Thursday, March 12, 2009

Warning, rant ahead.

I just woke up from a "nap." What time did I go to sleep this morning? Oh, about 11:00. I guess I've taken naps longer than 4 hours before, but the funny part is I didn't even realize I was that sleepy. Oh well, today wasn't completely useless. After our STUPID psych test I came home and made blueberry waffles, eggs, and cheese grits. Yum.

Now, for that test... I'm stupid and actually tried to review the powerpoints last night. Since they were all about 60 slides each and just had paragraphs copied straight out of the DSM-IV I managed to get through 1 lecture last night. Ha. Then this morning before the test I breezed through all those old quiz questions. Not a good idea. I should have spent about 2 hours breezing through those old quiz questions. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

The test started like this. We walk in, sit down, and the secretary passes out the scantrons. Just one thing about this secretary - she always wears this really strange thing on her head and I can't take her seriously because of it. She wears one black headband - the stretchy, cloth kind and then on top of it a plastic, gold, braided sort of headband. That's not the problem. She wears them RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF HER FOREHEAD. It is BIZZARE. It makes me think of Star Trek. We had half of this class last year and she wore the exact same getup then. Noone else seems to notice or have a problem with it, but it really disturbs me. Does she have some sort of scar she's trying to cover up? Is she schizotypal? She was also wearing a flowy leopard print top and black skirt with some bright red Nike tennis shoes so maybe she is schizotypal after all. I'll have to ask her if she has magical powers. I know one magical power she doesn't have. She doesn't have the gift of speed or efficiency. After she had passed out our scantrons she announced into the microphone:

Secretary: "Spring Break is coming up. It's not just for you guys. When y'all leave Friday, I'll be going too. You might not see your test grades until after the break, but check Blackboard."

Class: Screeches, BOO, HISS!!! *sarcastic comments and snickers abound*

Secretary: "Oh, do you want to see your grades before we return from Spring Break?"

Class: 118 students scream a resounding "YES!"

(Who does she think she's dealing with?)

Secretary: "So you want me to miss a whole day of my Spring Break?"

#1 You're a 40 year old secretary. You don't deserve Spring Break.
#2 We just want you to do your job in a timely manner. It's not like we're asking you to spend 30 hours taking online quizzes. Oh right - that's what we had to do...

Now what makes this so funny is that we take our tests with scantrons. You know, the kind you SCAN into a computer and it grades them for you. Then you simply enter the grades into Blackboard on the computer. I'm thinking this whole process would take me 1 hour if I took the time to make coffee and paint my nails while I was doing it. You know how I know it doesn't take an entire day? Because the secretary of the Pathology department is fabulous. She sends us weekly e-mails to keep us informed of what is going on, where to be, what to bring, etc... Our path test was Monday at 9:00. By 5:00 that day we had an e-mail stating that our grades were posted on Blackboard. Assuming the last person finished at 11:00, then she took a lunch break, she got the job done within 5 hours. I think our class needs to get her a gift before the year is over. If they don't, I might. Just a little plant to keep on her desk or something. Anyway, that's enough ranting.

Our ICM test is tomorrow. We have not 1, but 2 incompetent secretaries running that show. They're both about 21, wear stilleto boots and dresses to every test they give us and then huff and puff when we make unreasonable requests for things like scantrons. I'm not kidding. This happened 2 test blocks ago and they were like - "What's the big deal?!? We can just bubble them in for you or grade them by hand!" Do they really think we'd trust them to bubble in our answers for us? Are they BONKERS??? We are the most anal, OCD group of control freaks I've ever been around. We're not trusting 2 girls who can't even manage to count out enough scantrons to be in charge of one of our grades. I'm SURE those grades won't be in until after Spring Break. They're probably already in Destin drinking margaritas and auditioning for Girls Gone Wild and will have someone else proctor the exam tomorrow. The good thing for them is that they've already set the precedent so low for themselves. None of us expect those grades to be up for a while.

Okay, that's enough ranting. This test week has been the worst one so far. It's not because the material is harder. It's actually the easiest material we've ever had. It's just the level of burn out and unpreparedness that I went into it with. My bad! Maybe after Spring Break I'll be back on my game and pull up all these crappy grades next block. One can dream...

5 comments:

julzjubilee said...

Okay, the headband thing would completely disturb me too. Nicole Richie may be able to pull it off, but no normal person can outside of LA. As for the prissy secretaries, my guess is that they are aiming to pick up a hot doctor. Not that I have one (though I did land the hot part, hehe), but don't they know you get boys by being charming not um, "rude"?

tinyletters said...

well said...my feelings exactly

Ewok said...

I agree. The secretary from psych is just odd. And I didn't know if she was joking about the break thing or not. I'm hoping not. Because grown ups don't get spring breaks. that's a school only perk in my opinion.

I like your comment on girls gone wild. Although, I think they wouldn't be able to drink their margarita and appear on camera at the same time. That takes a cumulative of 3 brain cells. They've only got about a buck fifty between them.

R said...

Ah.. I'm so glad that you hate that stupid headband too! What the hell is she thinking. And I'm certainly not looking forward to seeing Dumb and Dumber tomorrow!

Laura said...

We've called her Warrior Princess since last year! We need a picture of the headband. And this has been the most gosh awful test week that we have ever had. I hope it doesn't make me fail medical school.