Semana de Ingeniería

Yes, only the title is in spanish...

Rant post!!!

Every year, my school organizes an event that lasts a whole week called... yup, you guessed: "Semana de Ingeniería". First time I heard of it, it intrigued me, cause for a whole week, there were going to be lots of lectures, presentations, conferences, courses and stuff like that, and all of them about Engineering, wow, that's so cool, for the school to care about its students, provide them with lots of conferences about different subjects... Yes, in theory it works, there's absolutely nothing to lose, it's free, you go, you learn something, or get a better grasp of something you knew and be happy.

Well, lots of things work in theory... IF AND ONLY IF SAID THINGS ARE EXECUTED PROPERLY!!! I can't stress that enough... rant approaching.

This is what I think is wrong with the school's and students' approach to it:

1. First, since all the conferences and stuff are during class hours, most of the teachers don't give class that week, so we can attend... well, no, turns out most students don't want to attend to ANY conference or courses, that speaks bad of the students, if you are studying it should be because YOU WANT to, so you should do everything in your power to gather all kinds of knowledge.

2. So, how would you prevent that??? By FORCING students to go. They give out stamps for every conference you attend, so teachers don't give class, but DEMAND you show them your stamps the following week. So what happens??? People start attending conferences they don't even know what the fuck it's about, just to get a stamp to show the teachers, why should one care about that? Cause classrooms (where most conferences are given) hold average some 35-40 people, 95% of which are there just for the stamp, not for the knowledge.

3. The persons giving the conferences are not very well picked. I once assisted a 3-day course about time-management which felt like a total waste of time (oh, the irony). The woman up front didn't know what the hell she was talking about, she made a presentation very poorly made that not even herself understood very well, questions were answered very vaguely or not answered at all, she gave no examples or hypothetical cases of when to apply what she was talking about. Some conferences are not dynamic, cause most of the people aren't really paying attention, so the person up front gets discouraged by that fact.

4. The school makes NO EFFORT to make students want to go to those conferences other than forcing them. If you don't go, the teachers take it like you missed a couple of classes, thus lowering your final grade (why assistance to class gets graded is beyond me, but that's a topic for another rant). They barely let students know when it's starting or what conferences and courses you can go to.

So, all in all, I like it cause it's a week off school. I do not attend it since last year, cause I don't agree with the school's approach. I have told teachers in the middle of the class about how I feel, and how they can help spread the word about it... they couldn't give less of a fuck. Literally this is one response I got "Mira, a mi me van a pagar de todos modos, y no voy a dar clases, así que mejor ven y traeme tus sellos". That's what made me start thinking.... how superior education in México is really fucked up.