Who does what which way?

[cjsmith]

Lab notebooks:
Have a separate lab notebook or make drawings and notes all over the manual?
Carbon-copied prenumbered pages or a spiral-bound notebook?
Take them home to do the writeup, or leave them locked up in the lab?
Do your work elsewhere and copy it in, or print it out and staple it in, or record every piece of data by hand directly into the notebook at the time the measurement was taken?
Strike through a mistake or recopy the page?

On every one of these questions, each of my professors insists that the ways the others do things are wrong. It's almost funny to watch them put value judgments on these answers, all the while conflicting massively with each other. At least, it would be funny if the whole mess didn't have consequences for me personally. As a student, I don't get to be self-righteous and snooty; I get to OBEY. It's dizzying trying to memorize three different protocols. Perhaps the bookstore should hand out laminated cards showing the answer key for each professor. Not the answers to the homework or quiz problems, no; the answers to their particular brand of This Is The Way Everyone Should Do Things.

As the quarter wears on, of course, we're supposed to do all these things as second nature. It's like learning to touch-type when every day you get a new keyboard layout.

Homework:
Bother to do the problems or just write enough to show you know how you WOULD do it?
Turn it in during lab, during lecture, or not at all?
Are crossouts or white-out acceptable inside a pile of calculations (because We're Learning Here) or not acceptable (because This Is College-Level Work)?

Etc., etc., etc.
Round a 5 up no matter what, or round to the evens?
Work in groups in lab (because That's The Right Way To Learn), or work alone (because That's The Right Way To Learn)?

In France, when I lived there (1989), there were three different keyboard layouts in common use. In all the computer programming offices I saw, I met not a single touch-typist. My own rapid typing branded me as a bit of a freak.

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

One of my students last year wrote his data on his hand. I made him photocopy his hand, tape the photocopy into the notebook, and sign his name across each piece of tape so that the signature extended onto both the photocopy and the notebook page. (This is what I had to do in industry when I taped an instrument read-out into a lab notebook.)

That is AWESOME. I've heard of the tape-and-signature method, but it turns out none of my teachers this quarter uses that one! :-)

[jcgbigler.livejournal.com]

I had thought briefly about telling him that it needed to be a notarized copy, but I didn't want to bother the one overworked secretary whom I know to be a notary.