Pretty straightforward day

I had two classes and neither was terribly exciting, but I guess I do have a sort of funny story. I checked my schedule before I left for my second class and I noted the building and room number. I went to the building and took a seat in the room and waited for the class to start. The professor handed out a syllabus as I sat, counting change to make sure I had enough “silver” to get a sub at Subway after class. He began his introduction, “Welcome to EEL 3304: Electronic Circuits 1.” I was sort of confused because that course name sounded awfully familiar… I stopped counting and thought for a moment; I already took this class! Yeah, in my infinite senior wisdom, I went to the wrong room. There’s a first time for everything, I guess.

The class that I thought would be really difficult seems as though it won’t be so bad. I feel prepared for it and it looks like the professor is going to make it pretty straightforward and not try to “trick” us or play dirty. I think I’ll be alright, at least in the two classes I visited today.

Two more classes tomorrow…

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Study Update:

Finished.

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I’m supposed to have been studying all evening, but…

I found a new game called Snood. It’s simple, challenging and all around addicting. This is unfortunate since I’ll be taking my FINAL final exam in about 11 hours. Am I ready? I guess that depends on who you ask. I spoke with a friend of mine and, after answering some questions that he had and talking through a few concepts with him, I felt as though I had a pretty good general understanding of the material. Problem is, they don’t hand out A’s to people with a good, general understanding of the material. They give out A’s to people who’ve mastered the stuff. Have I mastered it? Not by a long shot. Can I convince them that I’ve mastered it? Maybe. That all depends on what they ask me to do. There are certain things I’ve mastered and if they happen to use those things as a gauge for measuring my mastery level, then I’m set. If they happen to touch upon the many things I do not have mastered, then I’m in trouble.

Anyway, I think I’m done with Snood for the night, so I’m going to study for a bit and then hit the hay, so I can wake up early tomorrow and cram before the exam. By early I mean about 8 o’clock or so. I don’t like the sound of that, but it’s necessary. And, I know that once my exam’s over at 2:30, I can sleep to my heart’s content. I cannot express in words how much I’m looking forward to that freedom.

One more thing. I was taking today’s exam and about half way through it, there was a scream from downstairs. The scream was something like this, “WOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!” Yes, ironically, everyone in the room, including the professor, looked up and began to snicker because we all knew what that scream was about–somebody just finished their last final. Maybe I’ll let out a little yip tomorrow, if I’m not too drained from getting flogged and humbled.

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It’s amazing what a couple hours of reviewing can do for one’s confidence before an exam. I have briefly reviewed the material from the first nine weeks of the semester and now I’m making my “cheat sheet” for the last five weeks. After looking over just a few more pages of notes, I will officially have a comprehensive guide to the course on just 1 1/4 pieces of paper. I’m pretty excited about that, too. I think I will do pretty well on this test, then I’ll go get some dinner with some friends, make a few phone calls and spend as much time as possible preparing for my last exam, which occurs tomorrow at 12:30. It’ll all be over soon and for that, I’m grateful.

I’ve decided I’ll probably stay in Gainesville a little longer than anticipated. Unfortunately, the time I have to leave from Jacksonville for Dallas is set in stone, so that means I’ll be spending less time in Jacksonville than I thought. I plan on seeing my family as much as possible and also seeing all the friends I can. But now, it looks like I’ll be doing that all on Sunday afternoon. I’ll probably be in Jacksonville for less than 24 hours before I head to Dallas. Basically, I’ve realized that there’s no way I can possibly get everything done in Gainesville that I need to (clean our house, pack up, ship my things to Dallas, get my car tweaked for the road trip, etc.) in one day. I won’t be finished with finals until tomorrow at three in the afternoon, so I can’t realistically even start packing until sometime after that. My start date at work is May 9th, so I’ll get a one-day “vacation” after the concert on the 7th.

Here’s to speedy living…

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In 24 hours, I will be en route to my final-final exam. At least for the semester. But, between now and that time I have another exam that I haven’t even really started studying for yet. Am I shooting myself in the foot? I don’t think so, but we’ll see. I’ve done really well in this class all semester, but I’m certainly not guaranteed an A. I have just under five hours to review and make sure I know all the material that will be on the final. And, I am starting to have to deal with the last-minute stuff that always arises just before transferring to a new city for the summer. I thrive on pressure, but I’m ready for some relaxing time and I can’t wait to go chill in Dallas for a few days with no responsibilities whatsoever.

The trick is, I’m trying to look forward to it too much because I know it’ll be here so much quicker than I think. I can’t believe I’ve already gotten on of my finals out of the way. I can’t believe that, in eight hours, I will have taken two of my finals already. Things just move so quickly sometimes. I’m thankful for that.

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One final down, two to go. I feel pretty relieved after today’s exam, simply because there was so much pressure associated with it. Now, I’m off to study for tomorrow’s exam, but I’m not nearly as concerned about it as I am the other two.

