Academia Ghetto Thread

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I ended up taking Beginning Algebra parts I and II, then Intermediate Algebra, none of which applied to anything but were prereqs for College Algebra, which was a prereq for Stats I and II. And I have to get into grad school within 3 years of completing Stats I and II or I'll have to take them again.

[Cain]

Next week's tutorial: reflecting on the gunpowder plot.  Was it "pre-modern terrorism"?  What counter-terrorism policies can we draw on from it?

Should be fun.

[Junkenstein]

Out of curiosity, is there a widely regarded "first act" of modern terrorism? I'd guess but I'm not sure on the definitional boundaries here.

[Cain]

French Terror and/or Russian nihilist and anarchist currents.

Oh, and of course the Sicarii and Assassins, who somehow circumvent the "need a modern state for modern terrorism" theory, probably due to being Arabs and Jews.

[Junkenstein]

Sicarii are new to me, I'll have a look at them. From a quick search, 1C?

The first thought is that that's quite a gap till French/Russian hijinks. Probably quite a few interesting fringe cases in-between?

[Suu]

I got in my application materials to go dig in Turkey this summer. Once I talk to my professor this week about the actual dates and cost, I'll be getting all this back to him. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I got in my application materials to go dig in Turkey this summer. Once I talk to my professor this week about the actual dates and cost, I'll be getting all this back to him. 

Good luck!

[Reginald Ret]

Go Suu!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I had a small panic today when I realized that it's almost 2015, which is the year that I take the GRE and apply to grad school.

However, I also found a third grad program I'm interested in, and now I feel like maybe I'm not pushing my luck so much.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

But holy crap, I need to find a lab to work in, ASAP

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I think the most obvious thing that we have to jump through hoops with here is math courses, if you're a science major. George is fucking done with math. He told me that he took a ridiculous amount of math courses. It was either 7 or 9. I forget, but it was, in my opinion, unreasonably high. And actually I noticed that too when I decided to go from AA to AS. Time was also a factor- when I took College Algebra, in like, 2005, that was the baseline algebra for all degrees, but they differentiated after some point. And I also took statistics which doesn't count towards my electives because it's not statistics and lab (wut).

So I've taken:
College Algebra (no longer exists)
Statistics (doesn't count)
Intermediate Algebra
College Algebra for STEM
Precalculus

Shit. Yeah. I can see how George could have easily taken 7 math courses if he didn't do well on his placement exam when he first came in.

Why would you even NEED a lab with Stats? I took Stats I and II, which satisfied my math requirements for my undergrad and for all the grad programs I'm looking at.

No clue. I mean, technically it's an elective course, but statistics is statistics. I could quite honestly use a brush up, but I don't need a lab to do it. I think the lab bit is just to make it science specific, with no actual lab needed. If I recall, Precalculus was 4 credits, which makes it a lab course.

You could, but you'd have to give it a practical application. My Astronomy labs were largely mathematical, as you would expect, since you can't exactly touch the thing you're measuring. So why not combine those? That would be pretty awesome really. You have to take this math course as a prerequisite that's not going to count for anything but a prerequisite. Why not combine it with a science course that could broaden your perspective and satisfy both requirements? Cool, I'm a biologist, and I can calculate the mass of this exoplanet. Not as accurately as NDT, but I can give you a decent figure. Cool, I'm a physicist, and I can calculate the distance between these two alleles that occur on the same chromosome. I might not be.... eh... someone who's more active in biology than Dawkins should be (seriously, why is an evangelist the most famous fuck researching biology biologist?), but I can explain crossing over.

I don't really get it either, except that it sounds like you took it before they changed the class to meet new standards? I took a bunch of math classes that only count as prerequisites, simply because I was so math-deficient when I started. There was no reason to wrap those classes into the classes they're prereqs for, simply because most people have math enough to prep them for  college algebra or calc by the time they graduate high school.

That is essentially what happened. And I was quite honestly really pissed off. Again, like with Stats, could use the refresher, but going from College Algebra to Intermediate Algebra to College Algebra for STEM is pretty irritating. The intermediate should have been cut out. They would have been right to ask me to demonstrate my math abilities after that much time and that much of a switch, but not so much as to negate what I'd done before and add another class or two....

I'm surprised they wouldn't let you test out! It sounds like their system is in transition and they haven't worked all the kinks out maybe?

You're probably right. Remember that I've dropped out twice and the third time I came back it was to switch degrees from Arts to STEM.

The kooky thing about it is when I took algebra a decade ago, it was the only algebra. There was no STEM algebra and regular jack-offs who don't need algebra algebra. It was just algebra. So what I took still counts as a math course for my history degree but means jack shit as a scientist, even as a prereq.

Math is math, right? Numbers and the way that they interact with other numbers don't change, so I don't see why there needs to be anything other than This Is Algebra, This Is Stats, This Is Precalc, etc. Granted Precalc onward is all STEM, because why would you otherwise, but still. Why not standardize that?

Why is there a General Physics I and II for Biology majors and only for Biology majors and College Physics I and II which will satisfy the physics requirements for biology, but is geared towards Physics and Engineering? I guess it's all to bring the various transfer agreements we have with universities into line, but within just BHCC, it sometimes makes absolutely no sense.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't know. I wouldn't sweat it, to tell the truth. Shit changes and if you took it ten years ago why would it count? Stats won't count toward my grad degree after 3 years. Math in particular tends to be kind of use-it-or-lose-it.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I don't know. I wouldn't sweat it, to tell the truth. Shit changes and if you took it ten years ago why would it count? Stats won't count toward my grad degree after 3 years. Math in particular tends to be kind of use-it-or-lose-it.

True enough

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

As far as the physics for STEM major and physics for non-STEM majors, it's probably for the same reason they offer attenuated versions of all of the sciences for non-science-majors; so that people who are not science nerds can fulfill their basic science requirements in a field they have some interest in and graduate. I'm not saying that I agree with it, but most people just don't have the interest or training to do well in General Chemistry or Principles of Biology just for funzies. Just like they have classes like "History of Western Civilization" and "Understanding Architecture" for those of us who just want to get our requirements out of the way so we can get back to SCIENCE.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I asked my neuro professor about lab volunteer opportunities this afternoon, and he said that if I am taking the advanced neurophysiology class, we will be meeting and working with neuroscientists at OHSU, and that most of OSHU's neuroscience lab peons are selected from students in the advanced neurophysiology class! So by Spring I will probably be a lab peon!