SMIT Talentime

by Jonathan in SP,Victoria School on Thursday October 26, 2006 at 2334hours

After this is done, I think i’m going to take a nice ( long perhaps? =) ) break from the Club.

So yes, I thought I learned a great deal in VS through planning camps and helping organise school events. But being exposed to the FULL effect of planning an entire event from scratch, without the guidance and help of those who have been there and done that is seriously a freakish experience.

The experience I took home from VS was really just the foundation (though a sturdy one at that) for what Talentime brought into my life. From paperwork to people, from red tape to masking tape, from long hours spent in school to sleepless nights; this has been, is, and will continue to be (until the 28th Nov) one hell of a learning experience. And I dare say that it is precisely because of this learning experience that I’ve managed to drive myself and things along thus far.

Registrations close this week, and that’s just the begining of many things to come. I’m honestly worried for my grades. Oh well, time will tell. Many thanks to Ben (Admin) and Zoe (HR) for all the effort thus far, I know this has not been very easy on them. (Zoe’s somewhat more stressed since she claims she’s not a people person. =) ) Many thanks to the entire Organising Comm too.

We’ll pull through. We must, and I’m sure that together, we will make this year’s Talentime something to remember.

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Focus

by Jonathan in Education,Life on Thursday October 19, 2006 at 0027hours

I’ve been damn distracted as of late (late being post-PolyForum / IMF Duty). I don’t know if it’s the Talentime planning, the PolyForum stuff or if its just me, but I can’t seem to focus on one thing before my mind starts running off somewhere else. And when you’re trying to get some coding done, that not a very good thing.

Since school started, I’ve left my thumbdrive, my zeroshock case and my file in seperate instances in the lab / classroom. Most of the time I managed to recover it. Until last Friday that is. Forgot to take my thumbdrive from the lab computer on Thursday (last class), came back on Friday to find it gone.

Sigh.

On the bright side, I bought myself a 4gig thumbdrive. If I leave that in the lab i’ll go jump down.

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Being the Averagest

by Jonathan in Education,IT,Programming on Monday October 16, 2006 at 1431hours

I think this is the best explanation I’ve found so far on where my competive streak has gone (in terms of programming, not grades)..

Maybe we don’t do it because we don’t have the equivalent of a GPA for engineers. If we had such a number — let’s call it PNQ for “Productivity ‘N’ Quality” — then SDEs would immediately begin competing to improve their PNQ. But it doesn’t appear to be possible to measure or compute a fine-grained PNQ value for an SDE. I think you can measure someone’s skills, but that’s really more a measure of potential than performance.
Stevey’s Home Page – Being the Averagest

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SMIT Talentime 2006

by Jonathan in SP on Monday October 9, 2006 at 2334hours

Click here for more information

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The first week

by Jonathan in Education,Life,SP on Sunday October 1, 2006 at 0005hours

Since I’m in the ranting mood, I might as well take the opportunity to rant about the first week of school.

I’ve got a full complement of Tech related modules this sem, for which I’ve got nothing to rant about. Previous Sem has seen things like Business Operations Management (which was actually quite fun), Ethics and Law of IT (which was interesting and informative to say the least) and Introduction to Organisational Behaviour (which I got a Dist for, so I’m not complaining). But yes. Hello full complement of Tech modules.

I took 2 Tech Modules for my GEMS (Electives) and this is where the rating comes in. First module was Securing your PC(SYPC), which is really similar to Information Systems and Network Security, which I took last Sem, so yeah, the group of us who took SYPC this Sem found the first lecture extremely boring.

Then yesterday was SOHO Computer Networking, again somewhat of a mirror of the Networking Fundamentals taken in Year 1. So that class was pretty dull too.

Which finally brings us to the ranting part. Why the heck did I take modules of things I already have a foundation in? The answer to that lies in the stupid GPA calculation system that SP (and I reckon other Polys as well) use. See, GEMS is supposed to ‘broaden our educational experience’ by allowing us to learn things outside our field of study. But the results of our GEMS is taken into account when calculating GPA.

This means that for me, I would think twice before choosing a GEM on say, Biology, simply because if I don’t get an A for it, my GPA’s screwed. So taking it into consideration into our GPA while claiming that the objective is to ‘broaden our educational experience’ is rather oxymoronic I think.

While I completely understand the need to include it in the GPA (else people might not give two hoots about their GEMS), can’t we follow the Uni GPA calculation? Where a Dist is a 4.2, so at least should one get a B+ for GEM, keeping a 4.0 is still possible. I can think of a number of coursemates who would be happier with the Uni GPA calculation.

But alas, I’m not exactly bothered enough to take this up to the people upstairs, so like any other lazy person, I’ll just go along with my boring and dull GEMs.

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