[Author’s note: this must have been a bad day at school, which was beginning to happen with increased frequency. The instructor had refused to answer a question about a CD because the answer raised the possibility of creating pirated disks. I have a long-standing criticism of people who assume educated people automatically become criminals. That is only true if you work for the government, joke. I think. In the WAMU incident, the bank intentionally processes deposits late if they are not in the banks envelope.]
Those who know me will be aware that I have had this same criticism since I’ve been eight years old. I dislike instructors who suppress information because you ‘might use it wrong’. I once asked my guidance teacher how scams worked, explaining that when I went to the city, I did not want to fall for any. He not only refused to tell me, he informed my father of my intention to leave the farm, and I got slapped around. The result was that, yes, I did get taken by a few scams when I got to town at 17.
Fortunately not as badly as others, from what I’ve heard about old people and lotteries. That same teacher, when I told him years later he was an asshole, insisted he had only been protecting himself from being accused of teaching crime. That kind of gross stupidity was very normal back in the 60s. That same philosophy was also applied to knowledge about birth control, and it certainly worked in that small town. It insured the maximum number of teenage pregnancies, yet nobody could pin anything on the sex education teachers!
Another episode with WAMU. They don’t ensure there are always enough envelopes in the ATM trays. Excuse number one is that they don’t own the machines. That is lame. They could make it a condition of installation, or have the machines deal an envelope when you select the deposit function. I had to drive all the way to downtown Hollywood to find a machine with envelopes. I’ve noticed if you use your own envelop, or the envelopes from another bank, they don’t record your deposit for another 24 hours. That is the brand of nonsense you can’t have when the rent is due.
Then I call the school, looking for both a way out, and something to shake them on their high horses. One, there is no way they are getting a photocopy of my ID. That is not the law and I am very uncomfortable with trusting strangers, especially pushy strangers who insist they are just doing their job. You want to see my ID ten times, you come and see me ten times in person. This course if over on the 22nd, and I still can’t fix computers.
I know a lot of terms and concepts, but not much about using those to fix broken computers. Also, as predicted a month ago, the instructor is now repeatedly saying things like, “You’ll recall we covered this”, and “You’ll recall we covered that.” Yes, I recall that we covered it, but also that nothing was ever reinforced by repetition at the time. Covering it and learning it are not the same thing in the real world. No one sentence was given any more stress than any other, and nobody in the class could possibly guess which of them were important. But he is doing the old trick of implying you are dumb if you don’t recall every word.
I recall we installed Windows 98 back on March 18th, but not every detail and nuance of that complicated operation. It was covered once in the context of what each feature could do, but without any practice on fixing things if anything went wrong. Maybe we are supposed to guess at the methods? If so, very few people would agree with paying tuition to learn by trial and error.
There was no lab or practice time since then and all that was three weeks ago. Will the school, after graduation, provide me with a teacher to remind me on the job? It would be interesting to know whose side you take in this kind of issue. It is plain that the whole idea of the course was bait, to get me to take even more courses, and in the end, spend the money they want. That is a disgusting way to behave and claim you are an educational institution. If nothing else, Workforce One will find out that this A+ course has very little to do with computer repair. It should be called “An Introduction to the Names of Computer Parts and How to Install Windows.” Or, “Talking About Troubleshooting without Actually Doing Much of It.”
