(no subject)

So I took my mass media midterm on Friday, right? And - much to my surprise - we got them back today. I'd seen the spread of the grades, as the professor had them up on the projector, so I was naturally a bit worried that I hadn't done as well as I thought I had. And then I got my test back and saw that I got a 94, and suddenly I wasn't worried any more. And then I looked at the spread more closely and saw that the top grade? Was a 94. And there was only one. Which meant it was mine.

Yes, I'm more than a little proud of that. :D I actually think I might treat myself to some Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, if I can find it for less than $20.

Which reminds me, this weekend I used my expert Slytherin skills to end up with some extra money, so I actually had enough that I could put some away for emergencies or savings or whatever. So I dug my savings wallet out of the drawer I keep it in, and... found twenty bucks in there I'd completely forgotten about! So that was nice.

I have some stats stuff I should be doing and an essay to write (just a rough draft, though) but instead I'm procrastinating. I think I might look up some creepypasta. Hanekoma told me about how he was reading creepypasta last night and got practically no sleep because of it, and then kindly pointed me toward a Pokémon creepypasta tumblr, so I read some before class, and it was delightfully creepy. :D I kind of want to write some of my own, but it would probably be in-universe and... not the same kind of creepy as most of the creepypasta, but still.

Creepy doesn't even look like a word now, fyi.

(no subject)

I have to admit, I don't quite understand positive feedback.

I mean, I get that if you do something really awesome, it's nice to hear that it's, you know, really awesome. Or that if something strikes you as particularly cool, maybe the person who came up with it would like to know that it's particularly cool.

I get that. That makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is commending people on things they should be doing anyway. Like how my English prof says that if you're reviewing somebody's paper and you think they have a solid thesis, you should write that down; or how the software my stats class uses says things like "Fantastic!" and "Good job!" whenever you get an answer or answer part correct (which is often less because you did the maths right and more because you followed the bullshit arbitrary rounding requirement that seems to change three times in a single problem).

I mean, aren't you supposed to be writing a solid thesis? Aren't you supposed to get the right answers or answer parts?

I was trying to figure this out earlier, and I was thinking about it. I'm used to it going like, the more marks on your paper there are, the more there is you need to correct. I'm not used to things like stars next to right answers, or comments like "cute title!" or "great thesis!" or "effective use of semi-colon" on my papers (I'm not even kidding, my English prof totally wrote that last one on my last essay); if the only extra writing you get back on your paper is a grade at the top, it means you're doing something right. (At least, it is if that grade's a good one.)

Don't even get me started on the maths program. On the one hand, I like it because I'm really lazy and can find out instantly if I make a mistake instead of having to redo the entire problem. On the other hand, real maths don't work that way. If you make a rounding error, or forget to carry a number, or multiply wrong, you're going to get the wrong answer and you're going to have to redo the entire thing until you get the right answer; and that's if you even know what the right answer is. You're not going to have some cutesy green "Excellent!" to tell you that you do, in fact, know how to do third-grade maths. (You learn rounding in third grade, right?)

I get why you'd encourage someone for doing an exemplary job. I don't get why you'd encourage someone for doing the average job they're supposed to be doing anyway.

(As an aside, this is vaguely related to my earlier mention of my midterm grade. "Aren't you supposed to get all the answers right anyway?" you ask. Well, yes. I'm actually mildly annoyed that I got the ones wrong that I did, because I should have gotten them right. It's not so much the 94 I'm happy about as it is the "highest grade in the class" that I'm happy about. There are people who put in much more effort and spend much more time on that class and I outperformed the lot of them; and that, I feel, is worth celebrating. Not the laziness, or the ordinary; but the success.)

(...this entire post is a lot more long-winded than I thought it would be.)