I hated university and everyone (just about) that resided there.
Ahh, university...
... the bastards.
ah yes, university: that well known seat of learning. and if i did indeed learn nothing, i did at least learn that even in places you're supposed to be taught - you can always teach someone something too. hear me rant, hear him rage, hear me wrath, see the result
the rant
i wasn't in the best of moods...
and it didn't get much better after this
i know you have probably heard this a hundred thousand times before....
but this is just a quick email to vent my complete disgust of the network programming module. not only were we told we wouldn't have to do any programming this year, to find out that we would have to do java again when we received our timetable.
but to top it off:
1. we cant do it.
2. jan graba couldn't teach fish to swim. (ie -
fish:how do i swim?
jan:get in the water and move your fins
fish:what are they?
jan:just do it
fish:i might drown
jan:just get in the water and move your fins
fish:how?
jan:it's on drive q if you're not sure
fish:im a fish
jan:it'll be on blackboard next week
fish:ill be drowned by then
jan:just get in the water and move your fins
fish:how....?
etc etc...
you see?)
3. its too much in one semester to absorb and understand (especially when he cant answer anyone's questions)
4. we shouldn't even be doing it (it wasnt in 1. the prospectus 2. we were ensured it wuold only be done in year one)
5. its boring as sin
6. he doesn't teach, he reads the lecture notes. (hmmmm... i think i could do that for 30,000 a year...)
7. he is forever changing his mind about everything (see attached emails..... all sterling 22 of them)
8. a little consistency between the lectures and tutorials would be thoroughly helpful ( our tutorial teacher isn't even a java lecturer, and knows about as much about java as i do )
9. jan's tendency to put ALL important materials on the university Q:\ drive is frustrating, meaning that the ENTIRE year has to come into uni to do assignments. this is sometimes added to blackboard, but always several days too late.
10. he is about as approachable as Hiroshima with PMT.
i'm not entirely sure what everyone else thinks about this, but it has been sent to 2G, 2H, 2J and 2K networks as well. id appreciate it that if you feel the same you would send an email to everyone in the above list with the subject "java - i agree".
i would be more than happy to come in and discuss these issues with you acting as a representative for all others in 2G in absence of our current rep.
see attached : emails from Jan graba. they are not sorted because i have just added all recent emails from him to this email.
html a little PS - many thanks to Samir for all his legitimate concerns from all 2G. :-)
Regards
Phil
:-)
"I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes lots of days attack me all at once"
the rage
where's me handbag?
the response....
It was brought to my attention this morning (Monday) that one of the Network Programming students had emailed the whole cohort to complain about the current Network Programming assignment. (I won't name the individual, as I think that would be inappropriate in an email to be read by others, but you will know who he is if you read his email.)
My initial reaction was to ignore the matter, as I did not want to dignify such grossly improper behaviour with a response. However, as further information came to light, I decided that the matter needed to be addressed and dealt with.
The first and most important point is that any student who has a grievance with a particular lecturer (whether justified or not) should firstly approach the lecturer concerned about this grievance. Only if/when the student feels that the lecturer has not dealt with his grievance adequately should the student take matters further. I fully believe that the great majority of students are mature and sensible enough to be well aware of this. Evidently, the student concerned was not. In addition, the student made no attempt to seek assistance when having difficulty.
Having examined the attendance record of the above student, I find that he attended only 2 classes out of a possible 23 in the second semester and was not seen at all after Week 6!!! It is hardly surprising that he finds he is unable to complete the assignment. Someone with such an attendance record would not stand the remotest chance of completing the current assignment. The fault for this, of course, is his and noone else's.
To close on a high note, I would like to thank those students who have had the maturity and commonsense to point out that the student concerned was quite out of order in his actions and that it is principally people with poor attendance records who have been unable to do the assignment.
Cheers.
Jan
the wrath
it gets worse
oh dear....
you'll be pleased to know that i am not being so "immature and "unsensible" for this email. so i have decided not to send this to everyone on the course, because it seems to me that you do not wish for us to have freedom of speech. which is one thing i know i am perfectly reasonably aloowed to expect.
Did it ever come to your attention that people were not turning up for your lectures for the exact reasons i stated in said email which you are abusing me over.
the email was not immature, i am stating my own opinion. which believe it or not i am allowed to have. free speech and all...
i also know, if you had read another email which has been sent out in the last day or two that some people have actually been to all lectures and tutorials, and have not come out any better off than me. they are still confused and struggling on this assignment.
as to my absence from many lectures and tutorials:
if you looked at my other attendence records, you may find that they are not much better, and for your information there are very sensisitve personal issues which surround this.
but of course, you would just think that i was being lazy, not paying attention. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. did it ever occur to you that there are other things happening in my life which could possibly be stopping me from working to my full potential? i will of course be taking this up with trish and alison.
plus, the line in your email "(I won't name the individual, as I think that would be inappropriate in an email to be read by others, but you will know who he is if you read his email.)"
