Category: School

Another quick vent

I’m taking Spanish Lit this semester, and my prof totally sucks. The class itself should be pretty easy, since it’s what I learned with Loca Zinke last year, and I’ve already read about a third of the content for the whole class.

But this prof is awful! He definitely learned Spanish by just taking it in university for a long time, and talks with a complete gringo accent. When we ask when he is available to answer questions, he responds, “Well, I won’t be here at all tomorrow, so don’t ask. I work full time.”
So in other words, he’s an adjunct who teaches for the heck of it. Teaching upper-division classes.

About three-quarters of class time, English is spoken.

And the entire class, every single day, is composed of him lecturing on his thoughts on the literature.

At 9:30 A.M.. For an hour and a half.

A ZINKE SE ECHO MUCHO DE MENOS!!!

But it’s an easy class, and I can pull stuff that looks like literature analysis out of my butt, so I will endure this torture for a possible double major in Spanish.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go analyze “No Oyes Ladrar Los Perros.” Tengo ganas de tituarlo “No Oyes Roncar Los Estudiantes.”

El Semestre Nuevo

I’ve been to all of my classes now… So here’s the recap:

  • Spanish Lit (L310S) is a good class for 9:30 in the morning. Basically the combination of this class and the one I took last semester (L300S, which is basically Spanish Composition) equals Sra. Zinke’s crazy Spanish 9-10 class back at PPA. Except easier. It just amazes me that she was able to teach high school juniors the college junior equivalent class! Anyways, the prof is less than impressive. He’s not a native speaker, so he speaks really slowly and I found myself dozing off mid-class. But it should be fairly easy- a third of the stuff we’ll be reading is known territory – stuff like La Casa de Bernarda Alba and No Oyes Ladrar los Perros.
  • Business Law (BG260) was the dreaded class – a lot of the business core thoroughly disinterests me. But once I went into class, it wasn’t bad at all. The prof also teaches in the vet med school, is a Certified Public Accountant, and attorney, and a business prof to boot. On the side he manages startup companies and sells them to big companies like Google. So his approaches may be interesting, but the class might still end up being dry.
  • Business Stats (ST204) is an easy-ish math class with lots of busywork. At least most of the homework will be online and the prof doesn’t seem to suck.
  • Application Design & Development (BD240) is a continuation to last semester’s BD210. Object-oriented VB.net stuff. The prof is interesting and I enjoy working on homework that actually interests me.
  • Introduction to Eunuchs – er, UNIX. Same thing, effectively. (CS155) This is a 1-credit class for 5 weeks. Purely for fun and self-edification, no degree requirements fulfilled. After that class is over, it carries over to two C++ courses, which I am considering adding.

It’s really weird how I’m growing to like my business classes. Overall, I don’t want to become some guy in a suit whose life goal is maximizing company profit. But my business law prof had an interesting point to make about tech innovations: usually, it’s two geeks with a revolutionary product, but no knowledge of how to turn it into a successful business venture. A third businessman usually must be brought in to provide capital and entrepreneurial support –  be it Steve Ballmer backing Microsoft, or Andy Bechtolsheim backing Google. My CIS degree covers half programming and half business, so I might be able to eliminate the third man. Intriguing.

In other news, Barack Obama and Tom Tancredo both created Presidential Exploratory Committees yesterday. One I am jumping for joy about, and the other disgusts me. Guess which is which.

Oh, and I got my phone back. Not that I talked much on it in the first place.

Grades in

So overall, my grades came out where I expected them to – I’m pretty happy with how I did. I have some room for improvement, but overall I had a pretty strong semester. I wish I had done better with Spanish, but like I’ve said before, I think I just need to study abroad for a few months and get the little grammatical rules drilled into my brain.

I did have one pleasant surprise, though. I thought that BD210, my VB.net class, was going to be a B+ at 88%. Sure, that’s a pretty darned good grade already, but I was hoping for an “A” because it is, after all, my major, and I’d like to do well in CIS if I do well in anything.
But I checked my official grades today, and I got an A-! w00t!

If I can keep my momentum going, go to a few more classes next semester, and not let my evil classes (stats, business law) get me down, I should continue to do well.

🙂

Done!

I missed a final exam this morning. I looked under the wrong column on the finals schedule, and thought that it was at 11:20 a.m.
It was at 9:00.

