Archive for July, 2009

How I Got My Final Canceled

Jul 16th, 09 / 0 Comments

A few years ago, I took an introductory electrical engineering course as I was considering becoming an EE major. Most of the class found our teacher rather unreasonable. I think he meant well, and I certainly took some useful skills out of the class, but he was a little out of touch with all of us. He explained to us that he expected us to treat his class like a full time job. Just his class, not even considering our other classes. Of course, if all classes did this, it would literally be impossible for a student to carry a full course load. It would be impossible for any student who had to work to help pay for college to do this as well.

When he said he wanted us to treat his class as a full time job, he meant it. We had a group project, to build a voltmeter, ammeter, and ohmmeter. We were expected to do this on our own, with occasional input from our lab instructors who really never gave us any assistance. So we basically built the meters using Ohm’s Law, the two equations V=IR and P=VI. We also had the relations needed to determine how current and resistance changed based on using series and parallel circuits. If this is all gibberish to you, don’t worry, the upshot is we had a couple equations, knew basically what they meant, and had to build something useful from that.

We had “board meetings” to discuss our project, complete with prepared PowerPoint presentations and progress reports, and he expected these presentations to be of the same quality that would be found at engineering companies. This was on top of normal homework and class.

Needless to say, he was sorely disappointed, as absolutely no one in the class had 40 hours a week to burn on just his  class for an entire semester.

I say this to set the tone. We were all very unhappy with his expectations, and when we told him we thought he was being unreasonable and why, he basically said to suck it up and gave us a lecture about the real world. Ok, fine, it’s one class, we’ll triage and deal as best we can.

So, partway through the semester, he announced that presentations for our projects would be held on our school’s one reading day, used to study for finals. This is actually prohibited by university rules. When we cry foul, he just explains that we don’t have any classes that day, so it’s the ideal time to do it. Since we clearly couldn’t use class time for that. Somehow, he convinced us this was ok. If we were smart, we would have dug in there, but we didn’t. Still, he knew we were not on board with the plan.

Then, later in the semester, he explains that we’re all going to be sitting through everyone’s presentations and rating them. This will take a total of six hours. On our reading day. Which we’re supposed to use to study for our finals. Most of our class has two finals the day after the reading  day, and two more towards the beginning of finals week. I had learned the virtues of study the previous semester, the hard way, so I wanted to make use of this time, and I was less than pleased about this new development. I knew everyone else in the class was also very displeased about this.

I raised my hand. He called on me. With polite steel in my voice, I asked, “You seriously expect us to sit through six hours of presentations when we’re supposed to be preparing for finals?”

That did it. The class pretty much exploded at that point, echoing my statement and talking about the studying they needed to do as well. Eventually, he managed to calm the class down. Then he explained that surely, we could study for our finals another day of finals week, since we wouldn’t have classes. We countered with the fact that we had two finals the day after our reading day. This was, in fact, the truth, as almost everyone in the class was taking Computer Science II as well. The two finals were in CS and the engineering class we were having this discussion in.

We then pressed the point that he wasn’t even supposed to have presentations scheduled for our reading day for this reason. We hadn’t opposed it too strongly before because we didn’t expect him to require us all to be there for all the presentations. We had expected to take an hour our of study time to go present, then get back to it. He wasn’t very happy about this, because he felt this project was extremely important, as was having us all there to help grade everyone else. (Incidentally, what is this, the 2nd grade?)

Now, the goal here was to have a more reasonable amount of time spent on presentations. He proposed a different solution. He asked us if we’d do the presentations if he canceled the final. While I would have rather had less presentation time and taken the final, I felt this was reasonable, as did the rest of the class, so we agreed. We canceled the final and did the full presentation session.

Later on, back in the dorms, a student from the class informed me I was the man for getting our final canceled, and that it was awesome that I stood up to our professor as things were getting out of hand. As I’m not usually one to speak up, I thought it had felt pretty good too, though it was also really scary. I’m not generally one to directly challenge an authority unless I feel something is going very wrong, and when I do, it’s very uncomfortable for me.

However, sometimes, that’s exactly what needs to be done. This was one of those cases. It should be said that while we found him unreasonable most of the time before this point, after this incident, he did start to pay more attention to the fact that we were college students and became a lot more willing to listen when we had an issue with his very strict businessman style. This led to more compromises to meet our needs as students (who couldn’t dump 40 hours a week into a single class, for instance) while still making sure we hit the important things he was trying to teach us. In general, this made us all feel better about the class.

And we did pick up a lot of important skills in that class too. We learned to apply book knowledge to real life problems, we learned to present our progress in a businesslike fashion, and we learned a lot of time management. These last two are skills we likely wouldn’t have picked up or improved upon had we had another teacher.

