Well I learned something new about 30 minutes ago.
One of these days I wanna write a post about PSU’s “University Studies” format, which establish general rules on what sort of gen. ed. student can and can’t take. For now just know that there is a pool of classes for me to choose from in which I have to take a total of three classes.
One of the possible classes is called “Introduction to Agent-Based Modeling”. Now I can’t tell you exactly what this class is about, but take a quick read of the course description:
At the crossroads of philosophy, artificial intelligence, and the natural and social sciences, the course introduces Agent-Based Modeling, a methodology that enables users to study the relationship between locally interacting artificial agents and the emerging macro patterns. The first part of the course uses simple models to introduce the concepts of decentralized thinking and emergence. The second part explores more complicated models of artificial societies and focuses on the concept of cooperation. The third part explores what it takes to create an artificial agent with some degree of cognitive ability.
One last thing to note is that the course ID for said class is SYSC-399U.
The class meets today (Tuesdays and Thursdays) at 10:00 am.
Now you can argue that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes, well, you can. If you read that course description above, your likely picturing the sort of student who would take that class. You’re picturing the same sort of student you’d likely picture if you thought of class of engineering students or maybe computer science nerds. Well, at least that’s what I pictured.
As I walked into class today I was a little surprised at the student body before me. Well over half were female and there were a couple that would have likely smelled of patchouli if I had gotten close enough. One girl in the row before me was full out dreadlocked with a shirt that I’m sure was made of hemp. Maybe Agent Based Modelling isn’t quite what I expected it to be. One thing that was certain, I was definitely still in Portland.
Well the class begins and the syllabus gets handed out and sure enough, it’s SYSC-399U. The prof. drops a quick intro and jumps right into a video to start of the class. It’s a video of what appears to be an Eskimo. He talks about scientists coming up to do research, at one point stating something along the lines of, “…but do the scientists know if they’re researching the walrus or researching themselves?”
Very deep moment.
The video is over almost as quickly as it begins. I glance back at the syllabus before me, because I’m pretty fucking confused now. There it says, clear as day, “SYSC 399U: Indigenous & Systems Perspectives on Sustainability”. Umm… what. the. fuck?
As the professor was asking, “Who wants to share what message they got from this?” I was pulling out my netbook to figure out what the fuck was going on. Typing away I quickly learned that I am, in fact, an idiot. But so is the PSU naming convention. Sure enough, “Agent Based Modeling” was SYSC-399U, while “Indigenous blah blah” was SYSC-399U. Yeah, same fucking course number. Now to be fair, there is a section number associated with course numbers, but up until now I’ve only seen different section numbers for the same class that has multiple occurrences. Labs for example which are all for the same class, but there are multiple instances to accommodate all the students. I’ve never seen two completely different courses with the same course number. That’s just fucking stupid.
As I’m typing away trying to figure out what had happened, the rest of the class was discussing what they took away from a 3 minute video of an eskimo talking about scientists.
Dreadlock-girl, almost a caricature of her own stereotype, said that the video was obviously portraying the problem in the scientific community which seeks to keep women and the feminine perspective out. Mind you, this video was, again, 3 minutes long about scientists and walruses and some Eskimo doing the whole “spiritual man says deep shit” skit. Sex was never even hinted at.
Shortly after, another guy said that he felt the video touched on a problem in humanity itself as we “feel the need to understand the walrus as if he’s different than we are. When in reality we’re all the same.” That’s right all you fucking moron zoologists, what are you studying animals for? We’re all the same, just look in the mirror and your studying is done.
As you might expect, I gathered my shit and walked out. To be honest though, if I had the money to pay for stupid classes I would have liked to stay enrolled in the class and spend 10 weeks making people incessantly angry at me. But alas I dropped. Unfortunately my schedule is in a bit of disarray now, so I gotta get it all figured out.
–sigh–
Fucking school…