So I spent an hour or so running around campus, making phone calls and sending e-mails begging my prof and TA to let me take it later, all the while thinking that I’ll get a “D” in the class for missing it. Luckily, the prof is really cool and had no problems letting me take the final after my entomology exam.

So I’m done! Easy as that. w00t for a month off of school!

I still don’t know my grades. Blar for nongradeknowification.

(if you can’t tell, I am in a very random, “I don’t give a crap about anything right now, and don’t have to for an entire month” mode.)

My roommate moved out early this week, so I’ve had the whole room to myself. It’s nice for finals week, but I think I wouldn’t want to do it for a long time.

Finishing strong (hopefully)

I’m in the last real week of school now. Today will be the worst – I had a presentation at 7 am, and I have a tough econ test coming up in a couple of hours. I got all spiffed up for the presentation, shirt-n-tie-n-stuff… felt snazzy. I think I am slowly being brainwashed by the degree program called “Business Administration.”
I had to spend half an hour on tie-a-tie.net to figure out how to get the darned thing on, though :-/

So from here out, I have that econ test (blog faster, Zeke!) and a tough Spanish essay on a piece that has me running to the dictionary for every other word. After that is finals week, which consists of two optional finals that I will take (CIS and Econ) and a last entomology test.

I have like… no idea of any of my grades. That bothers me. It’s hard to find out, too… Most classes post scores on WebCT, but they don’t even convert anything to percentages. And it doesn’t account for grade weighting, so if your prof weights grades, you’re screwed.

So I think I’m doing well in my classes. But who knows? It feels like a shot in the dark.

I can’t wait to get back to Arizona. I really miss all of my friends.

Friday is supposed to be good!

So I have like…. 3 or 4 big things due on Friday. 😛

I got my latest BD210 (CIS) test back… my first test was the highest grade in the class. This one was the fourth lowest. Granted, it was still an 80%, which isn’t bad at all, but this is my major, and something that interests me! Why has it slipped so much?

All of my morning classes, actually, fail to motivate me. This isn’t a new trend, it just bothers me. I wish I could find something academic that interests me more, but something tells me that even the most fascinating of subjects won’t motivate or interest me 100% of the time. Meh.

That week was hell.

I’ve gotten so much busier with school… And I’m not used to it. I’m used to slacking off all summer and putting out maybe 2 weeks of crazy-hard effort at the end of the semester. And now, I actually have to be responsible?!! What is this crap?!

…but seriously. I am VERY glad that this week is over. I literally had something huge occupying my attention at any given moment. And as soon as that thing was over, I would remember something else that was super-important. I still have a couple of really important things coming up, but they aren’t due tomorrow or later today, as everything else had been. I never had more than, say, 12 hours to prepare for the next huge thing.

I’m pretty happy overall with how all of those tests and big assignments turned out. I got an A on my Macroeconomics midterm, which I’m really proud of because I suck overall at econ. It brought my grade back up to a B (four tests make up the entire grade in that class 😛 ). I also am finally in the programming part of BD210, which is the start of classes in something that actually interests me (and is my major).

At this moment (totally on a whim), I’m not sure if I want to keep taking Spanish. Meh.

All of this studying and homework is making me really miss Gold Bar.

Dad was right.

In college, you cease to think of things as “day” or “night”, “today” or “yesterday”. Your schedule is thrown around so much, staying up super late, sleeping in (or not), turning in essays or online quizzes at the strangest hours of the day, that you just start seeing everything in relative “consciousness periods”. Time is no longer divided by consistent, sustained periods of sleep.

CRAM.

I realized how much I have to do this week about 8 hours ago.

  • Econ midterm (12 hours from now exactly)
  • Spanish exam makeup (also today)
  • Course registration (6pm today… haven’t selected a real schedule yet)
  • Entomology midterm (wednesday; study session today)
  • Registration (6pm today; have no idea of what to register for, especially thanks to my CIS vs. CS dilemma)
  • Spanish paper (Wednesday)
  • Business Communication report (seemingly endless group project that will not be done until the end of the semester)
  • Several big projects that need to be done within the next two weeks

All of that wouldn’t be so bad… except that I’m kind of supposed to go to classes and work somewhere in there, too. Grr.

What it all boils down to is this: iTunes won’t be leaving the Jazz genre at all this week. And I need to restock on Vivarin. (I know, mom…)