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Search - "academics rant"
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// This is not a Rant, it's a sad story
I am a Software Engg. Student at my college, and I am a scholar, I stand 1st rank in my department for my academics. Our college expects us to do an internship this semester break, and I am stuck. The college expects us to do an internship for a period of around 6 weeks from a company with a CMM level 3. The real pain is the fact that the college didn't prepare us with the right skill set to get an internship like that. And in the end all our college wants is a certificate to show to them that I have done an internship.
My problem is, the people who don't have the slighest skill to do an internship are getting certificates because they have contacts, and they have no intentions to learn anything. But, here I am, although I believe I don't have that good skill set either, but I am stuck with no contacts, no internship offers, and no responses from the company I have applied to. Don't know what I am gonna do, but I have a zeal to do perform well, let's hope I find an opportunity to exhibit my talents.
If anybody can help me, please do. 🙏❤5 -
So another story about college and stupid team assignments that I have to be responsible for dealing with.
So we had an assignment in operating systems 1 course, it was about memory management and we are a team of 3. Then came the time when we should discuss this assignment with the TA and that day I had to stay all night finishing a project in software engineering (literally giving us a description of a big project because that's what the course teaches And I had to finish it in one all nighter alone because my teammates just gave up).
When the discussion time came I was really tired and then the TA asks me something really simple and I say it but then she tells me that I'm wrong so I wondered a bit and then said no what I said was right! She then asks my teammate (who we are supposed to be good friends) "did he say the right thing?" And his answer is a definitive "NO he's wrong" and then he starts to say the right answer which I swear I said the same but in a different way so I start to say again that I was right and say that I said that just a different way and she took that as an insult and said that I'm shouting at her and being disrespectful to her.
When we finished I asked my friend if he heard me say it wrong and he said "I'm sorry but I didn't even hear what you said and I was afraid" WHAT THE FUCK, he just said that I was wrong to please her and make her feel like she is right and I had to be the wrong one even though I said it right but NOoo her pride is more important
All this was last semester and the second semester just started today and I go into operating system 2 and guess what? The TA got her doctorate and is now the professor for OS 2 when she doesn't even understand anything.
Really FUCK the academic system it feels like it is a grind more than actually gaining mastery of a subject.1 -
!rant
May I suggest an email service?
I saw this post recommending the Vivaldi browser (https://devrant.com/rants/1544070/...) and there was a discussion a few days ago about how email providers snoop around and sell data. I can't find it anymore, but noone mentioned protonmail.ch there.
I just wanted to share my so far positive experience with protonmail. It's a fully encrypted email service that was first used internally by some Swiss academics. Now they made a product out of it with paid subscriptions and a basic, free account. They already open-sourced the front-end web client and are planning to do the same for the back-end in the future, which is really cool. Oh and they have really nice email clients for iOS and Android, which have higher ratings than gmail itself in the Play Store. But that might also be because only a special audience uses protonmail and not the regular guys.
So, I suggest that you register an account there even if you don't want to use it right now. The free account comes with 1 email address and storage limitations. But it's usable and ad-free. Since it's still quite the new service, many email addresses are available. Just like gmail in the early days. That's why I'm suggesting you go and register even if you don't need it now.
Oh and last but not least: I'm not affiliated in any way with protonmail, except for having a paid subscription. But I believe things making the internet a better place should be promoted and devrant is definitely the community with people thinking the same way I do. Have a nice day.7 -
markdown is not good enough! the tools aren't there for non-devs and there's no concordance on moving forward *compatibly* for anything other than headers and __possibly__ lists.
md has been around for years and still no consensus on comments, meta data, css, data imports, etc.
i could never in good faith recommend to a non-dev to use markdown, even though every academic and professional writer from legal to journalism should exclusively be using markdown to write and store their documents. the data portability and ease of search, retrieval, collection, distribution, etc of markdown compared to pdf or docx is enormous. markdown is the hex format of text, the perfect layer of data and visual so that the user and the computer can both operate on text as blocks of data rather than weirdly styled paragraphs that need to be reformatted BY HAND for citation-style or journal format, or paper size. FOR EACH SUBMISSION. Academics literally rewrite their 100-page papers to accommodate up to 10 different submission requirements.
They could be clicking MLA vs Chicago and/or using a journal's stylesheet to recompile for its styles.
Today there is some support from zotero et al to take away some of the pain, but it makes ZERO SENSE for writers to have to keep and store and keep up to date, multiple versions of the same document. Git pull does not exist for them. But the worst part is that git isnt the solution to their problem. They need a compiler more than they need version control. But they also desperately need vcs. They ALL literally have a million files named "dumdum.dumFINAL-3084_lastversion \2020, this one.dum".
They dont have git or anything like it, because they need a line-by-line solution like markdown for git to become effective.
All of writing is basically mired in the fact that people cant even roll up their paragraphs and see what the fuck it is theyre saying. Most writing reads like a long scroll through some nonsense that goes nowhere. Like this rant. but the point is that markdown and line-by line editing actually produces more logically sound writing. You start to think in terms of defining ideas in blocks, ... like code.9 -
I hate it when people expect that you read your emails every minute. I can't count the amount of times that I had a meeting with someone that they scheduled on the same day while I am sitting in a lecture(it's extremely rude to not pay attention to the lecturer, come on). Needless to say. I would notice the emails way too late and miss the meetings, because they expect you to be available at a minute's notice as well.
I sent way too many apology emails this year, honestly...undefined it's grinding my nerves already long-ish rant the only reason i'm stressed come on you're academics2 -
I witness a lot of stupidity (programming related) in college, and my mind is constantly toggling between the following states:
* arguing with stupid people makes me look stupid too, so I should just ignore
* maybe I should educate them
* I am helpless - they won't listen to me
* what sins did I commit in my life that I have to see this
* what in the actual flying fuck are these idiots doing
* I AM STRESSED AND I NEED TO RELEASE IT1 -
I learnt things by myself using websites like w3schools or geeksforgeeks and by making random useless things and i feel like that's how learning how to code should be like? My college made me forget why I loved coding in the first place, which was my creative freedom in it, making things I love, making things I would use. I don't care about what outcome comes out of it, I just like making things by my own volition.
I hate how coding is taught in academics. I don't know how it is in the US or other countries, but in India it just feels so irritating and boring, I feel like they should make things more hands on and out of the box rather than making us sit in class for 10 hours and give us 2 hour labs which are useless. If you're going to have a CS F111 course at least make sure it's inclusive of all the students you have? I worked my ass off to get into a really 'prestigious' college only to be disappointed by a vast array of professors who absolutely don't give a shit about teaching. They're brilliant researchers don't get me wrong, thousands of papers to their names, hundreds of citations, but when it comes to teaching it feels like they think of us as burdens? I dunno, this entire semester I felt so depressed, expecting more out of this course. I'm not a developer guru, I'm far from it, but I still feel like even if you're teaching the bare basics you can include things for people who already know this stuff? Instead of create an obvious unfair advantage for people like me who've been doing this for way longer than others.
I feel like evaluation should be made on progress rather than how much of the syllabus you can memorise. From this point, to that point, how much progress did you make. I feel like instead of evaluative components being MCQs or fill in the blanks they should be projects, how well did you code this project, how well did you document it. Create your own project! It'll take time to evaluate yes but it's not like you don't have that time, it's a genuine investment to not just make this a read and repeat course.
Thanks for reading my rant
