Farmer/Artist/Mom

OKAY - in addition to many other defects in my son’s uni, they stopped a few years back helping the students find internships or any kind of fieldwork relating to wildlife or fisheries majors. My son has been looking for projects/internships completely on his own, which is damned difficult to do. HOWEVER

THIS looks very promising vis-a-vis mine reclamation/stream quality projects. So - send out a little positive energy for my Boy, because he’s just dying for a chance to clean up our Appalachian waterways.

Yesterday, in one of his classes, a guest lecturer attended, and was asking the students probing questions about the fisheries program. The more they told her, the more concerned she got. It sounded like an excellent chance for the students to ‘make some noise’ about deficiencies in the school to someone who actually would be able to help. As he told me about it

Him: So, the other students were beating around the bush about things . .

Me: So, um, you cut down the bush and walked over the top of it?

Him: And then set it on fire. Yes.

Me: {snif} ThAT’s my BoY!

It’s been a bit of a week around here - well, a whole month - well, y'know what, Things have BEEN.

K came home for Spring Break this afternoon, sick with flu. My husband got it last weekend, and is still pretty much flat on his back. In the evening, chores and dinner taken care of, K and I decided to sit together and enjoy a movie. She picked the movie, I made popcorn, then …

ring-ring. My son (who is also sick, and missed classes today) called to let me know that one of his profs posted an assignment relating to professional fisheries credentials. Posted today, it is also due today. I F*ing HATE when they do that.

He was looking at the voluminous instructions, with his aching head, and needed my help. I set aside my popcorn and tootled sadly off down the road. Spent over an hour filling out a form for a Professional Fisheries Thingamabob that was completely pointless, because in order to actually submit it, one must already have a uni degree. That thing that my son is still working on. Hence taking the Stupid course.

There was a LOT of typing involved, and I am a fast but terrible typist. (Going slower, counterintuitively, does not help; I can only order the letters in a word by handwriting. When I type, the letters often-as-not come out in random order. Once I see it on the page (wrong) I can reorder them - but I can’t do it inside my brain.)

I was glad to be finished that. Now - dogs out for pee break, wood on the wood stove, too late for a movie … blaugh.

I am This Close to hunting university professors for sport.

I’ve just returned from my study session with Son. We were trying to coax Lewis structures and chemical formulae into a simplified format called the “bond-line structure.” It’s all about the carbon (and hydrogen). (Here are some samples)

Now, compared to other chemistry issues we have faced, this isn’t so bad. Kind of interesting, even, once you start getting into it. However, at one point, he struggled mightily to get a bunch of carbons, hydrogens, and an OH lined up into some kind of order, and

“This … looks like hate-speech,” he said, tiredly. I looked. It . . it kind of did. Once the last bit for the OH was added in, things no longer looked so dire, but it was the only funny moment in the gray, icy day.

So, college students, teachers, and parents may be familiar with Chegg.com, a subscription-based site for study/homework help. We have used it in the past, and, as much as I hate subscription services, it has been very valuable at times. But today I got this:

In which it appears that HBO, Door Dash, and TINDER(!?) are in some kind of partnership with Chegg … I am … boggled.

Son’s semester began on Monday. We had a study session together last evening, and I already feel doomed.

I think a big issues is that the one guy who is in charge of the Fisheries program is a hot-shit researcher with rather limited teaching skills who has completely lost track of the difference between an undergrad program and a graduate program. The list of classes he set up for the students majoring in fisheries includes a 400-level chem course and a 400-level geology course.

Should the kids have good general knowledge of chemistry and geology? Heck, yeah! But I cannot stress enough that trying to take a 400 level chem class when you are not, in fact, a chemistry major with all the underlying 200 and 300-level work is MADNESS.

