Shallow Thinker

On July 31, I submitted my final assignment for graduate school.  It was a riveting paper that detailing my case study of the failure to implement a software process improvement technique in a mechanical design environment.  I know, you’re completely fascinated with the concept and would love to learn more about the subject.  Unfortunately, that’s not the subject of today’s post.  Today’s post is to highlight the fact that I think I’m done with my Master’s degree. (or is it with a little “m”…or does the apostrophe go after?  I’m not familiar with the proper punctuation of degrees.) And to think that it all started so long ago…

I say that I think I’m done because I haven’t heard for sure.  My professor read my work of poetry and posted my grade pretty quick.  For the past three weeks, I’ve been watching my academic record waiting to see the magical degree appear.  A part of it is because I want some closure that everything is actually done and finished.  The other part is because I really want to see how they punctuate the title.  Either way, I haven’t seen any update on my record or received my diploma in the mail.

I still invite you to join me in celebrating the fact that I might, possibly be done.  Maybe.  Could still have more to do, though.  Possibly not.  Who knows?  Or maybe, they found out that I was really only doing this in hopes of making more money instead of doing it for the true pursuit of academia and that caused them to revoke my degree. Crap, I knew I should have used bigger words in that report.

Class #8 of 10 is now complete.  My final lecture of the course was last night.  The professor was nice enough to give us our final exam two weeks ago so we all showed up tonight hoping to get our graded finals.  (We got them.)  Class #9 comes to a close tomorrow evening with our final webchat of the semester.  My final assignment for the course is due at the same time that our class starts.

This final assignment has been a bit different.  We are supposed to make a presentation to justify a department within a fictional organization.  I worked through my rough draft last week and have been struggling with my final draft this week.  As I worked on some details this morning, I decided to go back and calculate what I need to make on this assignment in order to get an “A” in the class.  I need a 70.  Not bad.  But what do I need in order to have a “B” in the class? I need a 3. No, not a typo.  It’s a single-digit.

Well now, that takes the pressure off.  Instead of struggling through the assignment in order to make it perfect, I’ve decided to just add some pretty pictures.  Want to see my first slide?

You see that awesome logo at the top?  Yeah, I made it myself.  Because that’s what it takes to earn a 3 in graduate school.

One of the funnest parts about being in grad school is being included on e-mails like the ones below.  You know there’s some kind of story behind this…

I forwarded this out to some of my coworkers for a laugh and, as is likely to happen with engineers, I started a pun war.

From: Brian
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 9:07 AM

Yeah – something’s definitely afoot.

From: John
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 9:08 AM

We could take this story and run with it.

From: Brian
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:07 AM

If they’re caught, the thieves won’t have a leg to stand on.

From: John
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:08 AM

The police wanted to investigate, but the thieves already had a leg up.

From: Brian
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:10 AM

Students on campus are wondering if the community will be able to heel after such a heinous crime.

From: John
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:11 AM

Crime certainly has a toe-hold in that area.

From: Brian
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:13 AM

These foot puns are getting really corn-y.

From: Jonathan
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:13 AM

I’m sending this thread to the guys whose project this was. He’ll get a kick out of it.

From: Andy
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 1:48 PM

How could ya’ll be so callus?

Last night I took my final exam for class #8 in the 10-course master’s program.  I have three weeks and two assignments due in order to complete course #9.  So, in theory, I could finish my degree this summer.  In theory…

I checked the website for the master’s program and they are indeed offering a course this summer.  A course that I have already taken.  In the fall, they will be offering three courses…none of which have been offered since I started the program.  Isn’t that awesome?  So my options were to either wait until the fall and have an abundance of choices or to….well, actually, that was my only choice because I’d already had the summer course.

Seeing my option in front of me, I did what any man would do.  I wrote an e-mail to the program directors and begged for some help.  I realized that it’s difficult to try to curry favor by praising a program while also explaining that you want out as soon as possible.  Either I was articulate, the director had pity on me, or they have contingencies for situations like this.  Whichever it was, I have been allowed to do an independent study for the summer session.

I now have 10 weeks in the summer to do a research project and write a paper.  My course advisers are interested in the topic and have already indicated that the paper could be published.  Now that’s some pressure.  Well, not for me.  It’s pressure for Kelley because she’s going to have to edit this thing.  I hope she makes me sound smart!

Have I complained about graduate school in a while?  Probably.  But eh, why not go some more.

If all goes according to plan, I will have one course remaining after I finish this semester.  Conveniently, the illustrious university that I am attending offers a course in my field of study during the summer.  Unfortunately, it is one that I have already had.  So, I e-mailed the director of the program to see what my options are.  There are two.  (1) Wait until the fall and take a different course or (2) do an “independent study.”

