Things that scare me: Public Speaking and Promotional Treasure Chests
I finally got called on in Civ. Pro. yesterday. Of the assigned material, I had read all but the last small case (about 5% of the pages assigned), and hadn't bothered to skim it in class because we were moving quite slowly. So, with about 10 minutes left in class, my number came up. As soon as I heard "Mr. Golding", I flipped to the case, and skimmed it quickly, then slowly started to answer questions. Per usual I was utterly terrified, and sort of mumbled quietly the first answer, but I got myself together to answer the rest of the questions pretty well. Thankfully, this particular professor likes to ask longwinded questions to his Socratic Method victims, which gave me enough time to figure out the answers. Very oddly, my classmates didn't appear to realize that I hadn't read it, so they either were feeling kind, or I faked it pretty well. I will say this for it, getting called on unprepared first thing in the morning makes the rest of the day much more pleasant that normal. Perhaps a very mild version of this.
In other matters, I hate promotional keys. The kind where an organization mails thousands of keys out, and the one(s) that open a treasure chest or start a car wins. Anyway, lately, I've been refusing to participate in such contests for ethical concerns. The most recent example involved a "treasure chest" with $5,000, and a very cheap padlock. My thought process on the whole situation is as follows: even with whatever unmodified key I am mailed, I have a much better chance of manipulating it in a cheap lock than normal. To take it further, it seems like a slippery slope where if manipulating the key is OK, then filing the key into a better shape would be ok, as it is the same key. Then filing the key into a "999" key, and bumping the lock open would be OK....it seems to lead straight down hill to just using a padlock shim and opening the lock and then to doing my laundry for free, etc. So, I've decided that I'm just avoiding such promotions entirely. Even if I am ramdomly mailed the correct key, I would wonder if I had manipulated it to gain an unfair advantage.
I finally got called on in Civ. Pro. yesterday. Of the assigned material, I had read all but the last small case (about 5% of the pages assigned), and hadn't bothered to skim it in class because we were moving quite slowly. So, with about 10 minutes left in class, my number came up. As soon as I heard "Mr. Golding", I flipped to the case, and skimmed it quickly, then slowly started to answer questions. Per usual I was utterly terrified, and sort of mumbled quietly the first answer, but I got myself together to answer the rest of the questions pretty well. Thankfully, this particular professor likes to ask longwinded questions to his Socratic Method victims, which gave me enough time to figure out the answers. Very oddly, my classmates didn't appear to realize that I hadn't read it, so they either were feeling kind, or I faked it pretty well. I will say this for it, getting called on unprepared first thing in the morning makes the rest of the day much more pleasant that normal. Perhaps a very mild version of this.
In other matters, I hate promotional keys. The kind where an organization mails thousands of keys out, and the one(s) that open a treasure chest or start a car wins. Anyway, lately, I've been refusing to participate in such contests for ethical concerns. The most recent example involved a "treasure chest" with $5,000, and a very cheap padlock. My thought process on the whole situation is as follows: even with whatever unmodified key I am mailed, I have a much better chance of manipulating it in a cheap lock than normal. To take it further, it seems like a slippery slope where if manipulating the key is OK, then filing the key into a better shape would be ok, as it is the same key. Then filing the key into a "999" key, and bumping the lock open would be OK....it seems to lead straight down hill to just using a padlock shim and opening the lock and then to doing my laundry for free, etc. So, I've decided that I'm just avoiding such promotions entirely. Even if I am ramdomly mailed the correct key, I would wonder if I had manipulated it to gain an unfair advantage.
posted by Bob at
1:18:00 PM
