I finally cover CSI

//EDIT//
Sorry about the bad formatting in this post. Something with mobile posting or whatever.

This is like "tomorrow", right?

First, in this post of extreme postitude, a response:

No. You're not awful. You didn't do anything wrong. And you can stop using
the "what did I do?" angle any time now, because I specifically answered
that several times. Nothing. It was entirely my thoughts and
feelings that were responsible for my decision. I told you why I
wanted to break up. I didn't want to be a couple any more. I didn't like you
the same way any more. But we already covered that. I still respect you a
lot, though recent actions may have somewhat belied that. I'll get to that
in a second. One last thing here: Would you have preferred I'd stayed? Would
you rather have been part of a broken relationship? Would you have liked it
more if I'd just gotten more and more distant and uncomfortable around you?
Would you like it if this had gone on for a while, and any chance of any
relationship of any sort between us was utterly destroyed? You can't--I'm
sorry if I sound like a movie or a relationship counselor or something--you
can't have a relationship that only one person is interested in continuing.
I left because I didn't want to go through that, and didn't think it would
be fair to make you suffer the consequences.

My parents have always told me "actions speak louder than words", and I
suppose recently some of my actions have been screaming "Hey, look at this
kid, what a jerk!" I'm sorry if it seems like I moved on too fast, and I'm
sorry if I've done it too openly and brazenly. I didn't want to hurt you (it
certainly wasn't a calculated effort to make you feel used), and I'm sorry
that you don't feel than inexperience is a good enough reason for the
stupidity of my actions. It's the only reason I've got.

So there we go. I don't want to be bitter and angry at you, and I'll try to
behave more respectfully.

All right. That's done. Here at Pyromania, we (and by we, I mean I)
generally try not to Xanga it up too much. Sometimes, though, it's just a
good outlet for venting. Sheesh, when did inexperience stop being a "good
enough" reason for acting inexperienced?

But anyway. For a while now, I've been wanting to blog about the CSI class I
was just in and how much it sucked ass. Before that, though, one thing just
came to mind: Don't you just hate it when friends take sides in a personal
conflict?

DONE WITH THAT NOW. Okay. Enough.

CSI II was a horrible class, and I'm glad it's done. I convinced href="http://kuelbsme.blogspot.com">Marty to switch out of it, because
it's such a waste of time. I originally signed up for the classes for the
same reason I sign up for any elective class: I thought they would teach me
things that I (a)didn't know and (b)wanted to know. I thought we'd be
learning about different areas of forensics, in addition to analyzing the TV
show (more on that later)--at least, that's what the course description
implied. CSI I wasn't too bad. We covered a bunch of different subject
areas, and the information we were learning was at least interesting. Also,
I had a great teacher, Mr. Lund. He's very entertaining and informative.

CSI II was a different story. In CSI II I began to really see why it was
thought of as a total slacker class. There were several reasons that CSI II
sucked like a Kirby vacuum, the first one being the teacher. I'll say this
right now: Don't get me wrong, Mr. Selden is a great guy and I've got
nothing against him personally, but this class went badly. Probably a
quarter (at least) of the total class time was spent doing nothing.
Rarely was there a lesson plan (I recall him joking about never having one
once). There's open-ended, and then there's shoddy. His unpreparedness made
it seem like he lacked dedication to teaching the class. Not a real
motivator for the...

Busywork. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Case studies were busywork. They
weren't made interesting. They were never anything in-depth at all. All we
had to do, basically, was summarize the basic aspects of a certain case in
about a page of double-space typing. Useless and boring! The only
interesting part of the whole thing was reading about some of the cases.
They were never discussed in class (aside from Selden occasionally joking
about what a small amount of the class had done theirs, which, like most of
the class-based jokes in there, was funny at the time but saddening in
retrospect), nor were they ever used for anything other than the occasional
quiz/test question. PEOPLE! This is not how you use case studies to teach! I
actually do have a few suggestions here: Pick
important/landmark/precedent-setting cases. ACTUALLY DISCUSS THEM IN CLASS.
Most of what was contained in the written case studies we did--basic
elements of the case, suspects, evidence, how the evidence was
helpful--could be covered in 10-15 minutes of class discussion at maximum!
Also discuss how the case affected forensics as a whole. Keep the labs
(which I don't have too many complaints on), but make them related to the
case study at the time. For example, one of our case studies was on the O.J.
Simpson case. Then is when the blood spatter and testing labs should be
done. Make note in class of the fact that the lab relates to the case at
hand.

Another good example of case study misuse: the case study on pg. 355 of our
book, which dealt with being able to match bullets from a known source to
bullets from an unknown source and thereby determine who a murderer was
without ever actually finding a murder weapon. Definitely an
interesting and unique case. But this interesting aspect of the case was
buried within ten pages of boring, dry reading. Not exactly motivational for
a bunch of slackers (I actually read the whole thing, but nevertheless
failed to be motivated to rewrite it). This would be much much easier
to include if it were simply discussed in class. During the discussion,
references could be made to pages in the book/parts of the article if
necessary.

Also a HUGE waste of time was CSI (the show). It was handled in what, from a
teacher's perspective, should be the absolute worst way possible. We watched
CSI. Every Friday. Did we analyze it? Hell no. We wrote a "case study" on
it. In the context of this class, what do you think that meant? It meant
"who-did-it-who-got-it-what-was-the-evidence-how-did-it-help" on half a
sheet of paper. Some people wrote like four sentences. And got four out of
five points. Absolute waste of time and effort.

Now, from a student's perspective, I really shouldn't be complaining about
getting to watch a TV show I enjoy, once a week, during class. But it really
was an absolute waste, in every possible sense. I believe both course
syllabi mentioned something about "What's Wrong With This Episode?", or
units in which we would watch episodes of CSI and figure out what didn't
jibe with the real world. It was never really a set unit, but we actually
did do something involving pointing out unreality in episodes of the show in
CSI I. A couple of times. Nothing of the sort in CSI II. In CSI II, it was
strictly watch TV, then busywork, then sitting around talking for 25
minutes.

How would I have handled this, you ask? Well, first, I'd actually take the
time to find episodes of the show that had specific occurences of magic
futuristic technology (or some other type of error). That was something else
Selden didn't do too often--prepare things outside of class. No, actually,
he did do that reasonably often for the labs. But we didn't have a whole lot
of labs (for the last, like, two weeks, we didn't really do much of
anything). Then, I'd actually TALK ABOUT IT IN CLASS. I'd point out (or a
particularly awake student might possibly point out) that something was
wrong, and I'd ask (or just tell) the class what it was. At the end of the
episode we'd recap what was wrong, and talk about why they might put it in
the show anyway. See, that's actually getting the class involved, instead of
"Here, look, TV!"

Many of the other kids in the class kind of annoyed me, either because they
never paid attention or because they never paid attention and were blatantly
stupid about it (Casey, I'm looking in your direction). But that's not
really something that can be directly improved.

I'm glad it's done with. I'm sick of worrying about my grade in a waste of
time class that I don't like.