It's been awhile since I last put something here, or at least something serious. So I figure now, when its 2:30 in the morning and I am on my couch at home pondering how to spend the last two weeks of my Christmas break, is a good time to give an update.
The end of the semester went pretty okay, I got my GPA back up to a 3.1 after the abysmal 2.5 that was last semester. I mostly got all the grades I thought I would get, some a bit higher, some lower. A in Japanese, A in orchestra, A in aural skills, B in sociology, B in theory II, and...a D in history. I was surprised at the theory grade, I was absolutely sure I was either going to get a D or F for the semester, even Dr. O hinted at it. Overall, I had a good semester, I worked hard but still had a lot of time to relax.
Ok, I guess I should address the glaring D grade I just mentioned. History was a fun class, I really liked taking it. My teacher was fun to listen to because he didn't just lecture about the facts from the book, he told us all kinds of personal stories that related to the topics. What killed me was that there was a lot of reading material to cover, and a lot of lecture material that he gave us. The grade for the class was made up entirely of 4 multiple exams that came from the non-lectured books, and a midterm and final that were derived from only the lecture materials. No attendance, participation, or extra credit, which is what should be expected from a class of over 100 students. It was hard for me to keep up with the readings, and when it came down to exam time, I had to speed read and cram a few nights before the test. I don't have the best short term memory, so I usually had a lot of guesswork to do on them. The midterm and final were a different story though, they came from the reams of lecture material I had to go through, some of which I had to basically translate from 9amhistoryclasssleepyslurredchickenscratchinese into english. Which basically consists of me trying to remember the second half of the sentence I had started to write before a line crossed the rest of the paper. Hopefully I'll do better in my honors history class this spring.
Oh, I almost forgot about the other adventure I had this year, one I plan to never go on again.
Tuesday night of finals week I made it to bed at about 2 am, pretty normal time for me, and checked that my alarm was set for the next morning at 7:30am. I had my U.S. history final at 8 am, and an aural skills hearing test scheduled for 11:35 am.
I awoke the next morning with a feeling like something was wrong, looked at my clock, and saw that it was 12:30pm! I leaped out of bed, pulled on the nearest clothes, and checked the office hours of my professors. Both of them were not scheduled for office hours that day, and only had the exams to come to campus for, as far as I could see. So despondently, and with heavy steps I walked over to the Honors college administration and asked if I could talk to the dean about what would happen to my grade if I have two Fs this semester. I found out I would still be okay as long as I got it back up to a 3.0 by the next semester, in case it dropped below that. It was about 1 pm by that point, and I decided to call my parents and warn them that my grade wouldn't be too good this semester. They weren't too happy and kept questioning me as to how I managed to sleep through my speakers at full blast for over an hour, something I myself do not know.
About 2pm I happened to look at my history syllabus again to check what percentage of my grade would be chopped off from the final being missing. I realized that for some reason I was thinking that it was thursday, and that he was actually in his office that day for another hour. I grabbed my keys and ran across campus to Wooten Hall to see if there was still hope. After some working up of courage to knock on the door, I knocked and sure enough, he was there. I explained my circumstances to him, among his dismissive glares behind the massive stacks of papers that lined the walls of his office, and he told me this was probably the 15th time he's heard this story.
After a couple of seconds of awkward silence, he asked me my last name, and turned to his computer. I felt a small wave of hopefullness pass through me, which broke as he started to read my grades out loud, "67, 55, a 47 for the midterm, a 100?, and a 78." To have your teacher read all your grades out loud to you as you ask him for a second chance at a test you slept through is a really uncomfortable experience. But after looking at my attendance, which he said was decent (big emphasis on decent), he decided to give me the benefit of the doubt, and led me to the testing center, blank test in hand. Yet after all that, I still managed to make a D. But hey, shit happens.
My aural skills teacher just answered his cell phone, and told me we could do it the next day, problem solved. I am definitely getting like 5 more alarm clocks, just for days when I have tests.
Fortunately, I didn't have as crazy a year as some people I know, and I'm thankful for that. Sometimes I feel like I wish I had some kind of drama like that, so I would at least have something going on, but I will probably regret saying that once I actually do. Until then, I will continue to put my time towards helping my friends who are going through really bad shit.
I smoked weed for the first time this year. It was really fun and I would definitely do it again, considering I screwed up trying to do it right a bunch of times and didn't get as high as I guess I could have. I have two friends who have connections though, so I guess that means it may become something that will happen more often in the future, which would be awesome.
I have a feeling this year will be good for everyone. We have a new president, I am actually starting journalism classes, Lauren is back together with Eric, all is right with the universe...or at least my own personal universe.
My New Years Resolutions:
- Get back on a workout schedule and keep to it.
- Get a job.
- Make some friends, friends like I have in Dallas, not just acquaintances from school.
- Start dating, I don't have much experience with dating, but there's no better time to gain some of it than now.
- Review every video game I play, unless it's a massive, unreviewable game that takes like 80 hours to finish.
- Be more active on the websites and forums that I frequently visit, I won't get any recognition if I don't say anything outside of what I say here.
- Post more on here. If I do it enough, I can probably form a new habit and it won't be such a difficult thing to remember to do.
It has been a pretty fun year, but it's over now. Here's to a great 2009.
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1 comment:
That video was beautiful. You are amazing and awesome.
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