Word of the Semester

This production of "Fall Semester" has been brought to you by the word 'Ridiculous.'

I find myself using this word over and over again, and I really don't like the fact that my vocabulary seems to have become so restricted, but on closer examination, I really don't know if there is another word that I could be using.

Perhaps absurd, but those are so similar that they should be the same word.

Let's look at three places in my life where this semester has been particularly ridiculous.

Soccer - Soccer itself hasn't been particularly ridiculous; in fact it was a really good season where everybody involved had a good time, I think. But reffing up here has been absolutely and totally ridiculous. It ended up that every week I would end up calling my brother to give him that week's "Stories from the Soccer Field" where I would get to tell all of the horrible things that the ref did in my games.

Some examples:

1. Not tucking in shirts. Now, if you're not a ref, you don't understand why this is a big deal, but I forgive you. It's actually put in the rule book that the ref's shirt should be tucked in. And it's not difficult to do. Basically, it's along the lines of dressing appropriately for work. Most people aren't allowed to wear cut-off jeans and a wife beater to work, just as refs are expected to look professional.

2. Being near completely deaf. Seriously. This guy could not hear a word I said. He had to have special flags so that the assistants could get his attention from the sideline, but of course the batteries were dead. There goes that idea.

3. Starting the game 20 minutes early for absolutely no reason. IN soccer, if you're going to change anything having to do with game time (length of halves, starting time, halftime break) you have to get the agreement of both coaches. When my team shows up 45 minutes before a game, and 20 minutes of that is taken by the ref starting early (and refusing to answer my questions why) I'm just a little angry.

Arabic - Now, don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying learning the Arabic language. It's challenging, completely different from anything I've studied before, and just plain fun to write in a strange script. But that's all true of specifically learning the language; the class is just plain ridiculous. In the beginning of the year, she almost completely ignored all of the 'non-heritage speakers.' She would frequently expect us to know words that we've never been exposed to, I think because she just assumed that we all already knew how to speak the language.

This, of course, has translated into testing us on material there's no way we could have learned. In recent weeks this has changed slightly (probably due to complaints), but she still gives absolutely no structure to the class, frequently not following the given syllabus, and deciding to give us huge projects on Tuesday that are then due on Thursday.

Most frequently, she's making us go to class to watch a movie, when she won't be there. But for some reason, renting it, watching it at home, and turning in the movie evaluation isn't good enough.

Cost Benefit Analysis - I was actually looking forward to this class at the beginning of the semester. It's interesting stuff, looking at the costs and benefits of different public policies and seeing if they're worthwhile. In particular, I'm interested in seeing how they do this for environmental issues. Well I got my wish, and then some.

The class has covered very little actual CBA material. We're using an undergrad book, which goes in depth over things consumer surplus and deriving demand curves. The first any Intro to Micro or Macro student would understand, and the second any student who has any math knowledge at all will know (there was a little statistics, but it was pretty easy).

In addition the wasted class time, we've been assigned a project with absolutely no structure, as well as very little research available. On top of that, the project doesn't actually involve doing any CBA, but merely looking at other people's and critiquing it.

I have got to learn a lot about issues in environmental economics, but I'm pretty sure I signed up for CBA, not Intro to Environmental Economics.