I have been asked to sit on the Academic Progress Committee (APC) as the student representative again. This means that when I come back from Tasmania, I get to listen to excluded engineering students pleading to be allowed back into the course. The Faculty secretary sounded so relieved to find a volunteer for this three day chore. They think I’m doing them a favour but honestly, I really enjoy listening to student tragedies and sob stories.

At my uni, an engineering student is automatically excluded if he or she fails at least 50% of their subjects or fails a subject three times. The student is given the chance to appeal to the APC, bringing forth documentation, sorrowful eyes and trembling lips to prove their case.

I first sat on the APC last year. I don’t know how I was chosen. I’m part of a panel of three people, including Heads of Departments and the Dean of Engineering. You may be surprised to hear this, but the Committee is quite soft. We accept almost any story that sounds reasonable and can be substantiated. Last year, I listened to cases involving:

• A rural student who was too poor to afford a computer or printer;
  
• An international student from China who became a single mother and had to give up her baby;
  
• A student with a suicidal father;
  
• A student who found out he was adopted and spent the year searching for his birth mother (he found her in Turkey); and
  
• A final year student who had failed the very last subject he needed to graduate.

And then there were some students who said, “Yeah, sorry, I failed. I feel really bad. I’ll do better next time.” No other justifications.

Our exclusion rate is about one in five, so if you appeal, your chances of being allowed back in are quite good. Our rules of thumb are:

• Don’t exclude first years.
  
• Allow final year students to finish their degree.
  
• Be softer on first time offenders. Exclude anyone showing up for the second time.
  
• If their academic record shows they are barely passing, uphold their exclusion. They shouldn’t waste their time in a course obviously not suited to them.
  
• Think very carefully before excluding international students. They’ve spent a lot of money on this degree. (Believe it or not, we care about the value of money to them, rather than the money they are paying the university.)

From sitting on this panel, I can tell which of the engineering disciplines are the most difficult. There are hardly ever any civil or environmental engineers. Most flunking students come from mechanical or electrical engineering.

Sometimes, I look at all these marginal students and cringe. At the rate they’re bumbling along, most of them will graduate eventually. Who would want to hire these people, with their academic records littered with 45s, 52s and even zeroes? It seems like they pass just by chance. How can the uni award the Bachelor of Engineering to these half-baked students?

I sometimes think that by letting these students graduate, I damage the reputation of my own degree.

I’m off to Tasmania for a week. Blog you all soon!

Miss Joan demonstrates the correct dishwashing technique.

Look how sparkling it is!

What Paint and Pictionary results look like.

I have invented a new word — “inlandish”, the opposite of outlandish.

I frequently make up words. It’s because I’m too lazy to think of the correct word.

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Yesterday, I said an extremely silly thing. “I feel better after spending a lot of money.”

“Joan!” Joel said into the surprised silence. “You would be the last person I’d expect who’d say that.”

I considered this for a few seconds. “Because… it’s such a consumerist thing to say?”

“Yes!”

Let me think about this now. Until this very second, I considered myself reasonably “tight” with my money. I used to limit my spending to the essentials. When I wanted to buy something as ordinary as clothing or food, I thought, “Do I need it? Can I get it cheaper somewhere else? How would I feel if I just walked away?” And I was happy with that because my savings grew as a result.

My savings are no longer growing. I’m spending more money on entertainment and food. Am I spending without proper knowledge of my finances? Yes. Until I start working, I cannot create a budget. It’s a bit worrying at this moment because I really should have some idea of how my money should stretch. It’s been too easy to borrow money from my parents (I always pay it back!).

Anyway, I like to justify my spending by saying I spend it on the things I consider important in life.

• Dining out and holidaying with friends.
  
• Presents for people I care about
  
• Lessons to improve my skills

The only thing I can’t put under these categories are my gadgets. Every few years, I pour a lot of money into a “possession” I want. These have been:

1. Inline skates — 2000
   
2. Palm Tungsten C — 2003
   
3. Digital SLR camera — 2005

I don’t believe this is a list by a Voracious Consumer. It remains to be seen whether or not I get full use out of my new camera. To justify the expenditure, I’m going to have to learn how to be a better photographer, which means spending money on lessons. That would be expenditure under the category of “Lessons to improve my skills” so it’s okay, right?

Last night I had a nightmare. I went to USA and came back with presents for my brother. I had bought him a Hummer and a Buick. It was only when I was back in Australia and giving it to him that I thought, “Oh my God. Two cars! I’ve given him two cars! (Apparently, one car was do-able.) What’s dad going to think when he gets the credit card bill?

Perhaps my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

I had a lovely evening. Some time ago, Vera said, “We should have a Pictionary night. With butchers paper. And paint.” It was one of an endless stream of random ideas we have. Tonight, however, this particular idea was realised.

We all showed up to James’s house with food and toys. I brought giant mangoes to turn into mango steak. Vera brought home-made lemon tart. Damjan brought freshly-made pizza dough and toppings. James created a tuna pasta bake. Joel brought… well, now that I think about it, maybe he brought his appetite.

