Quodlibets

A driving problem

I have an honest question:  what do we, as a society, do about people who drive even though they've already had 20 DUI's?  Or have 40 traffic tickets?  Or don't have a license or insurance?  These people know they're doing something illegal; the ones who have 20 DUI's or 40 traffic tickets know for sure, even if the guy with no license or no insurance doesn't.  But it doesn't deter them.  So I'm curious, as someone who commutes every day, what I do about this? 

This morning, someone I know was in a hit-and-run car accident, and though I don't know the circumstances of the person who hit her, I do know that in the past few months, several children have died in Chicago in car accidents where it later became known that the person doing the driving of the offending car was someone with many tickets, or many DUI arrests. 

I genuinely want to know if there's something we can do to stop these people from getting into cars and driving, because as it looks to me, there's not.  If someone wants to drive badly enough, they're going to do it.  It's obviously a problem.  It seems simply unsolveable, though.

Thoughts on Distance Education

I like it.  Sort of.

The thing is, I know that I'm not meant to be in a classroom anymore.  I could feel the grating awfulness of being in that classroom every one of those 10 days this past summer; it was just excruciating.  Part of it is that I am a better learner when my hands are engaged elsewhere; in a classroom, this means doodling (or for one awful class as a freshman in college, coloring.  In a coloring book.  Yep, I did that.), but at home, I can sew.  This is a GIANT improvement for me; I find that although I still get annoyed at students who are monopolizing the conversation (in the chat box) with stupidity, I am able to just slough it off and sew.  And I'm kept busy during times when I'm not learning anything (which is happening, on a regular basis), which pacifies me.  If I was in a classroom for two hours and this was going on around me?  Yeah, my doodles would become demonic, my blood pressure would go up, and I would SEETHE.

Also, let's be honest: it's nice to be able to wear a nightgown to class if I so choose.  To eat and not disturb others.  To get up and use the bathroom without weighing whether the teacher will care.  It's nice to be able to check my email and read blogs and look at facebook.  It's nice to not be worried about being rude.  All that stuff works in distance education's favor.

But here is my problem with this particular distance education program: it insists on synchronous sessions.  Every class has them.  One two-hour session a week.  And not to be blunt, but it's not helping me learn.  They're a waste of my two hours (no matter how much sewing I get in), and frankly, a waste of the professor's time.  I'm learning tons from the homework, and I'm enjoying doing it too.  But I DREAD those two hours every week.  Man, I hate wasting time.  I hate feeling like I just sat through two hours of nothing, for nothing.  Because so far, there have been no tests.  Call me crazy, but I would really enjoy being tested.  First of all, I'm a test killer.  I've always been great under pressure.  Secondly, tests hold you accountable to actually learn the stuff they're teaching you, in ways that papers or group projects just absolutely do not.  It's a bit simplistic to claim that I'm doing grad school to learn, but that was certainly one of my expectations.  I love learning; that's just the way it is.  And I'm paying a lot to learn.  I'm just not learning very much. 

I feel pretty strongly that if I'm going to have to work the distance education thing, and I feel that I am, I should be moving faster.  I should be learning more.  If I could work this course at my own pace, I think I might learn more.  I guess there's a chance I could learn the same or less than I'm learning now, but then at least I wouldn't have to sit through a two-hour class every damn week.

Or maybe it's just that my standards for grad school were way too high.  My sister tells me that just about every time we talk about it.