.... i emailed the entire of the networks degree, so i would expect that everyone knows who i am. and i have also had several responses, in complete agreement of my points raised in said previous email.
"My initial reaction was to ignore the matter, as I did not want to dignify such grossly improper behaviour with a response." - why would this be? it is not grossly improper behaviour. i am stating fact as well as opinion, and i am not alone in thinking this. your attempts to abuse me in this way will not work, as i am not about to shut up.
"Evidently, the student concerned was not." - this is getting interesting. now you're accusing me of being immature and unsensible. would you like to add "dumb", "thick", "stupid" "lazy" "abusive" or anything else to that, because i think that you are out of order patronising me like that. I will take this further.
"Having examined the attendance record of the above student, I find that he attended only 2 classes out of a possible 23 in the second semester and was not seen at all after Week 6!!! It is hardly surprising that he finds he is unable to complete the assignment. Someone with such an attendance record would not stand the remotest chance of completing the current assignment. The fault for this, of course, is his and noone else's. " - having already stated my reasons several times for not being there, i will also restate that people who have been attending 95% or more of lectures and tutorials are also struggling as much as i am. does that not show the poor quality of both lectures and tutorials on this course? it may also be news to you that the tutorials were more than a complete waste of time. our totorial techer person did not even turn out to be a java tutor. he knew less than the restof the group did. what is the point in that? its no wonder people do not turn up to them, no-one learns anything.
okay, i also added all the replies recently to my original email: fair enough, some people think im out of order, but most people have agreed that the assigment is too hard, and that the course is being taught very poorly.
i also noticed that the only people to really say i was out of order were a couple of, how should i say, suck-ups? i rest my case.
emails as follows: ( 7 other emails wehich only read the subjectline "I agree" not included here)
Having been to all of the lectures bar 1 i found these USELESS
Gave up on the Tutorials after a few weeks having found these to be USELESS too.
Made little progress with the assignment after spending MANY MANY HOURS reading TEXTBOOKS and SUN WEBSITE and NAGGING JAN VARIOUS TIMES.
HINT FOR FUTURE YEARS - WE CAN ALL READ! TRY TEACHING SOMETHING!
BLESS PHIL FOR SPEAKING OUT!!!!!
i agree
bye java
Well, I Must agree......
In minor addition to Mr Steer...
What may have solved all of this poor learning environment would have been the taking on bored of our suggestions last year, concerning Computer Systems Architecture. One lecturer and another tutorial taker. It Didn't work then, and it most definitely didn't work now. That is a very long rant.
The Assignment:
Fair enough. Do these tasks 1, 2, 3 etc.... . However. If you want to do these said tasks or even work on them at home or on your own machine, the chances you will have to get the environment going without any help are exceedingly slim to nil. After installing everything I could find from the sun site, compiling and running beneficially in Textpad was an absolute breakthrough. Beans and any other non typical ".java" ilk are out the proverbial window.
Teaching us to do all these fantastic things with Java is great. However, teaching would have also been fantastic. There is little absorbtion in a mind where there is no meaningful description applied to it, demonstrating the logical structure of the code in question or even the language itself. Just lay man's terms to give us the jist of it would be great, how things tie in together what points to what and so on. Bless Jan, he can read, but explaining whats what in the code and why things work are truly not his strong point.
The Drive Q issues speak for themselves. Horrific.
The examples that are supplied are the module's meager grip on a claim to demonstration.... Comparing, copying pasting, changing. Learning! Great!. Guidance, Nil. I know many other people in different groups to mine and there is a slightly differing consensus about Jan. I Believe those in his tutorial group found him helpful, this I never got the chance to experience, but if he taught and showed them constructivley, then fair play to him. The attendance in our practicals from the word go demonstrate the usefulness of said tutorials.
On the whole.... I believe that there are many people on this module who can do this and really get their teeth into it, thats what programming assignments are all about, but are crying out for help and directions as to where to start and how not to stumble in terms of their productivity due to the unfeasibly annoying environment.
In Hope.....
Kevin
I agree with what you said as i am having trouble with said assingment myself. The examples we have been given are indeed limited and of little use. Also in tutorials we have not created code but only altered it which has not stood us in good stead for said assignment.
Best of luck to others who are struggling.
James
Has anyone else noticed that Jan's own JSP - bean examples DON'T WORK.
To be fair to the guy, I have tried using some examples from Sun's web site,
they don't work either, which can only mean that the Java Server on all the zenith workstations is set up wrong.
If you read Jan's notes carefully, ( the blue questions for practical 23/24, question 3 iii) Jan suggests inserting your .class files into the
Java SDK's classes directory, which mere students without admin passwords can't access., making the successful demonstration of your JSP files IMPOSSIBLE.
(i tried altering CLASSPATH from command line, does nowt...)
