Updated . . .

I passed the test . . . I got an "A"!

My "Understanding Motion Pictures" instructor, Prof. Joe Daccurso, is a very severe examiner yet a very humane grader. Clearly, the better one studies, the better one will do on the test. And believe me, this is not a test you can slide through like Gumby slides through books. I know quite a bit about this; I've ice skated through more than my fair share of tests. Yet it's comforting to know that you'd have to try really hard to totally bomb out.

Prof. Daccurso is not a sadist, despite the impression he tries to put over when it comes to the exam. He builds it up to be virtually Abu Ghraib-esque. It is, as I noted in the earlier posting on this subject, quite arduous. It's a marathon of a test! But for every yang there must be a yin, and Prof. Joe provides this yin in the form of very helpful study materials made available in the library and learning center. Prof. Joe is like a Dad who waits up by the front door for a curfew-breaking daughter, but leaves the back door unlocked. The key thing in a situation as benevolent as this is to not screw it up by abusing the benevolence. (This, by the way, is why benevolent governments and management structures hardly ever work. It only takes one person pissing in the pool to have the whole damn thing locked down. Why can't people just "be cool"?)

Something Prof. Daccurso said last night after passing out our grades really hit me right. He said that he's very interested in our conceptual understanding of the material, rather than rote regurgitation. Rote regurgitation is easy. Memorize some names and dates, spit it all out verbatim, and you pass! Yay! You can't remember it fifteen minutes later, but good on you anyway! Conceptual understanding though . . . ahhh. That's like changing your own personal mental "registry". Conceptual understanding affects how you think and perform. Rote regurgitation is good for a pat on the head and maybe a cookie. I am very pleased that Prof. Joe is the kind of teacher who teaches toward application rather than mere scholarship.

Well, I worked my ass off for this exam, and it shows. And now, to paraphrase Sun Ra, "What am I gonna do now I ain't got no ass?"

Study for the next one.