I went over to West Chester at lunch today to do some shopping in the WCU bookstore for my class starting Monday. There are 80-some sections of my Effective Writing class (WRT120). Many of the sections use the same books, but there are a few that don't. If I had knownon Monday what section my class was, I could have picked up my books there instead of wating in line today.
Anyway, I did finally find my books. There were two cards listed for the books I found. One was for a basic writing book. The other card listed a single book that turned out to be a bundle of books encased in plastic. These books included, of all things, a dictionary. But because it was bundled with the book I required, I was forced to pay for it, too.
Maybe I shouldn't complain about the price of books. After all, I am paying over $600 for 45 hours of class time spread over 15 weeks. No, wait, I have a right to complain about paying over $80 for books that will be most likely worthless after these 15 weeks, some of which I already own. And what will the resale value of these books be? $0.50?
I was looking at a syllabus for one of these classes. Not the section I'm in, but some other teacher. Apparently, they require one of the papers we write to be converted into a web site. Exactly how is that to be done? Don't these educated types understand that the web isn't really a fantastic place to just dump a paper?
I get the impression that they think it's just as simple as splitting up the text onto various pages then linking all of the pages together. If they knew anything about the web, they would know that you have to design for it, and that repurposing isn't such a great idea.
If you really want to post a paper-like bit of writing on the web, the best way would probably be to post it as a PDF so that the reader can print it out instead of looking at it on the tiny screen. But hey, who am I to argue with the educated establishment.
Well, I suppose I shouldn't judge too much, since I may end up posting my paper here, and the teacher may eventually end up reading the rest of this stuff. Hi there!
