Jeff

So we shall be departing from our house in about 3 and a half hours. I am still awake because my sleep cycle sucks so much it is about as far off good as it can possibly be for this, or as close to depending on how you look at it. I have most of my stuff packed up and I am just sitting around in my bed burning time before I need to get up and get ready to travel across the country. Hopefully, because I can’t sleep now, I will be able to crash for a lot of the flight and wake up in sunny paradise, far, far away from homework and exams.

I have been stressing about grades for a while now. I just don’t know about the outcome for my 437 class or where the curve lies in my psych course. I am just hoping that they turn out fine, I really don’t want to find out what happens if I have to retake either. I hope that the place we stay has internet, else I will be in a very odd position, since I am rarely away from the internet for more than a few hours, or at most a day. I will also need to be around when grades are released so that I can figure out if I should be panicking, crying, or relieved. I just hope it all goes alright. I put a lot of effort into this semester and if it turns out shitty, I will be pretty down.

I should probably get back to watching more House for now.

tagged with:
• school
• vacations

For some reason this week of finals sucks real bad. I finally realized why a bit ago too. This is one of the first time where failure is not even a possibility. I don’t want to fail a class, ever, but this is the first time where failure has major consequences. I have been working around the idea and goal of graduating in May. If I fail any of my classes this semester (well not PSY 235, I got a B in that, at least I think I did) I could be here past May. Suddenly this applies an unbearable pressure. I am struggling to concentrate on my exams and struggle to remain calm with the exams coming soon. I have two exams today.

The first is my ECE 462 exam, which I have been unable to study for. This is mostly due to it being a programming course, and I cannot find any real way to study for it beyond redoing code that I already know how to do and have done. The other is that the exam he is giving us is not anything like the past 4 exams in this course, meaning that I go into the exam with no idea what to expect. That really hurts since often I can enter a final with an impression for the types of exams the professor gives and how to prepare for them. I have two hours to answer 5 questions, this could cover anything and I have no idea of how to prepare for anything. I just have to get there and hope I am ready.

The second is my PSY 222 exam. I have studied for this the entire past day and all night thus far. I feel good about it, but know that I must do well to ensure I do well in the course (the final accounts for a whopping 25% of the grade). I’ve felt good going into all the past exams, but because the types of questions range so heavily, I cannot be sure I know what I am going to be asked. This was the same with my other psych final. I studied a lot but when I showed up, the questions asked were just not in the ways I was ready for them. (throwback to my cognitive psych course) I had established cues, aka methods of retrieving the knowledge, that were built in one way of being activated, sadly these cues were not used in the exam questions, which triggered other cues that brought me to close possibilities but not to the proper answer. sigh Maybe I should have just been a psych major, even though I hate memorization, I enjoy the reasoning and problem solving.

Well, shower time and then breakfast and heading to campus.

tagged with:
• personal
• school

Alright, I haven’t slept yet, I have an exam in 2 hours, I have been studying for it since 10 last night. I hope I do well. This is my 7th finals week here at Purdue (its scary) and it doesn’t seem that bad. I’ve done this all before, my grades are all in decent spots, so none of my finals are really crucial to survival, worst case scenario with them is I get a C probably. I still study and prepare for it, but it isn’t one of those frantic races that I had to experience with some of my other courses, the ones where the final was cumulative and worth 50% of my grade. This first final is just a regular exam covering the last third of the course and its Psych, so I just have to memorize a bunch of information. I plan on getting to the exam in an hour (give me an hour to mentally prepare for it), take the exam in probably about half an hour (45 multiple choice questions based off of memorization doesn’t take very long) then stumble back to my room and crash. Then I have two days off until my two Thursday finals.

I was in the school paper on Friday, I may try and scan the little blurb sometime and post it, but that would first require a scanner. It was just a question I was asked in the Union about what I was going to do for break. Nothing important, I wasn’t super excited about being in the paper. shrug Well I better cram a few more facts into my sleep deprived head before I have to head out.

tagged with:
• school