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PAGE 5
I'm really liking this sudoku, cryptquip, and crosswords on different pages in the UDK. I feel like 'I'm on a treasure hunt.
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
I found Waldo last night!
Apparently, a lot of people had swag yesterday. News to me.
Keep jumping the gun on the long-sleeve T-shirt and sweats...
My roommate set off the fire alarm while cooking dinner. On the bright side the firemen thought the food smelled really good and wanted to take some to go.
Yes, I am wearing a Chiefs jersey.
Yes, I am a girl. Wipe that confused look off your face.
Last call at Anschutz on days before exams should be obliterated. Why, yes. I do have a caffeine addiction.
The secret service is a lot flashier than I thought they would be.
Another reason to not be a Packers fan.
I know there are important things to text FFA about, like squirrels, but does anyone care that FIFA 13 came out today?
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2012
Is it just me or is part of health human interaction? Way to take that away. Watkins.
I am a girl and I am nice. Therefore, nice girls exist! Look harder and you'll find one!
The FFA embodies everything about the liberal media bias that taints the outlook of the readers. Anti-fraternity, anti-abortion, anti-conservative. How cliche?
If you think that nice girls don't exist, then maybe you haven't met the right girls.
Be especially wary of the squirrels missing half of their tails...
My male professor just quoted mean girls in class... Day made!
To the trainers who are wondering,
I did indeed find a Poke girl. She is the
Misty to my Ash.
Edit's Note: Good for you, man!
You walked into a 50-minute class 44 minutes late. Go away.
At least our football team won't lose this Saturday! That alone gives us a reason to party.
Aaand here is a girl supporting the guy that wrote the pro-life letter to the editor. Boom.
Anyone wanna get trashed and to extreme midget wrestling with me? Looking to make some lifelong friends. You drive.
'Collaborative learning'an excuse
CAMPUS
Watching that cheater was the impetus for my thoughts on the current trend towards a collaborative academic environment, particularly in the classroom. Collaboration in the college classroom is chic right now. Desks swivel and have wheels so students can work together. Class time is reserved for group work; watch the lectures before you come. My organic chemistry course had group quizzes. My thermodynamics course required homework partners. My microeconomics course takes daily quizzes as a class.
I've been in school long enough to see some pretty egregious academic misconduct. Just the other day, I saw a classmate take a quiz for another classmate and turn it in, along with his own. I was awestruck. In a moment when I should have said something, I froze.
We should consider why people would want to work together in the first place. Because of constraints like time and the chance to be better off, they choose to collaborate.
Nice girls do exist. I'm engaged to one. This nice guy is #WINNING
Please, don't boost the baseball players' egos anymore. They are cocky enough.
One person can't do everything and simply increasing the number of people has diminishing returns. But, do these things matter in an classroom?
It's possible, to some degree, though I wouldn't really count the blatant cheating I witnessed any kind of positive collaboration. Let's consider a less conspicuous example. Perhaps you've heard of the recent cheating debacle involving Harvard students whose take-home tests had eerily similar answers. Some students implicated in the fiasco have already come out with a defense of their actions; they collaborated because they couldn't understand the questions and the class was collaborative in nature to the point of being an expectation during the semester. Do they have a valid point?
orative classroom in the first place? It's true that some student-teaching-student action will happen. It's completely true that some students learn class material better working with others. But aside from this, the results can be comically sad – a combination of pseudo-learning, leeching off peers, and flat out cheating by students, all enabled by our educational institution.
Maybe, but I'm more concerned about how the situation fits the trend towards a collaborative classroom, a trend that played a role in the Harvard students' decision to work together on the take-home exam. Why trend towards a collab-
The trend towards a collaborative classroom is hurting students. Students don't work in homework and quiz groups to come up with creative, compelling solutions. What happens is this: The student who knows the material dominates the group. Others who don't know
the material skip ahead to wherever this most knowledgeable student already is. They don't work out the problem by themselves. Instead, they look at the most knowledgeable student's thought process and exclaim, "Oh! We see! We get it now!" Even worse is how they think that they can just keep up this pseudo-learning until the test and then then all the material at once. They stunt their own learning and are dependent on others. Then, they are expected to take a test. Alone. Despite all the "collaboration" that has happened, which has amounted to not really doing the homework independently and working all the problems in groups, they are expected to know everything autonomously. What a shocker – the student does poorly and then begs for a curve.
"If only we took group tests, then all this time we spent 'collaborating' would prove useful!" I hope that no one reads the example I gave and seriously thinks that trending harder towards a collaborative classroom will solve the
problems of a collaborative classroom. It won't. Students are getting away with not knowing much and this collaborative trend is to blame. There are definitely times when it makes sense, but homework partners? Group quizzes? Take-home, open-book, open-note tests? What ever happened to a competitive learning environment? Our university is just asking for our students to not learn anything.
I'm not asking every course to eliminate every student on student interaction; I'm just asking that our university holds students accountable. I seriously look forward to the day where we put the force feeding of collaboration in the classroom behind us. In the meantime, cheating is cheating and no amount of pseudo-collaboration can cover up that fact.
Ouyang is a junior majoring in potroleum engineering and economics from Overland Park. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisOuyang.
Take time to indulge in TV
TELEVISION
If you were to walk through my house right now, you would probably find 50 percent o
If you were to walk through my house right now, you would probably find 50 percent of the televisions tuned to some sort of reality TV - "Project Runway" is a favorite, along with "Toddlers and Tiaras" and the "Real Housewives" series. No shame.
The other 50 percent would be tuned to a show we all know and love, both for its complex, increasingly perverse story lines and its unbeatable Benson-Stabler team.
That's right, it's "Law and Order: SVU." Now say it with me:
"In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories."
Dun dun.
