Ajax Thinks

Ajax Thinks
by Muffin Man

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

School is Finished, and Not One Shoddy PowerPoint Based Presentation Too Soon

The title lies, slightly, I have one more final left to take tomorrow, but it doesn't count as school, much. As of an hour or so ago my semester was finished. I am pleased with this completion.
I have been keeping text books through the semesters thinking that someday it'd be nice to have them on a shelf so I could return to them for reference material. Because of this thought, I now have about 20 text books on my shelf. These 20 text books are going to need to go home with me. I will be flying home. Books are heavy. It costs money to mail heavy things. Even with the media mail rates I don't think it will be worth sending the books home, because, let's face it, I didn't read the books when they were assigned for me to read for class, therefore, why would I ever choose to read them on my own time? Plus, text books are dumbed down and generalized, just like the internet. If I need to look up this information in the future I can probably just look it up online. It really is pointless to keep these books. Not only do they take up space, they will cost money to get them home as well. I have decided to try to sell them.
Along the same lines I have a box full of DVD cases. I've purchased quite a few movies since being at school and I keep the DVDs in a wallet. I have no need for the cases, but I've kept them in a box anyway. I was thinking about sending the cases home. Why? Will I someday put the DVDs back in their cases and then occupy tons of shelf space with them? No, I won't ever do that, I don't think, what purpose would it serve? I bagged up the cases and will be throwing them in the garbage. I thought it might be funny to put them on the shelf in the laundry room of my apartment complex. The end of the semester brings a large deposit of things to that shelf. The apartment managers allow people to put things there and if anyone else wants any of it they have until the last day of the semester to claim it otherwise it goes to the goodwill store. I think it would be funny to put all of the movie cases there and then stand around and act like I'm doing my laundry and wait for people to come in and get excited then grab the cases to take them back to their apartment, followed by their eventual return mad that the case was empty. Or something along those lines. It'd be funny for a minute, maybe. At the same time, it'd be annoying to anyone who hoped that there was a movie inside the case, so I'll just throw the cases in the dumpster. That might be funny too, if someone notices and digs in to find a movie.
What else is happening today? How about this, college students are ridiculous with PowerPoint presentations. They treat the slides like giant cue cards for everyone to see. What is the point of having text on a slide if you are just going to read it? Do you think we are all morons and don't know how to read? You don't have to read to us, we can read...well, I can, maybe the other students can't, that's why they also present the slides the same way. Between two of my classes this semester I have seen a lot of student created PowerPoint shows. I'll just state this first, I like PowerPoint as far as an application for creating multi-media presentations. I think it does an excellent job and it is pretty easy and intuitive to use. Used well, PowerPoint can enhance a presentation. Used poorly, PowerPoint exposes your incompetence and makes me shudder with disgust and frustration. My favorite bad moment of the semester, this one isn't necessarily PowerPoint related, was when a girl was talking about hierarchies and the title on the slide was "higher archery." No joke. College. University. Do you follow me? Higher archery. I can't remember any other specific ridiculous things I've seen, but I will end by saying that presentations of this caliber involving PowerPoint are part of the downfall of our society.

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