When I had my interview with Richter, it ended with "I think you're being completely honest with me now, you're probably going to lose about 4 points." Fast forward a week and a half and I'm down 24 points -- oh, but I'm the dishonest one. No problem. I am, after all, a silver-tongued demon when it comes to classroom diplomacy. So I went ahead and gave him the long and short of "this is why I'm fucking pissed about this," in a less vulgar fashion. In fact, I even gave him my 'alternate' statistical analysis and showed him the flaws in his own analysis. Direct quote from my e-mail to him: "I feel at least somewhat obligated to make the observation that while the bar graphs of score/time ratios would seem to dictate two distinct populations existing with a clear cut-off between the two (the anti-mode), there are inevitably outliers within each of the camps who will bleed into the other population. More or less that there are both “slow cheaters” and “legitimately fast test-takers.”
That's right, I played his own goddamn game. You wanna play basketball? Set up the hoop, motherfucker -- I'm game.
Then I went on to detail how I take his tests fast and with the accuracy rate that he says is impossible -- something that's fairly irrefutable. Then I threw up the fact that he told me that 4 points would be the extent of my punishment, finished with a heaping spoon of "what I did was wrong," and clicked send.
Like clockwork, Dr. Richter never misses a chance to give me a windy explanation of his methods and promised he would take a closer look at my data. Gee, thanks for looking at the same data in a different way -- wonder what the conclusion will be this time. And of course a week later I got another War and Peace e-mail telling me exactly why I wasn't getting points back. Keep in mind the stats are fairly clearly on my side with the fact that I slap his tests around in record time. So it devolves to this: "I also looked at all the additional evidence I have, one piece of which indicates you emailed test answers. If all I had was your word, I might drop the issue and believe you..."
Yeah, remember when he said the only thing he was using was the stats to dictate our punishment? Woopsy -- who's being dishonest now? Disregard the fact that I did not, in fact, e-mail quiz answers -- but whatever, I'm done with this. I'm just going to take my little red wagon full of toys and go play somewhere else regarding this.
But one has to recognize that there's a certain naivety that comes with being surprised that we're all now cutthroat sumbitches. Its nearly impossible to NOT become a "cutthroat sumbitch" in a program that is this ridiculously rigorous. Being surprised that we've been stripped of human ethics is the equivalent of designing and building an ass-kicking machine and then wondering why everyone's ass hurts.
Awesome:
The group meeting in the old building was a great example of how he hears what he wants to hear. We explain that the class takes to much time and his solution is lets keep everything the same plus add another lecture period so he can give a quiz. I doubt that he won't use the remaining 40 minutes to lecture new material. I was also told that I would only lose points on a couple of quizes, but somehow the infection spread to twice the number of quizes when I left the room. The stats told him one day that is was 2 or 3 and then the next day the stats morphed and said 5 quizes. I was also told that he was not using quiz times in any form as his proof of conviction. If we are in fact as professional as a third tier pharmacy school then I would like to add that the students accurately reflect the faculty.
ReplyDeleteRichter's tie has grown throughout the semester as he tells more and more lies. By the end of the semester he will be tripping over that thing. I find myself making daily notes for his evaluation...hope there isn't a character limit
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