Jeremy Lin on Academic Pressure

Food for thought during exam time.

Incredibly, there have been haters responding to Lin's deeply personal account of his own struggles.  Well, screw those people.  I for one am grateful that he shared his vulnerability and offered a space to discuss the sometimes overwhelming pressure to perform, be it academically, athletically, or any other form.  You know, the fact that someone is prominent and successful does not mean that his or her psychological pain and lived experience are any less real or significant.  Let us all make an effort to be better, kinder, and more compassionate to each other, OK?

Satire Alert, Final Exam Edition: Look, We Can Either Study Or ...

The end of the academic semester is always a grand display of sadism, masochism, insomnia, human folly, general misery, operatic despair, and - occasionally - flashes of mordant wit.  In that vein, enjoy this relevant bit of exam-time lunacy from the reliable McSweeney's.

Nerd Journal: FINAL EXAM APOCALYPSE IS HERE

Campus is hell right now.  Thatisall.

Nerd Journal: We Survived Final Exams!

My response is a combination of these two animated gifs:

Friday Fun Video: Do You Wanna Go To Starbucks?

Here's a Frozen parody fit for final exam time, fellow coffee addicts!

Need A Study Break?

ARRRRGGGGHH, FINALS!

But if you need a study break (or five or twenty), you can go marathon TV shows on Netflix or go see Captain America: The Winter Soldier for the third time (something that I may or may not have done very recently).  

By the way, I know I owe you a real movie review, but let me just say this for now:  If you don't see this flick you are totally missing out.  89% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes?  BRING IT ON. 

I'm going to see the new Spider-Man flick too, but I'm frankly pessimistic.

Nerd Journal: IT'S FINALS WEEK

What Finals Week is saying to me:

My reply:

Nerd News: Gaming the New SAT

I repeat: standardized exams test basically only how well you know how to take standardized exams.  Obviously you can game them.

Nerd Journal: Exams Are Done!

Or, I should say, the grading is done.  Students panic and procrastinate before exams, instructors after.  Grading is, bar none, the worst part of this whole evaluative process.  Still, it's all over for this semester.  Time to celebrate!  I'm too darn tired to hit the dance floor, so I'll let someone else do it instead.

 

Bust a move.

Nerd Journal: FINAL EXAMS ARE UPON US!

Need I say more?  Regular posting and commentary will return after exams!

Finals. Yeah, it's like that.

Nerd News: Failing Liberia's University Entrance Exam

That can't be good!

Chinese Nerd News: Exams, Cheating, and Riots, Oh My!

*facepalm*

Ivy League Admissions and Asian American Students

*Sigh.*  

RELATED: Entrance exam issues at Stuy earlier this year.

Nerd News: Florida's New Plan for Racially-Based Educational Goals

OK, how is this not both stupid and blatantly raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacist?

The Florida State Board of Education passed a plan that sets goals for students in math and reading based upon their race. On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post.

There's so much wrong with this that I don't even know where to start. The Florida State Board of Education sucks, and you can quote me on that.  

Follow-Up: New York's Stuy Entrance Exam Controversy

I had noted the controversy here.  Here's a follow-up in the form of gentle reader and Stuy alum Eric's comment on the NAACP "othering" Asians in the Stuy entrance exam kerfuffle. Here's a blurb:

The NAACP isn’t contesting the neutrality of the exam. ... their claim is based on the result. The problem is the NAACP’s solution calls for race-based disparate treatment, which is a worse civil rights violation than disparate impact. 

I’m not angling towards separation. I’m calling out the NAACP for separating Asians. I agree that we should be able to trust the NAACP to guard the interests of Asian children – not ‘other’ and sacrifice Asians in order to favor other minority groups.  

You know what’s insulting? Read the NAACP complaint and see how it marginalizes Asians with the rhetorical trick of grouping together “either whites or Asian Americans”.

Nerd News: Another Day, Another Anti-Asian School Policy Kerfuffle

I'm used to hearing stuff like this from California, where several lawsuits have taken place and all (and I still remember Saint Bill Clinton of the Dems once saying that if not for race-based quotas, UC campus populations would be mostly Asian ... as if that would be a bad thing, Bubba, based on pure merit by test scores and such), but this new story is from New York City where the NAACP is involved in a flap over Stuyvesant High School.  The claim is that the entrance exam is "racist" (whatever that means right now according to whomever is using it to their advantage), but the practical goal seems to be taking places from Asian students and redistributing them to black and Latino students.

You know, when I was young and ignorant and filled with more pie-eyed idealism than facts, I had a vague thought that affirmative action was a good thing.  Then I grew up and realized that it screws over people who are qualified in order to give their places to people who aren't, and that instituting quotas turns human beings into mere numbers, that setting up two sets of criteria is innately unjust, and that the whole thing had become corrupted by identity politics and race-baiters.  The whole point to education, as I see it, is to push yourself to excellence as a way to get ahead in life, and I see this as especially applicable to children of immigrants (like myself).  Many of these families aren't rich.  Mine wasn't.  Education is the first, best way to improve yourself and your prospects in life.  The intrusion of identity politics into this is a travesty matched only by the Gramscian corruption of public education.

Nerd Fun: Student Errors

Horrifying yet hilarious.

A Song For the End of Exams

Finals are over, and we're all hot messes who are completely out of our right minds.  So, in the aftermath of the bouts of  sleeplessness, procrastination, panic, toil, existential horror, maniacal giggles, despair, exhaustion, screaming like banshees, howling at the moon, and all other manifestations of general test-time insanity, let's have a song!  

This is from the hilariously awful 2007 British flick about bad girls run amok at a school with a horrible reputation, "St. Trinian's" (which somehow managed to cast people like Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Toby Jones, Stephen Fry, Lena Headey, Fenella Woolgar, Mischa Barton, and Russell Brand).  It's a catchy tune, especially as done by Girls Aloud ... and right now I'm all in favor of the defiant chorus.  (Hey, La Parisienne, Alessandra, California Dreamer!  Maybe this should be our anthem!)

Defenders of Anarchy.

Programming Note: Exam Season Starts Now

This means that I will be sleepless, exhausted, and wildly alternating among being absorbed in fury, disinterest, and/or snarky despair.  And now here is a lolcat for the occasion:

Nerd News: the Long Island Exam Cheating Scandal

UGH.