It's been a long time, oh yeah ain't that right

You might recognize the title of this blog from a matchbox 20 song, or maybe you won't.
Okay, okay, so it has been a while since I posted anything, so sue me! I've been busy. In my business I have some venting that I must do.

I can't go on like this anymore! School is a joke. It is nothing more than a business. It is not a way to help broaden our intelligence as a society. I used to think it was just in textbooks and tuition that they got us but it seems more and more they are broadening the ways that students are asked to get screwed.
This all stems from the physics class I am taking this semester. I had anticipated spending about $100 for the book (which is paperback if you can believe it) and I was right on the money (pun intended). What I had not anticipated was the cost of a H-ITT clicker that would be used for quizzes and tests. This clicker is a couple notches down from a standard remote control but unlike a standard remote control this little baby cost $33 and that doesn't even include the battery!!! That's right folks, step right up and get some snake water while you're at it because at OU you can't have a remote without snake water, it just won't work!
This remote is a glorified SCANTRON but because our professors have gotten lazy and don't want to take all 30 minutes of their valuable research time (or rather 30 minutes of their TA's beer drinking time) to feed SCANTRON through a machine they decided students had to spend $33 to answer a question and have the answer recorded electronically immediately! More than that, there is no option to take a SCANTRON instead of purchasing the remote. If you don't get one of your own (because they are coded to match your student ID) you don't pass the class, period!
How ridiculous are we getting with our technology? Technology is great but it seems that in our drive to get immediate results we are neglecting at what cost we are getting those results not to mention personability! I guess the day is soon coming that in order to save classroom space, students will have to spend $350 for an iPod that is coded with their student number and broadcasts the professor’s voice during a scheduled time. The professor will give the lecture and homework assignments. The student then must upload the completed homework to the iPod. Automatically the answers will be given and the professors voice will tell if the answers were right and if not will explain what was done wrong. Oh yeah, Not to mention that there will be a required text that students will have to spend another $300 to buy. But instead of an actual book they will get a password to download an e-book onto the iPod. Seriously, where does it end? I'll tell you where it ends, right in the studends' collective END!