Pre-Med Students, Again

While I'm raging at people for minor personality quirks, let me get this out of the way. Pre-Med students were one of my very first posts, back when the blog was host to a litany of complaints, instead of the paragon of personal integrity is it now.... (sarcasm).

Pre-Med students isn't used here as a category label - that is, not all pre-med students are like this (I HOPE!) and not all people who are like this are pre-med students. Rather, it's a state of mind that so many of them fall into. I should go back to what I used to call it in high school: point-grubber.

Please tell me this drives you crazy, too: "Will this be on the test?" "Which part of this will be on the test?" "Will this be multiple-choice, on the test?" "What will the other choices be, on the test?"

Ugh, killer. Hey guys, I'm a big supporter of utilizing minimal work to obtain maximal result, but these people expect not just perfect results from zero work, but they feel entitled to have others do that work for them? Not to mention that this is no way to learn a subject, and I think we both know it. If a slacker like myself or Xian doesn't study the material, at least we don't expect to get A's. People like this expect to not have to study it and will fight for every point that they got marked down, as if it were the teacher's fault that they didn't get 100%.

I'm going to teach those idiots one of these days. I'm not even cut out for teaching, but I may do it. Sign up to teach a course, then put it right there on the syllabus: "YES, everything will be on the test, and the first person who asks that question or argues for more points on an exam will receive a ZERO". Someone's got to teach those morons that real life does not work like that, and people do not appreciate your butt-licking, point-grubbing, money-hungry attitudes.

I'm only especially mad about it right now because it appears that Berkeley does not require a dissertation defense. Now, there are two bad sides of getting a doctorate:

1) Your advisor has final, absolute power over your life. If he feels like stopping you from graduating, he can put a stop to you, officially making a waste of your last 'X' years of life and work.

2) It's viewed as a club or a fraternity, where you receive your hazing, then propagate that kind of elitist behavior.

Those are semi-bad things, but now that Berkeley's done away with them, there are MUCH more serious problems that have arisen, namely, everyone's graduating with PhD's despite having often less than master's credentials.

Let me educate you. The whole point of the doctorate isn't 'ingenious, contributing research', or to be an elitist snob in an ivory tower. The main point (at least in my opinion) is the ability to:

1) be thoroughly knowledgeable in a specific area,

2) conceive of original research,

3) execute independently, and

4) defend your research before a board of your (extremely judgmental) peers.

Harder than you might think. And none of these people appear to be capable of any of those steps. Their 'advisors' are just using them for cheap labor to further their own ideas, and they haven't learned how to do any of those four basic things. You can't just go by the word 'PhD' anymore. How on earth can I separate the real from the useless?

I'm pretty disillusioned. My new co-worker just proceeded with this series of nonsense:

Q: "So, what will I be doing?"

A: "...research. Coding, mostly."

Q: "Oh, and how would I do that?"

A: ".... How about you do this project, to get your feet wet. Insert this functionality into this code."

Q: "Where in the code would it go?"

A: "..... Around here somewhere."

Q: "Ok. What would I type in?"

A: "For real, man?"

Maybe it wasn't that bad, but come on. Really? Did you deserve a PhD?

Today: Closet Culling

Debriefing from Have Fun: Well it's harder to have fun when you're losing, and we lost 3 straight before most of the team disbanded to do (hopefully more fun) other things. I tried to keep spirits up, in a Be Cheerful kind of way, but it was a tough night on the Fields of Justice. Until we split up, that is. More on that in another post.

Today I'm going to Assess My Closet.

Just like Reviewing My Finances, it's high time we took a look at the sorry state of things. A ... Closet State-of-the-Union Address. Because this morning, I stood there thinking: everything that isn't in the laundry bin right now is basically unacceptable.

So the plan is, to spend at least some time this weekend, actually purchasing acceptable clothes. A heavy chore for me. I HATE shopping. But it must be done. I can't continue to go to work at this level of style-fail. (I suppose, for those of you who have the opposite problem resolve to organize your closets, find clothes that you haven't worn in a while, and cycle them to the forefront, then this weekend resolve to NOT purchase more clothes.)

First things first, I need to spend today removing the biggest offenders from my closet into the donate bin. Then I will determine what, exactly, I need to buy new, thereby creating a plan to efficiently purchase what I need from a single store, and get back out and back to video games.

LoL: Soraka Files 3

My friend Lin was too stressed to sleep. He gets too into his games, generally speaking. So I suggested he play Soraka - in my opinion, the most relaxing way to play LoL. Let me lay out the argument:

1) See Soraka Files 1, Soraka Is Not A Carry argument.

1a) the corollary, Soraka is Nothing But A Backpack.

You've done your job to the best of your ability if your cooldown rates are maxed, and everything's always on cooldown. That's it. It's that simple. You heal as much as possible, you refill mana / silence as much as is humanly possible. You can rest easy, confident in the knowledge that you've done everything you could to help the team, you haven't fed, and you're hanging back in the safety zone. You don't have to wonder if you should be in a different position, if you should save your skills for the right moment, or if you should be buying something else, or doing some aspect of your job better. All those other responsibilities do not fall in your jurisdiction. You cannot tank, initiate, nothing. So no need to worry about whether or not you could be doing it better. The most you can do is bring more team-oriented items and summoner spells.

