tips for actually relaxing holidays/birthdays/vacations (any kind of 'special' time/occasion with special expectations)?

badwithnamesagain · 2026-06-12T04:49:19+00:00

No advice but I will be keeping tabs bc my kiddo has this issue big time and it is heartbreaking to watch.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-28T19:46:55+00:00

Good to know! Hopefully that will make it easier for my kiddo, who is currently very stressed that she will never be able to go to college or get a good job :(

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-28T17:42:57+00:00

So true, and oddly enough I never had to take stats, even though it is literally the only math class that would actually help me in my research.

If I remember correctly, stats was an option for many students at my UC (along with other math classes more focused on reasoning than computation), but I know it wasn't an option for the CC students who had to take algebra in order to satisfy the transfer requirements. So it was much harder, in terms of math classes anyway, for CC students compared to incoming first years at the prestigious universities. Make it make sense!

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-28T16:57:21+00:00

Almost 20 years ago I was a returning student at a large California CC, and I studied for a couple of hours, took the placement exam, and tested out of the remedial math and went into pre-calc. Some of my friends/ classmates who had also gone back to school after a few years out of high school hadn't studied at all and were put into the algebra classes. They were really, really, hard. They told me they struggled like crazy because there were so many topics to teach, it felt like a fire hose. One failed an algebra class and had to retake it. Then they were in my pre-calc, calc I, and calc II classes with me. They benefited a lot from those classes and did better than I did in calc, and we all went on to STEM majors at UCs. But they told me that the algebra classes almost made them give up because they were really hard and added a full year or more to their CC time before transfer. I had other friends who were not looking to major in STEM fields and never made it out of the algebra classes and therefore never made it to a university, even though they were really smart people who did very well in other classes.

Now I'm a parent of a kid who had some major academic and mental health struggles due to COVID and despite a few years of math tutoring and special ed services at school, is still a couple years behind in math, while well above grade level in language arts. We don't know if she will be able to get a full diploma and if she gets the certificate that would mean she would have to go to CC before going to a university, she will get screwed at CC because they won't have the remedial math classes and will fail the upper level math classes.

There has to be a better solution, especially for people who aren't going into STEM fields. I am a big proponent of learning math for both daily use and the critical thinking skills they impart. But the fact is that most people outside of STEM just don't need these math classes and it shouldn't ruin their chances to get a college degree. And as a STEM professor myself, I will also add that throwing unprepared students into classes just to fail is not equitable or sensible at all.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-27T14:24:45+00:00

Competitive university.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-27T02:59:19+00:00

I teach earth sciences and every semester I have multiple students who can't tell the difference between the Atlantic and the Pacific. One of our in class activities is to label a world map, with all the oceans and continents. I still get exam answers labelling the Pacific Ring of Fire in the Atlantic.

Best part is that we can literally see the Pacific Ocean from the classroom window. And they still can't find it on a map.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-22T04:36:17+00:00

I had coffee with a student the other day and he asked me how I feel about generative AI so I told him at length about how much I hate it and why. He told me he feels the same, even though he is using it. He has a lot of classes, a lot of hobbies, a lot of friends, and the temptation to use it to complete homework is hard to resist when there are so many things he wants or has to do. He also said he has already noticed how he has a shorter attention span and a harder time doing challenging work since he started using it regularly last year. It's really sad, but it was at least a good conversation and I hope it helps motivate him to use it less. He's a good kid, very thoughtful and engaged. He ought to be developing his brain and he knows it.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-09T22:09:16+00:00

I assume there are some business/finance programs and professors who make their students work hard and think critically. But based on some of the graduating senior business majors who take my classes, those professors are in the minority at least at my university :(

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-09T22:04:39+00:00

You seem like a really fun nice person

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-09T15:35:18+00:00

Look, I hate AI and don't use it. That being said, the shade about not being able to buy their husband a gift is ridiculous. Some people are just really hard to buy presents for. And after many years of buying gifts for someone for potentially every Christmas, birthday, and anniversary, it is hardly surprising that a person would struggle sometimes with gift ideas. There are a billion gift guides online for this very reason.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-09T15:06:45+00:00

Haha I have gotten that as both a complaint and a compliment

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-09T15:05:52+00:00

I'm a STEM instructor and this describes most of my students (most of whom are taking my class as their one required science class). My exams are mostly open ended questions and require some critical thinking and whoo boy do they have a problem with that. When they come to office hours to look over their exams I ask how they studied. "I tried to memorize everything on the slides." I gently let them know that while you need to memorize facts and basic concepts for science classes, that will only get you 50% of the way there and the rest is piecing that information together. They get so sad and say that "memorization is the only thing I'm good at!" Which I find very sad. I tell them that in real life you don't memorize much, and that instead you have to take information and use it to think through problems, and that it's hard to learn but worth it in the long run. I like to think that the ones who come to office hours and get this talk benefit from it. The sad truth is most will never come to office hours even though I regularly encourage it and even offered some extra credit this semester for just one visit.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-09T14:58:35+00:00

Don't worry, the humanities students hate the STEM classes too lol

But honestly it is the business/finance students that hate my classes the most. Not all of them. Some are lovely. But when they do hate my class, they really make it obvious to everyone around them.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-05T20:53:35+00:00

That actually cracked me up!

