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ProfQuirrell


				

				

				
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joined 2022 September 05 15:12:13 UTC

				

User ID: 606

ProfQuirrell


				
				
				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 05 15:12:13 UTC

					

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User ID: 606

The song is somewhat cliche at this point, but I really like Pinocchio Story from the album 808s and Heartbreak. It's a live recording and Kanye is difficult to hear and understand over the screams of the crowd, but he raps about how he just wants happiness and a normal life, and somehow all the fame and fortune has made everything worse:

Do you think I'd sacrifice real life

For all the fame and flashing lights?

There is no Gucci I can buy

There is no Louis Vuitton to put on

There is no YSL that they could sell

To get my heart out of this hell and my mind out of this jail

There is no clothes that I could buy

That could turn back the time

There is no vacation spot I could fly

That could bring back a piece of real life.

The contrast between Kanye singing about how he wants to experience real life and real love with the screams of the fans proclaiming their love for him is really fascinating and you can hear in the reality of the live performance how all the fans and the fame ... just isn't a substitute for what he's really looking for. It's a wonderful example of how form / function can work together in a piece of music. You don't have to just listen to Kanye explain how the fame isn't getting him happiness -- you can hear the fans screaming "I LOVE YOU KANYE" as he sings about how he can't find real love and how he lost the only real love he'd ever had... I think it's a beautiful song, personally.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=OeCdG0Mzrkw

And while schools have done their best, it is near impossible to prevent cheating in a take home test. To be honest, I blame professors using old closed-book test methods for classes learned and tested entirely at distance for cheating scandals: you just can't ask people to be closed book in their own homes, it's stupid. Trust, but verify; and if you can't verify, don't trust at all.

Our institution did this -- when everyone closed up shop in March 2020 we flat-out refused to administer any final exams for the spring since we knew we'd be doing them online and we knew we wouldn't be able to trust the data. Granted, I work for a military academy and we have some flexibility there that most institutions probably don't.

I don't think schools did their best, though. My view on the ground with lots of friends across lots of institutions is that teachers / professors were struggling to carry out their class in a difficult environment with little to no support from administration. If you have to pivot online, there are ways to take some advantage of that media, and lots of ways to do it catastrophically poorly. I haven't see any evidence that administration made any effort to help their professors transition smoothly and teach a good class as opposed to just throwing them to the wolves.