After the feast, we pulled on our art smocks (I had an XXL Faculty of Engineering shirt) and went outside for a nighttime game of Paint and Pictionary. As far as I can tell, success in Pictionary depends on three factors:

1. Drawing ability (realism and clarity)
   
2. Guessing ability (implies perceptiveness)
   
3. Synergy between team mates

When using paint, you also need the ability to work under pressure — you need to draw carefully and remember to dip your brush in paint occasionally.

James and I were pwned by Vera, Damjan and Joel. I think it’s because Vera is spatially intelligent (What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?).

Here are some of the words we did tonight: Las Vegas, John Howard, cherry pick, rags-to-riches, disappear, chairman, spread, boat, convict, pirate, anchor (we must have hit the nautical part of the deck — haha! Deck! Get it? Hee hee.)…

I’m lucky to have friends that enjoy silliness.

I taught my first hip hop classes for the year. Teaching is unpredictable. My first class was great. Everyone had a good time, there was interest and chatter. I felt I paced it right.

The second one was bad, not the worst one I’ve had but still on the not good end of the scale. The problem was that there was a mixture of levels. I don’t like to bore the people who already know the routine but I have to look after the beginners too. I think I did a bad job. The class was too quiet.

Ah, well. You win some, you lose some.

(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? R

(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? R

(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? F

Relationship failed.

From Top 11 Geek Break Up Lines

In this day of intense academic competition, I am happy to see that this school does not set itself up for disappointment. Check it out.

I’m seeing everything with tourist eyes. Mum, dad and I drove 20 minutes to our usual “Asian hangout”. You know the type — Chinese, Vietnamese and Malaysian restaurants on every corner, bakeries full of exotic treats, crammed Asian grocery stores, overflowing fruit/meat/seafood stores…

I started seeing photo opportunities everywhere. “Gee, if we were visitors here we’d buy that at that price,” I thought. I noticed the languages and accents. I paid attention to the composition of ethnicities. (I was confused for a while why there seemed to be so many Anglo white men in the Asian grocery stores. Then I found that inevitably, they were attached to an Asian woman. Now there’s a long blog entry — Why do we find more Anglo white male/Asian female couples than we do Asian male/Anglo white female ones in Australia? )

We walked into a shopping complex and our ears were assaulted by unintelligible shouting. The fruiterers at store A were hawking their wares. I could be charitable and say their shouting was unintelligible because it was in Vietnamese but I am more convinced that they weren’t bothering to form actual words.

The fruiterers at a store across the walkway occasionally tried shouting too but they were drowned out.

What a racket! I asked mum and dad if it was always this noisy. No, they told me. It’s only since Fruiterer A set up shop here. We’ve seen Fruiterer A at the fruit markets. They seems to have brought over their market-style advertising to this shopping centre. Fruiterer B feels very threatened by this change.

Poor Fruiterer B! I will buy my fruit and vegies from store B, rather than store A. I don’t like bullies.

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*** Updated *** mr joel pointed out there was nothing offensive about writing “white” instead of specifying Anglo-Saxon. I was just worried about “white male” being misinterpreted as an albino male.

When I started tutoring in first year uni, I was optimistic. “High school maths is simple and logical! Everyone can learn it. All they need is the proper attention.” I thought that I could get any student to past with test scores in the 90s. How hard could it be? But now, after four years of tutoring, I have concluded that some people are lost causes.

One of my first students was my most troubling. I taught her maths for three years. For those three years, she represented almost half my tutoring income; I taught her three hours a week!

Even going at three hours a week and scaling up to six hours coming closer to exams, she still needed more time. The problem was that her English skills were quite poor. She was an international student from Taiwan. Besides teaching her maths, I also had to throw together ad-hoc English and comprehension lessons. Hell, I even helped her in her Business Management, English and Graphics assessments. Who on earth let her choose all these supposedly “easy” subjects that depend on your language comprehension and expression skills?

Comprehension skills are vital in VCE maths, especially in Further Maths, where all the problems are based on ‘real-life’. Sometimes, I think she would have been better off in Methods or even Specialist. She was smart enough to get the maths bits but she always fell down at the initial problem definition stage.

In the end, as exams barrelled down towards us, I resorted to teaching her pattern recognition. “Okay, if the exam says, “What does Pearson’s correlation of 0.23 indicate?” then you must write, “23% of the variation in [variable y] is due to variation in [variable x].” ” But between every lesson, she would forget the patterns. She admitted that she didn’t practice and her laziness would be the undoing of her.

When the Year 12 results came out, I tried to call her. Her mobile number was disconnected. I gave up ever getting in contact with her again. Then a few weeks later, she called me and gave me the news. She had gotten 39 for her ENTER. This is a disaster for someone whose parents are paying tens of thousands of dollars for her to study in Australia. I felt like I had failed too, even though I know her Business and English scores must have dragged the mark down.

I had no reason to speak to her for two years. I assumed she went back to Taiwan to face her family’s wrath. Then today, I find a missed call from an unknown mobile number. I call it back — it’s her! It turns out she’s still in Australia doing some sort of further study. She tells me that she needs to re-learn the Further Maths course. So now, after a two year break, we have another lesson on Monday at 10 AM.

Life is strange.

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