I can't wait until they read this one.

Perhaps I spend too much time on my teaching evals or perhaps I am too harsh. In the mid-term evaluations I called them out for giving out a quiz to make sure that seniors in engineering could compute standard deviations.

This is from my final eval. The question is "What was the least valuable part of this course?" I sorta let it all out.

The lectures, all of the busy work. Honestly having a interim report due weeks after giving our project proposals was idiotic, especially when one of those weeks was spring break.

The emails that were sent out by the professor were unprofessional, and the emails sent out by the GSI were long winded and tiresome to read. Also, I would have appreciated it if the GSI paid attention in class instead of writing emails.

This course is supposed to integrate four years of courses and studies into one big project but often it felt like this was just a technical communication course with some engineering topics sprinkled in.

Instead of having our proposals and presentation given before the entire class where no one paid attention, I would have been much better served by sitting down with the professor and GSI and going over our project and offering advice. That way they could have given us some feedback and discussed our problems instead of just asking a few questions and moving on to the next group.

This class had the potential to be an invaluable learning experience, but instead was marred by unrealistically expectations and bothersome work by the faculty. More focus should be on the actual projects and less on the busy work and unrelated materials.

There is still much room for improvement.

More like the Worst of Ann Arbor.

The Daily's Best of Ann Arbor came out yesterday.

Apparently the Ark is the best club, Ashley's is the best bar and Village Corner is the best liquor store.

Whatever.

But when they say the U Towers are the best apartments I must insist they are joking. U Towers are the most run down, dingy apartments. There is a reason why you get a free hot dog just for touring their apartments. They are completely terrible.

The worst one though was that they named Wilson White the best realtor. That is terrible. They demand the rent must be paid by one check. They don't do even the most basic maintenance and they charge us a $217.50 late fee every month. They are a evil organization with absolutely no ethics.

Surprisingly though the places that won, were also the very same places that bought advertising in the "Best of Ann Arbor" section.

Time Zones

Ya know what really dunks my donut? When times zones are unrepresentative of people sleep habits. I mean really. It's like the bane of my existence.

It's like this, people don't go to bed when the sun sets, and they don't get up when the sun rises. Without Daylight Savings Time, the sun would rise at 5am and set at 8:15pm in June. In January the sun rises at 8 am and sets at 5:30 pm. Sure maybe half the population is awake at 8am but no one goes to bed at 5:30. That's dumb.

This is a chart of the percent of people awake at any given time of day for Ann Arbor Michigan. I made it using my best estimate of when people go to bed and wake up. The blue box is the sunlight times in summer with DST, so it is shifted over an hour.

My point is that the box should be put in the center of people's day. The boxes should be centered around 2pm. And why don't we observe DST all year round? Does anyone really like the sun setting at 5pm? Why not have the sun rise at like 9am and set at 6pm.

Furthermore, I live on the western edge of my time zone so people on the east coast have the sun rise at 7:15 am and set at 4:30 pm in the winter. Even with daylight savings time the sun rises at 5:30 am in June.

I feel like I'm the only person who cares about this. Everyone I try to explain this to doesn't think it's a big deal. But even Venezuela decided to change it's time zones by 30 minutes to fit peoples lives better, and if Chavez can do it why can't we?

GEO Strikes! Wire the Pinkertons!

The GEO haven't chosen to strike, only to hold a 2 day walkout in order to show how the University cannot function without them. This comes as GEO is asking for a 9 percent wage increase. I personally feel that giving graduate students free tuition in exchange for teaching a class seems reasonably fair. The University couldn't function without the relatively low cost work that GSI's do. I don't know how much GSI's have to work in a given week or what they make per hour. Whether or not they deserve a pay increase is not the point. The point is that the entire walkout only hurts students. I don't know the details of how the GSI system works or what their payment is like but I'll just pretend I do. I could be very wrong.

Although I have never taken a class, I consider game theory a hobby of mine. I have produced a payoff matrix for both sides. The numbers are arbitrary but show how each outcome might be perceived by each side (I think). Each side is really only interested in themselves. The first number is the University's score, the second is the GEO score. The higher the number the better.

		GEO
		Soft	Medium	Hard
U of M	Soft	Not Probable	GEO gets what it wants 2,8	GEO really gets what it wants 0,10
	Medium	Not Probable	Compromise 5,5	GEO walks out, Michigan Caves; 2, 7
	Hard	Not Probable	GEO walks out then caves; 6,2	Strike -3, -3

The GEO appears to have come hard to the table by demanding a 9% increase, it is clear that they won't play soft. The University countered with 3% which leads me to believe that they are playing medium to hard ball. If the University knows that GEO is playing hardball they should play medium ball for the best results.

The point is that if the GEO really wants these raises and is willing to strike for them, eventually the University will have to cave because - and I love this - when GEO strikes they still get to go to class. The University doesn't stop teaching grad courses even when the GEO is on strike. So, in essence since they get paid with tuition they are still getting paid, in a way. There is one aspect of this that isn't included in the chart, the University won't lose any revenue during a walk out. I am not getting a tuition reimbursement during this. There state and federal funding will continue. This is one of the things that really bothers me about this.

GSI's don't have to go to work, the University runs as normal, and who loses? The students. An out of state student taking 16 credit hours pays $130 per credit hour per week [33,500$/(16 weeks * 16 hours per week)]. Yeah, every time an out of state student misses a 2 hour lecture they are throwing away $260 of knowledge in a roundabout kind of way. So when my classes are canceled I am getting less education but still paying the same amount. It bothers me that I am going to learn less because the GSI feel they aren't being paid enough.

When GSI's take away from class time to explain why they are striking I get so angry. I don't care about their problems. Every one has problems, they shouldn't waste my time because they feel they deserve more money. I don't pay tuition to listen to them complain. Plus, if they do get the pay increases guess who subsidizes it. The students tuition. I cannot stand a GSI taking away from class time to try to get me to support the idea that they should get paid more at my expense.