Not just my son, but most of his fisheries cohort, failed out of the 400 Environmental Chem required for the major last spring. It will not be offered again until spring 2026. The whole group of them has been told (by Prof Dingbat himself) that 400 Organic chemistry, offered this spring, would be an acceptable substitute. However, the same problem applies. A whole group of kids whose only chemistry so far has been general chem 201 and 202 are being expected to hop into a 400 level class. No shade on the organic chem teacher - but I’m sure his teaching is (rightly!) geared toward chem majors! What is he going to do with a group of students who are already lost on week one?!

If experience has taught us anything with this school, it is that he will shrug and say “Not my problem.” and fail them all. And this HAS to be an ongoing issue that the Fisheries advisor has seen play out over and over. Most chem requires really, really strong math skills, and not every person who chooses a biology field is going to be a mathelete. Just.

AAUUGGH!

(This is even more frustrating now that Son has confirmed with a fried at a different school that their requirements are MUCH more reasonable for the same degree.)

K will go back to her dorm this weekend and start spring semester classes on Monday. I can’t stand it. She has another semester of chemistry, we still have to figure out a plan for her to retake the first semester, I’ll be doing hours of tutoring (and studying it myself, first) each week.

Son will ALSO have a chemistry class this semester. I don’t know if I can. do this. Her school provides good help for students who need it, and she uses that - but still needs more. His school does NOT provide any meaningful help for struggling students. They just do not.

I just feel absolutely awful about this. I just don’t know how we’re going to get through it all. Just venting.

Snickering. Some of my son’s friend’s were playing around with photo filters. You know, the ones that give you just a tad bit sharper jaw, straighter nose, dramatic eyes. (I can’t stop snickering)

So, one of them snapped a picture of Son, and ‘filtered’ it. However, it didn’t change his features. At all. Because his jaw, nose, and eyes are already as good as they could reasonably be without him becoming a caricature drawing. The girls who were doing this got a little bit miffed at him for being to pretty to be prettified. And he and I got a chuckle out of it.

Oh, dear LORD I’m trying to understand my daughter’s last chemistry lab so I can tutor her through the damned thing - but I swear it’s an order of magnitude more difficult than anything else they’ve done all semester. I am BOGGLED.

K was supposed to stay at college this weekend, because there is a fancy event on Saturday. I was surprised, therefore, when I heard a car pull in mid-afternoon. I looked out, and beheld her stomping across the yard.

Apparently, it was a shit week. She was stressed about classes, tests, and Rosalie’s injury. Her friends keep coming to her with their stresses and upsets. She doesn’t want to BE the Mom Friend right now. So she came home.

I prescribed hot, cheesy lasagna, time spent with Hero, and a monumentally stupid animated movie (The Croods, Part 2). Now she’s out in the kitchen with her brother, who magically managed to visit right when there was leftover lasagna, having her second dinner. Yes, we eat like hobbits. But she’s laughing and sounds 100% better than she did 5 hours ago. She’ll head back there tomorrow at mid-day, and be in time for the event.

Countdown to finals. All the college students are feeling it.

Drama in the lab (why it’s in your interests to be decent to other people).

Last week my daughter wasn’t feeling well. (nothing contagious) She struggled her way into chemistry lab, but the prof, who is very nice, saw how she was feeling and sent her back to her dorm. Per the prof’s instructions, her new lab partner sent her the data collected and some initial calculations after lab.

She shared those with me, so I could take her step-by-step through the math and make sure her results were correct. Excell, my beloved. When I reviewed everything, I found math errors in the lab partner’s work.

I had a video chat with K yesterday, where I went over the results, and explained why I disagreed with lab partner. (It really kinda looked like Partner wrote the equation down, and then copied someone else’s answers, because one answer was ‘wrong,’ but correct if it had been written on the next line down) I suggested that K let her partner know in time to correct her work.

That’s when she told me that Partner had been rather an ass to her, and, um, Nope, she was not going to help her out. I left that to her discretion. But. It is so, so easy to simply be polite to someone for the duration of one lab class. Why would you ever be a jerk just because the teacher changed all the lab partners, and you aren’t working with your best buddy anymore? Instant karma, here, I guess.