Say what you will about crime dramas – that they're unrealistic, overly dramatic, predictable, what have you – but something about SVU is different. Maybe it's the fact that there are nearly 300 episodes to enjoy or that by the end of each episode, trying to sort through all the plot twists is like trying to
untangle your Apple headphones after a full day in your backpack (read: extremely difficult).
Furthermore, "Law and Order: SVU" is a big whopping helping of "look at your life, look at your choices." After seeing so many episodes, I feel relatively certain I won't agree to be a nanny for a man I meet in a nightclub or eat a salad with mushrooms on it when no one else has any.
not really sure about that one, but I'm sure there's some justification.
Everyone can justify his or her television choices in this way. With a football addiction, it's because you have to support your favorite team. With the "Bachelorette," it's because you just like to make fun of the contestants, it's not like you really believe they fall in love or anything. With "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" it... Well, I'm
My point is, no one should be embarrassed by guilty pleasure television choices. If you're one of those people who dives for the remote when someone goes to look at your DVR list, own it.
Keep it in moderation, of course. Add a little History Channel ("Pawn Stars" doesn't count) or C-SPAN every once in awhile. But just because Stabler's anger management issues or Benson's relating to rape victims is predictable doesn't mean we have to deprive ourselves of a series we love.
We're college students. We have tests, papers, homework, deadlines, networking and extracurriculars to think about. In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with indulging in a little MTV at the end of the day. Except for Snooki's baby. There's really no excuse for being interested in that.
Mayfield is a junior studying journalism, public policy and leadership from Overland Park. Follow her on twitter @lindsmayf.
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
Will you still watch the NFL with replacement refs after Monday's controversy?
Follow us on Twitter @UK_Opinion. Tweet us your opinions, and we just might publish them.
@Jason Fried
@Jason_Fried
@UKD_Opinion_Yup, what else am I supposed to do on a Sunday? Homework?
Ha.
@UDK Opinion Yep. Refs make bad calls all the time. Calls that decide championships. This wasn't a championship game. #GetOverit
@ODK Opinion of course. You can't boycott a big conglomerate like the NFL.
It just doesn't happen #SA8dTrue
@JennaJJayhawk
HUMOR
@Ev Dunbar
@everydayKU
@vida_ambiciosa
@UDK_ Opinion. yes. But only until basketball season if it doesn't get better
By AJ Barbosa
abarbosa@kansan.com
But I still vote, though I don't know why. Maybe it's because it gives me an inherent right to complain about politics whenever I see fit, or maybe it's because I feel like a good American whenever I wear my "I Voted" sticker. Either way, I'm contributing to the poorly-oiled, rickety machine that is today's United States government.
To me, that's a bit disconcerting. Basically, unless congress sides with the Commander-in-Chief, nothing's going to get done. That's why a lot of President Obama's promises from 2008 never came to frustion. If Romney is elected and the mid-term elections bring more Democrats, he's not going to get anything done, either. Everything is a crampshoot.
In case you skipped out on politics and government classes, any promise each presidential candidate makes is subject to congress' approval. If that gray-haired gaggle of Brooks Brothers-wearing clowns isn't down with it, the president's ideas get shot down.
When it comes to civic engagement, you and I are probably a lot alike: I keep myself informed and I have my opinions and views, but I'm not the kind of guy who goes canvassing the town encouraging people to vote for the candidate I believe in.
I look at voting the same way I look at going to the Jayhawk Cafe—or, in the parlance of our times, the Hawk. Each time I patronize Lawrence's most notorious drinking establishment, I contribute to the widespread epidemic of collegiate binge drinking. I don't know why I do it, but I do. Maybe it's because it lowers my standards for more upscale bars, or maybe it's because I feel like a proper college kid when I wake up with that wrinkled, neon-orange wristband adhered to my wrist.
When I was 18, I was excited to vote for the first time. When I first moved to Lawrence, I was excited to go to the Hawk. I've spent the better part of my first two years at school going to the Hawk each week and I've voted
three or four times in the last two years. The allure of both diminishes each time.
Logistically, they're almost identical. For example, if you don't arrive early, you're going to be waiting in line for a long time. Unfortunately, the days of gaining admission to the Hawk with a shoddy, cardboard fake are long gone; if your ID isn't legit, you could be in trouble. If you watch the news, you've seen the controversy that's arisen over new "Voter ID" laws in certain states. Now, in Kansas, casting your ballot carries the same requirements as getting into the Hawk (basically). There's been talk of "voter vigilante" groups plotting to intimidate minority voters outside of polling places who they believe may commit voter fraud, too. These guys are just like the Alcohol Beverage Control officers who litter the Hawk; if you don't look like you belong there, these professional haters will be on your back.
Then there's the actual voting process, which is akin to the actual drinking process at the Hawk. The majority of politicians these days are just as cheap as the booze lining each bar at the Hawk. When you vote for your local congressmen, you'll be knocking down a variety of quick, watered-down liquors. Then you'll vote for a presidential candidate, which is comparable to ripping two-or-three "specialty" shots; concoctions with a sweet taste that cleverly masks the fact that they're still made up of cheap alcohol. Then you'll feel good about yourself. You'll feel like a good American.
But remember this: No matter what kind of booze you pick and no matter which candidate you pick, you're still going to feel terrible tomorrow. But that's what makes America beautiful: we're free to make stupid decisions that are only going to give us headaches the next day. We can pick who crooked politician we trust to control our country and we can pick which type of booze we trust to control our thought-processes.
That's democracy. God bless the United States of America and God bless the Hawk. Go vote and go drink.
Barbosa is a junior majoring in journalism from Leawood. For more hilarity, follow him on Twitter @ AIBARBROSA.
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LETTER GUIDELINES
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