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@danirabbit yep, I built a computer program in 1982 that basically did mail merge (and also stored persona-related information and targeted the content to fit the persona). I got a C

@danirabbit

Yep, im going through a intro to databases and data class now.

Ive administered Oracle, MSSQL, AWS RDS, postgres, MySQL, and Mongo.

Ive never had to design tables or data. And this class is purely over design and data. Not one bit of administration.

And it uses Zybooks. And that platform should be dumped 1 mile deep in a bunker and filled with concrete. Horrible horrible fucking platform. Its so bad even the teachers are like "no student, you figured it out. Ignore zybooks".

@danirabbit

If you have a copy of your report card from that year you should definitely get it framed

@danirabbit The more I experience things the more I dislike formal education. IMO formal education DOES NOT make someone smart. I have seen some really dumb people (they claimed they never verified tbh) that has a Master's yet they act like they are not smart in the slightest.

@danirabbit strongly agree. Got a mediocre grade in electromagnetic physics, which made me angry because my dad was an electrical engineer, and I knew I'd been exposed enough to pick up that stuff. Took an EE into course and aced it, which made me realize that my ability to learn was affected by teaching methods.

I also separately learned that academia is its own entire bubble, and most of us are just passing through with a different end goal in mind, which can cause weird frictions.

@danirabbit
Let's not forget that it's highly probable that the person who gave you a D should get an F for not teaching you well enough to give you an A

@danirabbit during my 2nd year of Master's, I had 5.5/20 (so… a D or E if we were in a 100-point scale?) in parallel architectures and programming.

Contrary to Oz in Buffy, I don't test well.

Anyway, My PhD was about performance measurement and optimization for nascent multicore architectures. 😁

You're 100% right, passion/dedication trumps rigid institutional structures (that being said, I *am* a professor who partially enforce them…).

@danirabbit you weren't good at it in the particular way they wanted you to be good at it. I come out of an experimental-science background and the tunnel vision of CS/EE academics is comical to us. If we just dismissed unexpected outcomes and always always always insisted on using the same methods we wouldn't discover anything.

@danirabbit you know it's exactly same at me?

@danirabbit D, more like Deliberately Excellent! At Uni we just say "Vier gewinnt" (four wins, aka. the German name for Connect Four) or "E for Excellent".

@danirabbit My first programming class (BASIC, in middle school!), the teacher told me "you aren't cut for programming, you should do something else", and yet I have spent a good chunk of my life writing software.

@danirabbit Two classes I didn't do well in were Linguistics 101 and Intro to the Web (granted, this was circa 1996)

I like to think I lived the rest of my life in defiance (BA in Linguistics, MLIS focusing on IA for web).

@danirabbit I got good grades, which is how I know I'm not good at anything

@danirabbit True! At university/college, I tended to partake in drinking beer and going to parties, which mistakenly took priority at inappropriate times. So I also had some bad marks for things where now I am paid as a leading consultant.