I answered- including the ones I sort of blundered my way through. The good news is that Im starting to understand more and more as time goes on- so even though theres plenty of room for improvement, Im confident that I actually will improve. On Tuesday, my 18.03 TA handed out evaluations for us to fill out about him. I suggested that we work in small groups on the recitation problems, because wellI need help in 18.03. (More on that later.) On Thursday, he handed out the problems as usual and then said, So on Tuesday someone suggested working in small groups on these problems, so why dont we try that? And I was like hey! That was my suggestion! It was pretty cool. I thought it was really awesome of him to go out of this way to hand out these evaluations and then actually consider our responses. Speaking of 18.03I am unhappy with my grader, but not because of the grade they gave me at all. See, I have this weird habit oftaking colorful notes with offhand comments in the margins, littering my scratch work with emoticons (smiley and sad and confused faces according to my feelings about my answers as I go through the work), and writing little notes on anything that I know will be graded by hand by an actual human being. For example, on the AP Physics test last year, there was some question involving all kinds of calculus that Id never even heard of. I did my best from what I knew and understood, trying to make sense of the math as I worked through it. At the end of the page, I wrote my answer. Beneath that, I wrote, Whew. That was hard. Im not really sure why I do these things; I suppose its just one of my odder quirks, but I do it all the time. For example, on the last 18.03 pset. There was this one problem that was just so well-written. I dont mean that it was a clever word problem, I mean they gave you some function and you had to go through this elaborate process involving complex exponentials and taking the real and imaginary parts of things and converting them back and forth and integrating and all kinds of nonsenseand then in the end, the answer was 4. I mean, it was some single-digit whole nice number. And then part B of the question involved some other manner of complex calculation (well, maybe its not so complex, but it seems that way too me) and you get 7. It was just so cool. So after doing all the work, in the margin of the page I wrote something like, this question was cool because it was really well designed. Good job. =) And when I got the pset back, the grader had written I dont think you can suck up to professors through psets ! This made me really angry. If I wanted to suck up to a professor, I wouldnt write comments on something that only gets seen by some poor undergrad grader. I was tempted to write that (plus so there! at the end) on my next pset but wellconsidering that my gradergrades methat doesnt seem like the best idea. After this, I was really worried to get back my 8.02 pset. Youd think that if my 18.03 grader didnt like my complimeting the problem, that my 8.02 grader would be even more annoyed at the fact that I wrote This problem was worthless. =( at the end of question 2. (To be fair, I wrote this at like 3 AM. And the problem was worthless. You basically had to make up some numbers and do this meaningless calculation that taught you absolutely nothing about physics.) Well, my 8.02 grader had written. Welcome to physics. Get used to it. =( . I personally found this really funny. I think this just goes to show how people here are not happy unless theyre unhappy. =/ On Thursday I donated blood and was awarded a sticker that said Be nice to me, I donated blood today. =) There were others that had pictures of teddy bears on them that said Hug me, I donated blood today but I personally thought that wearing one of those could be a little dangerous. Responses to comments: Drew said about my recent hack entry: That hack although not as extensive as some of the others is still pretty entertaining. The one that I remember was told to me by my interviewer who took part in the hack. Some years back they set up around the dome some lettering that had been rolled up a night or two before a presentation given for the entering class. The message was revealed at the start, from Dantes work, Abandon all hope, ye who enter Thats a classic. Actually, my roommates dad was in the entering class that was welcomed to MIT with that hack. She says he loves to tell stories about it all the time. =) Mike said: As a freshman, how did you decide on laptop versus desktop, and what influenced that decision one way or the other? Hmm, thats a good question. I have a laptop, but I honestly didnt put much thought into it. I guess I just figured that a laptop would be smaller and easier to bring with me. I stayed with a friend of the family at Penn State once. Her roommate had a desktop, and it just struck me as so big when put into a college dorm room. *grin* To be fair, dorm rooms here are pretty big (well, mine is at least), but still, I think its just easier to have a laptop. That said, practically no one brings their laptops to class, although I know people on FSAE and other clubs like them because they can bring them to meetings so they can do work and show others what theyve done. I think there are definite advantages to having a laptop, but I also dont think that having a desktop would be a big problem. Chris said: heyyy, new jersey huh? where in jersey do you live? there is absolutely nothing to do in NJim from Linwood, basically right next to Ocean City. Im from Middletown, Monmouth County, right by Sandy Hook..exit 114, if you want to do the parkway thing. And I like NJ! Although its probably mostly because now that I live with people from all over the country I get harassed about it all the time and feel an intense need to defend my home. =) Tomorrow: Im going to the Manchester FIRST regional!!! =D