I also learned to take a more active role in challenging an authority figure at appropriate times when things get out of hand.

Most importantly, I learned how one person really can make a difference. It’s all a matter of knowing the situation and then applying that knowledge appropriately so we all get what we’re looking for.

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Ethics of Magic (And Some Possible Side Effects)

Jul 3rd, 09 / 5 Comments

Recently, I wrote a piece about how to cast a spell. In hindsight, I probably should have written this piece first, but at the time I was thinking about trying to write something that got to the good stuff, what I was always looking to find when I went hunting for information on the paranormal. However, how you use magic is also very important.

Now, that said, I don’t believe for a minute you have to be pure of heart to use magic. I’ve known people who are far from pure (by their own admission) who have been capable of doing some pretty awesome things. So, the ability itself isn’t restricted to those who are perfect. I think this thought came about simply because we don’t want to consider that someone unethical could make use of something we don’t understand for their own gain, especially at the expense of others, and especially at our expense.

Of course, since we’re all human, we all do things we regret once in awhile. The point of this piece isn’t to say “BAD!  Don’t do that!”  Rather, it’s to make you think about what you’re doing so you can understand the ethical implications and decide for yourself what to do.

The biggest rule of thumb is this: if you could do this without using magic, would you find it ethical to do it that way? If so, it’s a safe bet it’s ethical to use magic to do it as well. If not, it’s probably not ethical to use magic to do it either.

My general rule is simply if it doesn’t cause harm to someone else, it should be ok to do it. However, you have to realize that I’m talking about all kinds of harm, not just  physical harm. Subverting someone’s free will is causing harm. Stealing their property is harm. Causing them to lose their job is harm. Basically, if you wouldn’t want it done to you (and you aren’t a masochist), it’s probably causing harm and you shouldn’t do it.

As an example to what I’m talking about, most people who have found my guide to casting spells have found it by looking for love spells. Now, love spells as a whole aren’t necessarily bad, but I would say that some kinds are. The kind of love spell that is cast to make someone fall in love with you would fall into the bad category. You’re attempting to subvert their free will to make them love you. Not only is this bad because you’re subverting their free will, but it’s also bad because, if the spell were successful, then it wouldn’t really be love, because the person the spell was cast upon wouldn’t have chosen it.

On the other hand, there are other ways to use magic in the quest for a suitable partner. For instance, casting a spell to cause you to cross paths with someone compatible with you, or your soul mate, or something along those lines doesn’t invalidate anyone’s free will. It just sets up circumstances for you to meet someone who you might find you have a mutual bond of love with. You aren’t forcing anyone to do anything with this type of love spell, you’re just  nudging events to work out well for you and the mystery person who you happen to find.

Likewise, money spells, in general, aren’t a bad thing either. With these, it is a good idea to specify that you don’t want harm to come to anyone, as inspecific magic can have unintended effects. You don’t want to cast a money spell only to find that your money is coming by inheritance. However, a desire to have money is perfectly natural, as it tends to help us along in life in numerous ways. Some people say spells like this show greed, I say so long as they’re cast in a way that won’t hurt anyone, they’re perfectly fine. I’ve found they don’t tend to be very successful, though a few people report success. Money seems to be weirdly hard to effect via magic though. However, it’s certainly not unethical to try to get more.

Also, what I said about unintended consequences and making part of the spell a specific request not to cause harm is probably good advice for any spell you cast, so you don’t wind up inadvertently causing harm some way you didn’t expect.

Something else to keep in mind is that some traditions of magic believe in forces such as karma and the Threefold Law. If they’re right, anytime you cast a spell with positive intentions, to help yourself or another, it also brings good to you. If you cast a spell with negative intentions, to harm yourself or another, then it will bring harm to you as well. Personally, I don’t think there’s a universal law that says this will happen.

That said, if you gather enough negative energy around you from casting  negative spells, I could see that drawing some unpleasant events to you. Likewise, if you gather enough positive energy around you over time, I could see that manifesting some good events in your life. But I don’t think it’s a hard and fast rule so much as it’s something that builds over time. I also think this could be manipulated with the right knowledge of subtle energy, so someone could clean away the negative energy if they knew what they were doing, or simply build up the positive energy on their own.

The main point I want to get across though, is that you should consider magic just as any other tool. If you would find it ethical to do something without the use of magic, then using magic to do it would also be ethical by your code of ethics. If you would find it unethical without magic, then using magic to do it would also be unethical. Please be responsible with your spells. While we don’t know for sure whether they work or not, it’s best to be careful so we don’t harm others with anything we do.

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