Seeing as I’m one of those types that likes to do things immediately and get them out of the way, the independent study seems like a great idea.  The problem is that I will probably have to derive the course description, content, and grading scheme.  I’m all for teaching and grading myself, but doing so in a manner that is approved by the university will probably prove difficult.  So, I have come up with some ideas for my course topic.  See what you think, or add your own in the comment section.  Remember that my degree will be in Engineering Management.

• MWA-605 - (Management by Walking Around) - The course would detail how to walk around an office, make generic statements, and appear way more important than I actually am.
• MCP-514 - “Management Catch Phrases” will work on extending my vocabulary to include the parts of managerial speech that so often eludes the common fold.  From “Strike while the nose is on the grindstone” to “Think outside the mousetrap.”
• MCP-515 - The advanced level of MCP-514 will center around high-level management phrases like “Team Construct” and one of my all time favorites “Hierarchical Analysis“
• ELS-635 - This course details how to utilize extended lunches in order to create a sense of entitlement.
• PTE-538 - People who do crappy work are eventually assigned menial tasks that don’t matter.  Those who excel have more and more work assigned to them.  This is a course in how to continually punish those who excel.

Any other ideas on how to improve my managing skills?

Before I started graduate school, I liked to read a little.  When I say “a little” I mean “maybe a book a year.”  As a matter of fact, I started a page about books that I read so that I could share them with the internets.  But I got so bored with my lack of reading that I stopped updating the page.  When graduate school started, I used that as an excuse to stop trying.  There are some books that I feel that I should read, but I just don’t care for them.  It’s kind of like the movie The Blind Side.  Everyone is raving about how good it is, but I have no interest in seeing it.  Does that make me a bad person?  Probably.  But I’m very content with being a bad person.  The same applies to a lot of books out there.  I want to be cool and be able to discuss stuff with all of my hip, book-lover friends, but I can’t bring myself to do the required reading.

I finally decided to forget about the books that I should read and start getting things that I want to read.  Oh, the good stuff is so refreshing.  I’ve been through a book and a half in the past month.  That’s a record for me!  Granted, I have had to ignore some of my grad school required reading in order to achieve this lightning-fast pace, but I gotta feed my brain some sweets to go along with the bland course requirements.

So what awesome books have captured my brain?  Um….well…..

See, here’s the thing.  You have to promise that you won’t laugh at me for this.  I mean it.

PROMISE!  OK, here they are:

So be honest.  Does this selection make me look nerdy?

I’ll be the first to admit that every school system has their problems.  I’ll also be in line to discuss how our local school system seems to have a much larger pile of problems than the rest.  Horrible decisions are made almost every day and top administration officials seem concerned only with protecting themselves and promoting their friends.

So, like any dysfunctional group, the local school board isn’t the best at planning ahead.  For about a week, the local weather services had been predicting a chance of snow for last night.  But yesterday turned out to be one of the warmest days of the week.  It reached 50 degrees.  Not sunbathing weather, but certainly nothing to cry about.

In the late afternoon yesterday, with the temperature hovering in the mid-40’s and the precipitation definitely not falling, the local school board made the decision to close schools.  And because my daughters’ preschool follows their lead, it shut down as well.  At the time, I thought it was preposterous to make such a decision at that time.  Wouldn’t the wait-and-see approach be more appropriate?

It just goes to show what little I know.  I took a couple of picture of the great blizzard that hit our area last night.  Here’s a shot of our front yard looking across the street over to our neighbor’s house:

How did I survive out there?!  And you want to know something even crazier than all that snow?  I actually tried to drive to work in that mess!  Our parking lot was beautiful under such a thick blanket of snow.

So if you’ll pardon me, I’m off to build a snowman.  I’ll probably make just as much progress on the snowman as I’m going to make on this report that I’m working on.

You can check my blog archives, but I don’t think that I’ve ever complained about graduate school before.  (No need to actually check.  Here are the links to my school complaints - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7)  So, since I’m such a good sport about this school thing, perhaps you’ll indulge me a moment to complain.

This semester came to a close last night as I took a final exam.  I’ve never been one of those to take the full amount of time allotted for an exam.  I’m usually one of the first ones to walk-out, as a matter of fact.  It’s not because I’m smart or super-fast, it’s just my approach to exams.  I figure that I know the material or I don’t.  So, I put down what I know, fake what I don’t and move on.  For this exam, though, almost everyone was in the classroom for the duration. I allotted myself 30 minutes for each problem (5 total) and figured that I’d have nothing to do for the last 30 but maybe verify a couple of steps.  Nope.  I spent the entire time crunching numbers.  This wasn’t an exam in investment analysis.  It was an exam in using calculators.  I made so many calculations and wrote so much that one of my mechanical pencils broke.  One of the test problems had an entire page of text to read through just to find the six or seven numbers pertinent to the problem.  The professor insisted that this “case study” was a real life application of what we’ve learned.  Yeah?  Well, in real life, I’m not limited to three hours and I have a paycheck waiting when I’m done.  So I deem your problem silly and trivial….but I’ll still do it.

