Couch 215: The Overcoming Couch

What on Earth is the point of that test then?

I had a similar discussion regarding altruism with Dr. T last session. How some of the countries that have handled Covid well are ones where people tend to have a greater sense of community, of doing things for the good of society. He mentioned South Korea and Japan as examples. Whereas here in the US, so many people tend to be me mostly out for themselves and/or are more concerned about their personal liberties rather than helping others.

The course textbook platform is really comprehensive. There is absolutely no need to resort to using an online translator unless you're not only lazy but don't do all of the assignments. Many of the things you have to do for credit are literally sitting there listening to vocab, then repeating the vocab, then matching vocab, then finally recording yourself saying vocab according to pictures that come up. You kind of have to try hard to not absorb anything.

She may also have been confused because I had issues with my mic on my first submission where it would not recognize me saying anything for half of the vocab words. It made it seem like this was just for practice, but it turned out that it was graded. It's possible it appeared that I did not comprehend the vocab based on not successfully completing the voice recognition portion. That would be slightly stupid given I had no issues with matching pictures with words or phrases and also that I've noticed the speech recognition sometimes incorrectly counts wrong answers as correct. For example, yesterday I said "viernes" instead of "jueves" and it didn't know the difference.

I used my ps4 gaming headset for the assignments I turned in last night and that fixed the issue, so hopefully if she got the wrong impression based on poor performance on the speech recognition, that won't be an issue anymore.

Naps are always better than not naps.

@@, what I did not appreciate was the accusatory nature of the email. Since I have not done what she is accusing me of and she therefore can't possibly know that I am guilty, it doesn't seem right to threaten me with an honor code violation and cause me the anxiety of not knowing what I'm supposed to do to avoid that. I realize many students cheat and I am generally sympathetic to professors who are frustrated by this because it frustrates me too - after all, I am the one who has to compete against cheaters. However, I really don't appreciate the few professors who have developed such a chip on their shoulders that they are basically prejudiced against students as a whole. From my interactions with this woman so far (not just this one), she seems really jaded.

There was one other professor who made an assumption about me once that really hurt my feelings. I had learned about a certain topic in one of my other programming classes that I really enjoyed. I decided to implement it in some code for an assignment in this other class. I mean, that's kind of what you're supposed to do, build your knowledge and implement it in different ways. The professor got really angry with me and told me I probably got it online and didn't even know what it meant. Luckily, this was at the end of the semester and I didn't have time to review the feedback until months later. I was so upset and offended. I wrote that code myself and I was proud of it. If it wasn't good code, fine, I can take that, but to tell me I don't even know what my own code means ESPECIALLY when I had commented exactly what it meant was offensive. And this guy heads the master of data science program at my uni, so if I were interested in pursuing that, I would feel unable to do so after being thoroughly attacked by him since he becomes the advisor of everyone in that program. He basically called me stupid and lazy. And then after he finished reaming me for "just looking online" (which wasn't against the rules, although I hadn't done it), he tried to make me feel bad about the code by saying he didn't even understand why it worked. The fact that it did work (perfectly) apparently didn't matter, nor had he run it through any sort of checker to see if I had copied it from somewhere. Oh, and this was a semester we had missed more than a month of class due to a hurricane, so I felt pretty good for being able to produce something that did what it was supposed to. He took that small sense of accomplishment, crushed it, tossed it on the ground, and spat on it in contempt.

Anyway, I seem to have gone off on a tangent there. These two professors just behave/d so differently than all my other professors and it's unnerving receiving a rare censure when you least expect it.

On a lighter note, I've been trying to bake with almond flour lately because I'm doing low carb and I can't say I care for it. Everything I produce seems so dry and/or grainy. Anybody have any tips? I'm focusing on sweets.

Also, I tried a cauliflower crust pizza and it was absolutely disgusting. I can't remember the brand. It wasn't caulipower because that one isn't low carb. Anyway, I could only take like two bites.

I realised the other day how much i am like my mother as i have been searching out anD buying rare and unusual plants. I realised this as i bought a Persian Silk Tree as we had one in our front yard as a child. I bought by mail order and the poor thing turned up in a box stripped of all but 2 leaves and roots. I feel sorry for it when i garden as it just looks like i randomly stuck a tall stick in the ground.

So glad i am not studying. I only cheated once and the 2 guys i cheated off were accused of cheating off me. I didnt know if this was ploy to flush me out but i never cheated again.

To give everyone easy A’s and get good teaching evaluations?

well h and i got almost all of the broken off part of the tree cleaned up today. whew, that was a lot of work and half our backyard is now full of tree branches we're still working on cutting down to a manageable size. it's a big tree that was damaged... luckily we have a brush & bulky pickup in our neighborhood scheduled for mid-june, we should have it all ready to haul out to the curb by then... this is the mess right now.

These riots that have started up are scaring me. I'm okay with protests, I actually support them. I have mixed feelings about the riots. It's getting/has gotten bad. There are stores destroyed, gas stations blown up, buildings set on fire, looting, and general chaos.

I'm not at all worried about myself or my safety (chronic and severe MDD and SI will do that to a person), but I'm worried about others. I know a lot of people living where this is directly taking place. I'm in a suburb, so I'm not directly affected...just some minor protests here.

Staying up late to switch over my circadian rhythm for a week of nights. Blargh. Bored and lonely.

I have paint all over me. Painted letters for one of my daughter's name and still have the other to do. And almost halfway done with painting their bedroom.

Talked to T1 this morning and he said he wants to attend our CPS team meeting on Wednesday to advocate for me. I really hope he can work it into his schedule because ex T didn't want to attend our first meeting.

TW for talk of H just in case
.

I get this, it unnerving for all of us .. it’s flat out crazy - I wish things could just calm down... prayers for everyone during these messed up times

My contribution to the Couch Painting Weekend (from a Yaymaker Zoom yesterday). Used sponge painting for the background and flicked paint off the brush for stars--was fun!

LT your painting is beautiful.

Aw, thanks!

That's very pretty! I signed up for another virtual paint night tomorrow, so I'm going to do mone then.

Thanks, SheHulk! Hope you enjoy the one you do tomorrow!

My head hurts. I don't know if it's because of allergies (no longer can take meds for that thanks to the MAOI I'm on), if it's because I ate something with some soybean oil in it (thanks to the MAOI I'm SUPER sensitive to soy), or if I'm just exhausted. Blah.

On a whole different topic, I'm so very behind at work and I have no time to catch up. The school year ends on Wednesday. My days are booked solid Mon-Wed with meetings, visits with families, connecting with co-workers to team, and such. But I have 5 reports to finish, 4 IEPs to write, 2 IFSPs to write, mileage to do, attendance to do, end of the year check-out stuff to complete, and more I'm sure. But I'm so overwhelmed by all of this that I feel frozen and can't seem to get any of it done. Maybe this is actually what's causing my headache.

Once I'm finally out of this depressive episode and can concentrate on something more than mere minutes, I so want to try this!

You did an awesome job!!

The mall near Info’s office (where she wanted to take me for a makeover) was looted last night in the local riots. Was never a protest there, the crowd just started rioting right away.

I live near a totally different mall. Hope this area isn’t next on the list.

There were several businesses downtown that were burned down last night. Also there were some statues defaced. I’m fine with the statues; I live in the South and they are racist statues. The rest I don’t understand.

My area is now under curfew starting at 8 pm.

I feel like I've had more of government telling me what to do and when to do it and where to do it and with whom to do it in the past three months than ever before. (Yes, I'm sure that's not actually true.)

Thanks! I'm finding it helps me get out of my head for a bit, to really focus on something.