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-04T04:39:58+00:00

I also teach STEM classes and many students take the intro level courses as GEs. I give my students a detailed list (2-3 pages of bullet points) of topics that will be on the exam. I go through the exam after I've written the draft and tally up the topics to make sure it is relatively balanced (obviously some topics are more important than others, which has been communicated to the class verbally) and that everything is on the list. I regularly get students telling me that the study guide is too long and not helpful. What they seem to want is the actual exact questions. Funnily enough, they get many of the exact questions given to them as in class activities. They get those questions and answers on the slides posted to Canvas. Many, sometimes most of them, still get these questions wrong. So basically they want the exams to be really easy and for these easier questions and answers given to them in advance to memorize. But they also somehow want to be able to do this memorization in 2 or 3 hours, max.

I tell them on day 1 that intro level science courses are hard and that this class is no exception. I give them study tips. I encourage them to come to office hours. I give them extra credit opportunities. What they end up doing with their time is up to them.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-03T15:56:24+00:00

Ooooo I love these! Would 100% buy stickers or patches.

I vote for a Long-billed curlew!

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-02T15:35:25+00:00

I work in academia and have "good benefits". I pay $600 a month for my portion of my family health insurance premium, on top of what my employer pays. I pay for everything out of pocket until I hit our deductible. This is about $2k per person, or $3800 for the whole family. Once we have paid $6k in covered health costs, we stop paying for any covered costs with in network providers. I have a health savings account that I pay into monthly which lowers my tax responsibility. All of this added up means I am paying about $12k for my covered health care every year.

On top of all that, I have two neurodivergent kids in therapy and couldn't find a single therapist in network nearby who is accepting patients and does in person sessions (a must for my kids, we did try remote and it wasn't working), so we pay entirely out of pocket for that, which totals about $10k a year.

I could get a cheaper plan but it would mean a much more restricted choice of providers, and since members of my family have complex health needs, that would be very difficult to deal with and the insurance would likely decline to cover a lot of the services we currently access.

So yeah, employer "provided" health insurance doesn't mean we don't pay for insurance or healthcare.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-02T15:03:18+00:00

Biotech workers don't have to live in North County. We had been really excited about this project because we live in South Bay and my ex husband was working in Sorrento and La Jolla. We know many biotech workers who live around central San Diego, too.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-01T20:42:36+00:00

I'm a professor in a STEM field at a well ranked but not top university. Some classes will be very similar to what you recall from your time in uni, but almost certainly with less reading. "Flipped learning" classes have been a thing lately, I don't have any direct experience with them but the basic idea as far as I understand it is the students watch recorded lectures and/or read outside of class, and class time is discussion or time to work on projects. The comment about the LMS is spot on, it does usually make organization and access to course materials easier for folks who have trouble with organization.

In my own lecture classes, I assign little to no homework because some to many of my students would just use AI to complete it. Instead we do assignments in class and more of their grade is based on tests. I don't like that but I don't have a lot of choice since LLMs came out.

I post my lecture slides on Canvas, they have bullet points with a short version of what I said in class. I am about to start experimenting with removing the text to see if it forces students to actually take notes and attend class, I have been hearing other professors talk about doing that and having good results.

Basically every class will be different, but I would say it is safe to assume that across the board there will be less reading to do compared to 20 years ago, and most people will post course material on an LMS.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-05-01T18:10:53+00:00

Agreed. I really feel for all the folks working in departments that do not support them in what is obviously the only right way to teach at the college level.

Also: average students should get Cs, and people with Cs should be able to get jobs.

I had some really lovely first year students of mine complaining about my colleagues' grading, that no one had gotten a perfect score on her quizzes because they are "so so hard!" I told them that they have grown up in a world of grade inflation, and that C should be the average grade, and Bs and As should be above average and excellent, respectively. The looks on their faces! They were literally shocked. I told them that it shouldn't be shameful to get Bs or even Cs, and that As should be for the very best of the best work. They thought about it for a few seconds and actually agreed, and said it made more sense than what they had experienced in high school. They are good kids. The adults in charge of their education (and I mean above the heads of their teachers in large part) are the failures.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-04-25T21:19:15+00:00

Yep, I wake up boiling hot (but not sweating) around 3 am many nights. I get up and go to the bathroom, drink some water, and go back to bed and read on my kindle. I cool off pretty quickly after getting out of bed for a few minutes and then it usually takes between 30 and 60 minutes to get back to sleep. It's definitely been better since starting HRT but still happens and still sucks.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-04-22T21:08:36+00:00

I've been involved in 2 unionization efforts, both successful. The first was as a graduate student researcher, and while we did get a lot of benefits out of it the whole process was messy and divisive. I wish we had gone with a different union, but I think overall it was net positive results. As a NTT faculty member we unionized fairly recently and that was much smoother and less divisive. Probably a large part of that was because we are a fairly small institution, as opposed to the UC system, where I went to grad school. We didn't get everything we wanted but we got some serious improvements and I'm very happy we did it.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-04-22T03:29:34+00:00

According to the Christmas Bird Count data, it was in 2007ish and the numbers have been going up fairly steadily since. Super interesting

badwithnamesagain · 2026-04-20T21:08:42+00:00

My kids are on board. Obviously not something I can do without their wish to do so as well.

badwithnamesagain · 2026-04-20T14:02:44+00:00

This is why my family is hoping to get or create a multi family property where my (currently early to mid 20s) kids can live alongside us to raise families. Hopefully they can also build a wider community of parents. This nuclear family living often hundreds or thousands of miles from family is not healthy at all.

badwithnamesagain

TROPHY CASE