At any rate, the semester is over and I can catch my breath before diving back into a new semester in January.  The holidays now seem a little cheerier and my evenings are a bit more free.  I don’t have a care in the world!  Well, except for the fact that I have a compulsive need to check the school website every half hour to see if my grades have been posted yet.  I’ve already checked three times while writing this post.  If his final were really so important, you’d think that he’d have the grades posted by now.  Jerk.

UPDATE: Behold the power of my writing!  An hour after posting this the professor posted our grades.  I was joking about it, but this is the first time I’ve had a class where we took a final and less than 24 hours later, the grades were posted.  Now pardon me while I find something else to complain about.

Quick background - My employer pays for a portion of my graduate school, but only if I make a B or higher in the courses that I take.  The process is that I take the classes, get my grades, show them to my HR rep, and the company writes me a check.  The university normally requires students to pay before the semester starts, though.  Fortunately, they offer a deferred payment option.  I request this option at the beginning of the semester, pay a small fee, and I’m good to go.  By the time the bill comes due, I’ve already gotten my grades and the check from my employer.  It’s a pretty cool system.

Now the story - On August 3rd, all of my assignments for the summer semester were due.  August 4th was the deadline for my professors to submit grades for the summer semester.  Yesterday, I received a letter in the mail from this same academic institution.  It was dated August 5th.  The letter told me that my request for deferred payment for the summer semester was received.  And approved!  I reread the letter to make sure….yep, it said “summer semester.”  I looked at the date again….”August 5, 2009.”

So, the day after the summer semester was over, the school told me that it was OK for me to wait and pay my balance until after the semester was over.  I’m glad I was approved, and I’m thankful for them working with me, but it makes me wonder.  What am I supposed to do if my application is denied and I don’t find out until after the semester?  Do I go back and untake the classes or to I make the payment two months ago?

While my escapades into the mind of a plagiarist were fun, they do distract slightly from the overall arch of this academic year.  On August 19th of last year, I started the graduate program.  Since then, I have completed five of the ten courses required for the degree.  I have looked through my course requirements and talked with the various department heads and, if all goes according to plan, I’ll take two courses this semester, two in the spring, and then have one last class in the summer.  I’ll finish with the following degree:

Masters of Science in Engineering in Engineering Management with a minor in Technical Communications

They might have to give me two degrees in order to fit the whole name on there.  Basically, the MSE is offered in things like Electrical Engineering or Mechanical Engineering, but all of that doesn’t really relate to the part of my job that I enjoy doing.  The Engineering Management curriculum is more focused on the work that I do and the things that interest me.  It is a step out of my comfort zone to try for the minor in Technical Communications.  The classes typically require more time, work, and research, but I have found that they are very beneficial.  For instance, if it weren’t for the course that I took this past semester, you guys wouldn’t have had that fun plagiarism story to read.  See, we all win.

At the halfway point, I must admit that this has been a challenging experience.  I haven’t been overwhelmed by the difficulty of the work, I’ve just been much more stressed because of the time commitment that has been required.  Some nights require me to be at school, so I try to make sure that I’m at home with the girls the other nights.  I’ve given up reading (alright, video games) after the girls go to sleep in order to work on work and assignments.  And, I’ve had to devote the better part of a few weekends for some projects and some papers.  Through it all, Kelley has been very supportive and just plain amazing.  Thanks, Babe!  At the end of it all, I should reward you with something cool.  I have some ideas, but most of them involve building a statue of you from cheese.  I’ll keep working on it.

And, you have my word that this is the last time I do something like this.  Until we decide that I need a PhD, but after that, definitely no more degrees.  Now, I might try to become a licensed engineer and have to take the PE exam which would require a lot of studying.  But other than those two things, that’s it.  Unless I find a cool, new hobby.  But other than that…

Since Alana and Kelley enjoy taking moral dilemmas and questions of ethics and reducing them to tests of grammar, I figured we might as well continue along our journey and see how far down the rabbit hole this goes.

Within 30 minutes of sending the response that I posted (click here to refresh your memory), I received an e-mail in response.  The wise thing to do in this case would be to simply ignore it and wash my hands of the whole ordeal.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that you know me better than that:

John,

I appreciated your comment on my paper, but what i dont appreciate is you go around my back and make comment to prof. [REDACTED] about my paper without letting me know. Prof [REDACTED] tell me you wrote him an email about my paper. If you email him about my paper you need to let me know, because those paper is not finalize yet.  If there is anything i need to fix you need to inform me on the review. But instead you go around me and email prof. [REDACTED] without my knowledge. What you try to do? what is your intenstion?
What you doing is inappropriate.

