h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hypatia, congrats B. and MR

Amy - your discriptions sound like the script of one or two movies I've seen: The dedicated teacher of course turned the whole lot of youngster and got them through their examens. Happy end!

In RL it seems it is not only the young students you have to turn. I'm sure you can do it from what (little) I know about you from this thread - your view on youngster and your dedication for your subject. Kids and young people like to learn and they do develope in spite of bad conditions.

The huge challence is the kid's surroundings - the whole organisation - the school, the leadeship of it, the teachers and the parents. Their (negative?) expectations bordering to indifference and their mutual lack of dedication influence the young peoples' selfesteem and outlook heavily.

Good, dedicated and caring teachers/grown ups are heavensends for kids under construction (i.e. teenagers). I can name the few that have set my kids rocketing off on both intellectual and creative subjects.

But, as others have said. You have to take care of yourself.

Ooops I forgot. Z

Just had a phonecall - do I want to do some work in London tonight from 6.00pm till 2.00am? It would take me 3 hours to get there, and I would have to stay in a hotel. The work is well enough paid for me to clear a good profit even if I did that. But....

I am *so* glad I have the Halifax job, because otherwise I'd be doing it, and bang would go my weekend.

Even so, it is one of those things which is almost more annoying to be offered than not to be offered.



B

Nothing definite to report yet. He was worse yesterday then he was better. The doctors don't have a clue what's going on. One minute they're giving up and the next they're hopeful again. Makes for a roller coaster ride. On my way out the door.

Thanks for all the hugs. They're greatly appreciated. And so far I'm doing fine. No public meltdowns. No rants, even, which is pretty amazing. Although there is one woman doctor from India or Pakistan or someplace that I would like to smack. I wish these people would stay in their own country. Don't thy need doctors in the third world? They flood our hospitals, can barely speak English, and have no sympathy for any of their patients.

Let me tell you about this broad. Most of the beds in the ICU have the motors on them to automatically rotate the patients so they won't get bedsores - but not all of them. A man walked up to her and asked if there was any way that one of the good beds could be put into his mother's room to make her more comfortable. This P**i b***h looked at him and said, "What's your problem? She's old and her prognosis isn't good. It doesn't matter what kind of bed she has."

Holy s**t. That is an awful thing for a doctor to say. It is a pretty bad thing for a doctor to think, even, but I can understand someone tired and under pressure themselves maybe just thinking it. But to say it....



We are thinking about you, honey.

B
*who now has a bed for the night for the London gig, but who now cannot get to the dude on the phone to say "I'll do it"...*

Hypatia -- no matter how you prepare for it, no matter how evident the downward journey is, no matter how long it takes, the ending is still a shock.

Amy, I think the story you tell about the school is fascinating. What interests me the most is the fact that those kids sound ~organized~. They sound intelligent enough to learn and get good grades.

When I worked at the vo-tech, they made much over their curriculum style, which was based on a contract between individual students and the teacher. The syllabus was as explicit as could be, defining the tasks to be performed to complete the course and how many points each task was worth (think like 1600 points for Accountancy), each point being a credit hour.

The student then determined how many hours to do in a semester or term, and which tasks s/he would do; that was the contract. Do the work you said you'd do, and be assessed on that.

And then the student would do the work, assisted by learning guides the teacher wrote, resources indicated by the guide, and the help of the teacher. The idea was to allow the student to work at his/her own pace and to learn to work independently.

The butt-biting side effect was that students came to feel that learning was the same thing as doing the hours and passing the tests at the end of each task. I saw unemployable adults use this system in evening class, completing the tasks over a period of 3 years and not knowing a damn thing, just following the learning guides step by step, but feeling entitled to graduate nonetheless.

The OU mini-course I am doing is highly structured. All the material is supplied online or in booklets, and the activities (about 20 or 30 per week) range from "listen to a five minute discussion on the CD, and consider (a) (b) (c)" to "write in couplets in the voice of a fictional person or a person in history". So I can cover off three or five activities in an hour and a half or two hours, and be dipping in here and on IM at the same time.

The point, really, is that it is bite-size chuncks. It does not require any great imagination. Sure I can take the skills I am learning ("go through this poem and notice the rhymes and internal rhymes") and apply them to other things, other poems.

It does make it very very easy to follow, and I know that all I have to do is log on and follow instructions, which I am *incredibly* grateful for. But it ain't 'alf different from when I was at school and at Uni.

B

Odly enough I dreamnt that I was teaching a philosophy clasa at my old school. I think that I was channeling this conversation.

it does make it very very easy to follow.
yes that because of the wisdom of age and variety, look at all the things you have done since 17 year old. as for great imagination , a lot of your best stuff comes from experiences ,which
provides new leils of imagination car jouneys ect.

Dont think i could or do that prefer to write then work out what i have written after ,chop and change mid way through, like in real life open mouth and thinking before thinking.

[d'E]
[]

And by the way, I woke up to snow. Es schneet noch jetzt. I have instant indoor cats.

Was it on this thread FG mentioned about the latest issue of Vanity Fair? There's an excellent article in there about DU (depleted uranium) ammunition and its possible relationship to Gulf Syndrome. We're killing our own troops, it seems, but they don't die till after they come home. The ones that don't get killed by the insurgents, I mean. The ones that get to come home.

[tartaronne]

[GD]

[GDZ]

Congrats on the job, Ben.

Never been to Halifax

*shivering in a Lemsip-flavoured heap*

It's one of the things that used to drive me ballistic when I worked in the university library - students doing DEGREES, gosh-darn-it, expecting everything to be delivered to them in easy little teaspoonfuls and when they discover the set text is a big fat book, they would fuss like we'd asked them to chain themselves to a millstone and practise deep-sea-diving smeared in shark-bait. I actually told one girl, complaining because she had to read several books to complete an Economics assignment, that if she found the work so detrimental to her social life perhaps she should give up her place for someone who actually wanted a degree. She stormed off and got her friends to come and whisper and stare at me for several days afterwards. I couldn't have cared less and promptly threw her out of the library for using her mobile phone repeatedly in the study area. Enemy for life there. Hah.

I actually enjoyed reading for my assignments as a student. Used to talk everyone else's ears off in seminar too. I'm sure no one liked me much, but I was having too much fun to notice.

s all round.

anybody ever done a search on clinkers
http://www.cadbury.com.au/products/index.php?product_id=7&pack_id=5
this is more accepted explanation.
is that takeing the P or just clever marketing

brings a whole meaning to " bite-size chuncks"

I have a collection of dodgy scandinavian products.

Plopps are chocolates.

Spunk - sweeties that come in two flavours - wine gum flavour and anchovy flavour. Apparently.

Favorit Pussi - cat treats.

And my all time favourite is Fukt Creme, which is a moisturising hand cream.

What can you do?

B

Well - if you go look for a timetable for buses or ferries, you risk getting a 'fartplan'.....