Vocabulary Fun

A word association game has gripped my select number of friends here in Cork, and has begun to travel abroad, reaching out to San Fransisco and Toronto! Funny Farm starts you on the centre block, with just the phrase "On The Farm". From there, you have to snake out to the surrounding blocks, slowly making connections across the board. The corner blocks also contain a yellow "clue word", each of which hints at the complete metapuzzle answer.

This is one tough game! It's virtually impossible to do alone, but amazing fun when you have friends helping out. In our own house we have the game running on both the PC and laptop, while some of us guess blindly and others can research possibilities. But no amount of research will get you all the answers, unless you find a list of answers, in which case you cheated anyway. As well as that, the same game is running in one or two locations around Cork, with Karen in California, and with Bob in Canada! What amazing fun!

Feel free to give the game a try yourself, but if you want to pick up from where we are, I'll post the link to the puzzle as we have it in the comments to this entry. That way you can expand the growing network of friends determined to solve this game through honest research, luck and lateral thinking. Ok. A little knowledge is involved too, but not much!

In My Day...

Wow! UCC has changed since I was last there. Not just physically, but also what seems to have become acceptable. Again, "acceptable" both in terms of actions, as well as the intelligence level of the student body. Allow me to explain. Lets start with the physical changes.

Well, rather dramatically there is an entire new building; huge, shiney and with lecture theatres to boot! The Brookfield Complex is sweet. Very cool to be in. And the restaurant is very nice. Great food, cheap prices. Though I was talking to someone who was complaining about the prices, but I think that's because I'm still stuck in non-student prices mode.

Also new is the current addition to the Boole Library. The biggest problem with this is, that it's not done yet. This means that you can be in studying, or photocopying when a piercing drilling sound vibrates through the building, causing everyone to look up in annoyance. It's not going to be even done in time for any of us final years to care about it enough to put up with it.

Right, on to what has become acceptable, starting with actions, though this flows nicely into the intelligence issue also.

A little anecdote:
There is a particular girl in my class who was the first to sit beside me and talk to me. This was nice because I'm a repeat, and none of the other students know me. Also, the fact that I'm working mornings means I'm missing out on tutorials, the perfect time to learn about the others or get to make some associations. Anyway, I digress. This girl sits next to me and then proceeds to talk throughout the class. Sometimes to me, sometimes responding to things the lecturer says. Sounds ok, right? Only if she doesn't get heard by the lecturer, she repeats herself. Over and over. Until she gets attention. And she makes stupid comments. Really stupid. Like she catches two words in a sentence and calls out an answer. Rarely, so far has she even been close. Then she misses something in class and gets the lecturer to repeat herself one-to-one. She fell asleep in a lecture, completely distracting the lecturer. She was in the front row!! Seriously, how is this acceptable?!? All this: one person! And she answers her phone during lectures! Not to hang up or say "shhh. I'm in a lecture. Ring in an hour". No. She spends 5 minutes whispering making plans for a trip to Galway at the weekend. Gah!

How does someone like this get into 3rd Year Early Childhood Studies? And this girl of even less attention span than me wants to be in the UN!! If that happens I'm moving to one of those countries that didn't sign whatever bit of paper made the UN. I don't care if it looks bad now, it'll be better than UN countries in a few years if she's their quality standard!

Inteligence is dropping rapidly. I realise I'm no high level to aspire to. I may be a smart guy with a decent IQ, I just don't have the attention span to match. But I try to pay attention in class... this time. I have sufficient respect for the lecturers not to disrupt their class. The levels of sheer ignorance and lack or respect for others displayed by students in my year is staggering.

I'm not really sure where this is going. It's not really supposed to be a rant. It's more of a description of what I see. Obviously my own views strongly influence what I've written. It's not exactly an impartial description of how things have changed.

Just take it as a short essay, poorly written, lamenting the lack of repect among the youth of today. I'm only 26 (and two thirds) and I'm appalled at people just a few years younger than me. Was I that bad? Is it an age thiung? Will they get better in just three or four years? Would you let people like this look after your kid? You tell me.