2) See Soraka Files 1, Soraka is Never In the Limelight

Remember, Soraka is never targeted! Well, unless the other team is really good. Or your team is REALLY bad.

Sadly this gracious gesture didn't pan out - he's not as fatalistic as me. When I'm Soraka and we lose, I just say: "well, couldn't do anything, I healed the team." When he loses, my friend often frets too much that he 'didn't do enough'. Which I've been trying to tell him is a bit ridiculous. You're one out of five, and sometimes, the other team is way better than your team.

Lin: But we must be better! We can be the best if we just try enough!

Me: No. We will not. Because we've seen what world-class players are like. Jerks. Do you want to be a world-class jerk, just to be good at LoL?

Lin: No...

There is a mentality, related to point 1 and 1a, above, that can be good and bad. If you watch them livestreams (which I do not admit to watching, because that would be intensely nerdy) you'll wonder why so many LoL players can't ever make a mistake without giving some tired excuse about lag, luck, "I did it on purpose", etc. etc. I've heard one or two of them curse out the game's interface after it supposedly 'caused' a death. The game itself! That they are willingly playing for nigh-on 40 hours a week! These people can never be wrong, no matter who else has to be wrong from them to be right! You'd think it's just because they're being jerks, but let's not categorize it as that for now - let's delve deeper. They can't stand not being the absolute best, and will work at it until they are exactly where they think they deserve to be. Of course, for the rest of us, it means that we get all the verbal abuse and blame because they can't possibly find room in their heads to consider themselves ever wrong or at fault. Got wiped trying to 1v5 the entire other team? It was your fault for not being there. Fed hard early game? Abuse the rest of the team for being noobs, go idle like a spoilt child because the other people lost you the game. And on and on. I don't want a friend like that, frankly, and I hope to never have coworkers like that, either. I'm guessing that's what playing in a professional league is like, all the time. Only in this case, not for millions of dollars and adoring fans like in the NFL or NBA, but for a video game.

Nan has this mentality. He's not that much of a jerk, probably because the rest of us never try to compete with him in an area he's decided he's better than us at. He won't play LoL, by the way, because in his mind, I'm pretty sure he's already the best at it, so he doesn't need to prove himself to "those losers". He played for precisely 2 minutes, and was pretty confused as to why he wasn't immediately winning - after all, he was so much better than us. "This game is broken," he said, and hasn't played since. But I'm confident he still thinks he's the best LoL player ever born.

This is an amazing mentality, jerk attitudes aside. It's that inner drive that makes people superstars. But it also makes them unbearable, and I'm not sure I have a way to diffuse the numerous situations they create on a daily basis. Mostly, society lets them alone to do their thing, and just slaps their hands with fines when they start thinking they're too big for the normal rules and niceties of life. They have a hard time remembering that the rest of us aren't also frothing at the mouth to be the absolute best at some obscure thing, and just assume that we aspire to be the best, and are just losers, or lazy.

So if any of that rings true for you, do your best to dial it back a bit. Even if you really are ranked number one in the world at something, try to keep it in perspective, yeah? And remember, the rest of us don't hate you because we're jealous, we hate you because you're an insufferable jerk. Honestly.

Oh yeah, and Lin said Soraka was boring to play (sadface!).

Today: Have Fun

Debriefing on Catching Up: Well, at least I caught up on sleep??? ^_^

Today, I'm going to Have Fun.

No matter what, the goal is to have fun. Not to win, not to lose, just to have fun. My time out of work (read: incarceration) is too precious and limited to spend angry and stressed during a game! Ok, here's the plan: I'm going to try to win, but I'm going to have to ignore all setbacks, ragers, and inevitable losses. It's a resolution that you sometimes just have to stick to in LoL, which is a game full of rage. And bad teammates.

Maybe this resolution will be greatly helped if I just roll 5-man only tonight. Without our own resident rager :)

168

Taiwanese menu: very Taiwanese. Not much else to say about it.

Weekend mornings they have sweet and savory soy options, which are fine, but they run out of the flatbread quick, and the fried donut sticks are not the super fresh kind that I'm looking for - more on the twice-fried side. So, the hunt is still on. I saw some promising options in Chinatown...

Today: Catch Up!

Debriefing from General Silence: Did good with being silent, but it does feel like I may have thusly made backwards progress on other resolutions, not to mention some work-related tasks. Hence...

Today, I'm going to Catch Up.

Three day weekend: wasted! I've got more household chores and work to-do than ever before! (Do you ever fool yourself into thinking you'll do work at home? Yeah, me too.) So today, we'll need to dedicate ourselves to at least a little catch-up in order to not fall too ridiculously far behind. Just a little on all fronts. We'll be back on top of things in no time.

Penang Garden

Food is.... alright. But the portions are way off. You can't give Malay-sized portions and then charge family-size prices! When we saw the coconut shrimp was almost $18, we thought it'd feed all of us - the waitress warned us that there were only 5 shrimp involved. For $18?! No thanks. And how does your tiny bowl of curry NOT come with rice? It doesn't even feed ONE person if there's no rice...

Fried bananas were fine, but too bad! Nan doesn't ever want to go back.