Coming back to Cornell every August and signing into your Blackboard
account used to be a simple task. But, this year, for some reason unbeknown to the student body, blackboard has changed. GASP!

I logged in and there was a warning. IN CASE YOU’RE TOO STUPID TO HAVE
NOTICED THE MAJOR CHANGES, WARNING THERE ARE CHANGES! Really? Anyway
thanks for the warning and the blatant insult to my intelligence.

Momma always told me, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it and never get in a
car with someone who offers you candy. Life lessons we should all pass
on to our kin.

So why Cornell tech people? Why? Now professors have more work to pawn
off on their graduate and undergraduate TAs! Another task to relearn and
another way for students to delay posting entries and papers…”I
thought I posted it! Damn you new Blackboard!”

I wonder what would happen if we just got rid of Blackboard altogether…would there be
chaos? I think not my good friends. Would it be a lot easier and professors wouldn’t insist
on having weekly journal postings on your thoughts about the 300 pages
of reading? Or would the weekly online problem sets that always give you the
wrong grade and you have to go to office hours anyways become obsolete?

Person to person contact could solve so many problems! Developing a new
blackboard has just created wasteful tutorials and agony for us all. I
miss chalk… different colored chalk…remember the glory of getting to write on the
chalkboard? Ah yes those were the days. Now let the nostalgia ensue….