Looking at the marking scheme the most it is POSSIBLE to get is 45%, but not to worry as you could get 20 marks for "Commenting, variable naming, code layout, design
and screenshots." if you are really, really nice to Jan. :-)
I do agree with a lot of the points raised about the module.... But I STRONGLY disagree that anything should have been said against Jan because it is a total insult to him and also such an inappropriate and unprofessional way of approaching the matter.
We have discussed the matter with alot of members of staff and have tried to show the students worries and I think the main ones are:-
IF THE STUDENTS DO NOT PASS THE ASSIGNMENT OR THE EXAM THEY WILL NOT PASS THE YEAR! NOT PASSING THE YEAR MEANS THE STUDENTS WITH PLACEMENTS WILL NOT BE ABLE TO CONTINUE ON THERE PLACEMENTS THAT THEY HAVE WORKED SO HARD TO GET. ALSO A MAJOR POINT IS THAT COMPARED TO OTHER UNIVERSITIES OUR EASTER BREAK HAS BEEN VERY VERY SHORT AND BECAUSE OF THIS JAVA ASSIGNMENT NOT MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GO FOR A BREAK AND AS WE HAVE 6 EXAMS IN LESS THAN 2 WEEKS AND WHEN WE GET BACK 3 ASSIGNMENTS TO HAND IN ON FIRST WEEK WE ARE VERY BUSY AND ONCE AGAIN WE HAVE NO REAL PREPERATION TIME FOR EXAMS.
We all understand that without new courses there would be not point of learning, but this module has been run on a very tight schedule and there was concern shown at the last staff student meeting and nothing was done.
We are here to learn and I do believe that if you want to come to university you should be willing to learn and put the work in, but when you can do all the other work and you can't do one subject then you will put that to the back of the list but I don't believe this has been done as we only finished learning the stuff we needed about 1 week before the end of term!
My last point is that you can't even have a good go at the assignment; as the marking scheme says that you have to get the whole thing working to pass!!!!!
I do feel that it is too late to do anything and I personally will be so so gutted if I fail this year as I have done well in everything else.
Yours sincerely
John
phil,
Yes i agree with 90 percent of the email that you sent out, i feel that jan has tried to cover too much for one year, and the lectures do "pass by me" because its no good him just reading code from a book. Also in the lectures jan try's to cram too much into the hour slot, it would of been much better not covering as much in the lecture and spreading less material out of the hour slot, with more explanations.
I am concerned very much about this subject cus god knows how i will pass this assignment, because it is simply too hard (is that me or is that the common thought?). I am panicing as well because if i fail this module it will not allow me to pass year 2 so i dont know how that stands me with placement with my job offer (if i can still go or not?). I feel it would be harsh if i was to fail the year because of one module when i have passed all the other pieces of coursework all year with a 2/1 average + turned up to 98% of lectures.
Let me know the progress on this matter,
Ashley
Err, not sure what to say to that, but...
On some of the issues you have raised you do have the full agreement of Group 2J (if you want more details then ask but you can edge your bets on points 1, 3, 4 and 5, (ok number 5 is for me) are what we agree on)
Not too sure about the comments about Jan, these will do more harm then good in your case against Network Programming but hey you said it now, you cant exactly get it back can you?
You have said your issues with the module but what do you want to see done about it?
Can i ask have you started the assignment? It's by no means a walk in the park, and i attend virtually every single tutorial, unsupervised tutorial and lecture. Or are you hoping like the others i know who sit staring at the thing until the answer physically rapes them? (i'm hoping the latter works just aswell as doing the assignment otherwise all year 2 may be on the U-bend rollacoster)
Just to add though:
Have you made a formal complaint? if so, who to? My concern is that people just took the fact year 2 was moaning because they had to do some work in java and i don't think that is the case, people are scared they will fail a module and it will cost them all the hard work they put in by getting this far. This will cost people the 'firsts' they have attained so far.
It is also wise to remember that this is the first time this unit has been run and it SHOULD be marked more beneficially to all students regardless.
Good luck!
Tobias
BSc Computing (Networks)
'We can either stand here doing nothing like the French, or we can do something about it' - Marge Simpson
I agree wholeheartedly that the module was poorly put together and presented.
I have managed to finish the assignment today, after somewhere in the region of 90 hours work on it.
I was new to Java this year, although having done some C++ and smalltalk and so understand the concepts of OOP.
I am now in the position of Hating Java as a programming language, feeling it is impenetrable and very frustrating to do even the simplest of tasks.
Is it down to me & ALL the year being thick as pigsh*t?
Is it down to lack of work on our part?
or
Is this down to the way it's been taught?
Is it down to the limited examples we've been shown?
Is it down to no overview of concepts being presented? Is it down to the programming environment used?
Personally I think the latter four all apply!
and many other issues on top of these.
We shall find out after the exams how far the moderators have to swing the marking
to find out how truly awful this module has been.
end of rant!
Lee
I agree that the assignment is way too hard - a little harsh on Jan tho!
----------------------------------------------------
Jack
okbye
Regards
Phil
:-)
"I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes lots of days attack me all at once"
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