Two things should be obvious to you by now. 
(1) This guy does not have the best grasp of the English language.  (Granted, Kelley and Alana would argue that I do not possess this grasp either, but this is my story so we will assume that I am a pillar of academic and moral excellence.)
(2) He’s not happy with me.  Of course, his words seem to indicate that he doesn’t like the fact that I corresponded with the professor.  I’m not a psychologist, but I would venture to guess that his anger is displaced to something that is beyond his control instead of the obvious things that he could have done to prevent the situation.

As I said earlier, the wise thing to do is to let all this pass and to just ignore it.  But have you checked the web address of my blog recently?  It certainly ain’t “smartboy.com.”

[REDACTED],

My correspondence with Dr. [REDACTED] was to determine what actions I should take and how best to proceed with the peer review.  This is the same advice that I gave to you.  If you’re not sure of the assignment requirements, contact the professor and make sure that things are clear.  My communications with Dr. [REDACTED] were neither inappropriate nor out of scope.  The notion that anything I do needs to go through you is just silly.

Once again, if you think that I have done something inappropriate, then please feel free to notify Dr. [REDACTED], or if warranted, contact the department chair, Dr. [REDACTED].  My suspicion, however, is that you are not so much concerned with my asking for guidance on the assignment.  I would suspect that you are probably upset that I easily identified your sources and that I did not keep quiet about it.  There is only one person that determined the outcome of this situation.  Your actions forced me to seek guidance when your report was simply a compilation of internet sources.  Your actions determined whatever final standing you have with the class.  If you are going to be upset about how this has turned out, your anger should not be directed at me.

Again, I encourage you to speak with the proper authorities if you feel that my actions are inappropriate or that I have perpetrated some type of academic misconduct.  Until I hear from a formal review board, I will consider this matter closed.

john

Will I get another response?  It’s tough to tell.  When you try to handle things tactfully, you run the risk of the other person not completely understanding the gravity of the situation or the intensity that you wish to convey.  I have opted to run that risk and refrain from just replying “You are a stupid cheater, you cheating McStupidHead!”

There is one other piece to this puzzle that you may interest you.  My employer, as well as the employer of the person in question, offers tuition reimbursement for graduate programs.  The caveat is that you have to make an A or a B in the course in order to be reimbursed.  I don’t know what this guy’s final grade was in this course, but I’m going to guess that it didn’t warrant getting a check from his employer.  If that is indeed the case, this was a $2,000 mistake that he made.  A mistake that I warned him about twice.

Moral of the story:  If at first you don’t succeed, try again.  If you don’t succeed the second time, find someone involved and blame them because, clearly, your plagiarism was of good quality and deserved a better grade than the 0ne you received.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’m off to crush some more hopes of academic success!

Remember our saga with The Plagiarist?  You don’t?  Well, let me refresh your memory….click here.

This afternoon, I checked the school’s website and our grades were posted.  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.  This evening, I received an e-mail from the “alleged” copy-cat.  I thought that you might enjoy what he said to me.  I have only removed the professor’s name.  The rest is exactly as it was written in the e-mail.

John,

Why u going around my back make comment to prof [REDACTED] without let me know. U r task to do peer review, any comment u have on my paper o need to before I have it finalize for him. Why u have write him and make comments without my keying me know, ur job is to comment on the and so I cam improve, ur job is not to around me and talk prof [REDACTED] on my paper.

Now do you see how I was able to easily identify what portions he had written and what portions were copied from the internet?  I had several ideas for responses, but I couldn’t come to a definitive conclusion that would make an impact.  I kept coming back to the fact that if this guy was mad at me because he got busted for plagiarizing, even when I warned him twice, then the use of logic probable wouldn’t help.  A lecture on ethics or integrity was out of the question, as well.  I even thought a few moments about turning it around and saying something like “Me?  You want to talk about what my duties were on this assignment?  How about you actually try to write a paper instead of copying whatever Google gives to you and then come lecture me.”  But, again, based on my dealings thus far, I figured it wouldn’t have the impact that I’d hope for.

[REDACTED],

My initial thought was to dismiss your e-mail, but I think that you deserve some response.

I copied Dr. [REDACTED] on all communications between you and me.  If you’d like to look over the instructions that were provided for the peer review, I believe that you will see that it was a requirement of the peer review assignment.  If you think that I have not performed my assigned task adequately, then I fully encourage you to bring that to Dr. [REDACTED]’s attention.

If your concern is that Dr. [REDACTED] was made aware of something that you were not, I believe that your are mistaken.  My review of both of your submissions indicated a sever lack of citations and some problematic use of text from internet sources.  Those comments are included on the documents that I returned to you.

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance,
john