This postI ran across Orson Scott Card’s two-part essay on homework this morning. A quote:
Homework is usually so mind-numbingly dull, so endless, so hopeless, so relentless, so useless that lots of motivated, bright kids whose parents are involved turn savagely against the whole idea of school. They hate reading, they hate writing, they hate everything because they never get a break, the process never ends, and they know perfectly well that it accomplishes nothing.
This is the damage that homework really does: It kills the love of reading and writing in thousands and thousands of children every year.
Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about slacking off on my schoolwork… ;) (Yes, I realize his argument is primarily against homework for elementary school kids, but I’m going to liken it to myself anyway. So there.) You can read Part I and Part II at Ornery.org.
In other news, I’m thinking rather seriously about taking Old Norse (ICLND 429 / SCAND 429) next semester. It’ll push graduation back to August, but that’s okay because 1) it’ll be nice to extend my comfort zone forward a little bit, before I get pushed out of the nest, 2) I really really really want to study Old Norse, 3) it’s not like I’ll have another chance anytime soon, 4) April and August both start with the letter ‘A’, 5) if I work for a year after graduation, which I’ll probably do before applying to grad school, it doesn’t make much difference when I graduate, 6) my birthday’s in July so I can say I was 24 when I graduated instead of 23, 7) I’ll get to take one more class for fun spring term, and that’s all because seven is a perfect number, or so they tell me.
One last thing. The Linux Users Group up at Oregon State has made a crop circle with the Firefox logo:
I wonder if I could make a crop circle in the grass in front of my apartment…