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My first final of the semester is in 14 hours. Am I prepared? Who knows… I’m trying though. I have officially realized that I got robbed on my last exam in Data Structures. I said before that I felt I was ill prepared. Two things contributed to my lack of preparedness: I didn’t really have time to invest in studying for the test since I had another test that same day and a project due that day as well; my T.A. didn’t tell us what he was supposed to regarding the format of the test. I’ve now realized that, time really wasn’t the problem after all–not being told about the format of the test is what killed me. I spent about an hour or so tonight, reviewing (actually learning) the material that I never learned for the second test (because I didn’t know we were going to be tested on it) and I’ve officially mastered all of the concepts I didn’t know on that test. They’re easy. I knew they were, but I just never looked over them thoroughly before the test. That just doesn’t seem right to me–I got a 50% on that exam because I wasn’t told what the exam would really be covering. My only hope is to ace the final, which is possible, but there’s no way of knowing until I’ve actually taken the test–there’s a myriad of things to be tested and I won’t know what will be tested, again, until I’m sitting in that room with the exam in front of me.

Anyhow, my exam in Signals & Systems is tomorrow, so I’m pretty nervous about that. I have a good understanding of the basic concepts, but I have to hope that tomorrow, I can get a thorough understanding of the basics and also the more advanced stuff. If I force myself out of bed at a decent hour tomorrow morning (this morning), then I should have ample time to study and memorize the material I need. I just hope this semester ends well. At the beginning, I wrote about how I was hoping to see if studying actually pays off. At first, it was definitely paying off, then I had that fateful day when three of my four classes had either an exam or a project due and everything went downhill really quickly. How frustrating–because of cruddy luck with my schedule, I may have ruined a perfect semester. However, I need to remember that all is not lost: I can still pull the perfect semester with perfect scores on two final exams. Only time will tell if I can do it and there’s not very much time before it starts telling: 14 hours, in fact.

Must sleep. It’s crunch time–I just hope I’m up for the crunching.

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Study update:

Studying today hasn’t been as productive as I would have liked, but the day is young (or at least my day is young) and I have a long way to go. I went to my prof’s office hours and asked some questions and his clarifications helped quite a bit. There was a pretty humorous incident while I was in to see him and I thought I should relay it:

He was helping another guy and me with some concepts that we misunderstood when the phone rang. Here’s a transcript of his end of the conversation:

Hello?…Hello? Yes… Yes, you can see me… Do you always call your professors by their first name? I always called my professors by their title. No, no offense taken, I just thought it was interesting. Anyway, yeah, you can try and catch me late-morning tomorrow or e-mail me. My schedule isn’t finalized yet.

Then he hung up the phone and laughed and said “Heh heh… you new age kids, callin’ their professors by their first names. ‘Hey Joe, what’s happenin’ man? You mind if I stop by your office and chill for a bit?’ ” Now that’s quality humor.

The lesson? Realize that people with the “Dr.” in front of their name probably did something to earn it and they don’t like when people leave it silent.

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Study update:

I have already mentioned that I have three finals. I have broken the studying for each final down into components because each final is cumulative. Essentially, each of the three courses have had two exams so far, so there will be three segments of the course covered on each course’s final: From the beginning of the course to exam one; from exam one to exam two; and from exam two to the end of the course. One of the classes, which is the least of my worries, I will not bother breaking the material into groups because it is all closely related and the first parts of the material are pretty much old-hat by now. So far, in one of the other courses, I have thoroughly studied two of the three segments of material that will be covered on the final exam. The remaining segment is the segment of material covered between exam two and the end of the course. And, in the remaining course, I am in the process of studying the second segment of the material. I feel comfortable saying I have a very solid understanding of the first segment’s material. Hopefully I’m right.

A little insight as to how my brain works:

I think the point of the previous paragraph was this: When I have a big task, or several big tasks, in order that I might not be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the sum of all the tasks, I generally break each task into smaller tasks and focus on completing one small task at a time. That way, I frequently have a reason to feel that I am making progress because I am able to complete small tasks more quickly than larger ones. I even have little pictures in my head representing each exam I have to study for–one picture for each exam. For my first exam, the picture is a long bar and two-thirds of the bar are shaded in–the shaded part represents the studying I’ve already done for the exam. For my second exam, the picture is a long bar, none of which is shaded in because I haven’t begun studying for it. However, the bar for the second exam is skinnier than that of the first exam because I don’t think it will be nearly as difficult an exam and I feel that I’ve already pretty much prepared for the exam throughout the semester. For my third exam, the picture is a very wide, very long bar, which has the first third fully shaded in, the second third partially shaded in and the final third partially shaded in. This bar is the most overwhelming and is being shaded more slowly than the other bars can be because this bar is much wider than the other two.

Now, I know that it’s ridiculous that I have pictures representing each of my finals floating around in my head, but that’s just the way my brain works. I remember things by creating some sort of image to represent each thing in my mind. Phone numbers are often represented by the shape they take on the key pad when dialed. Names are often associated with a capitol letter–usually the letter is that of the person’s first name–and the person’s face or some distinguishing characteristic. I often place important appointments and due-dates on a calendar in my mind, particularly if I haven’t ever seen the appointment or due-date written down. If I’ve seen it written down, I’ll usually associate it with whatever I wrote it on–not physically, but mentally with an image. If I don’t think I’ll remember the exact information regarding the appointment, I’ll put the written information somewhere and associate the fact that I have an appointment with the object on which it’s written and with the place I stashed it. Sometimes, particularly with numbers or groups of similar things I need to memorize, I’ll compress the group in my mind. For instance, if a phone number has repeated numbers in it (or a social security number that sticks in my brain for some reason or anything like that), then I’ll picture the phone number written left-to-right with gaps where the repeated numbers would be. Immediately below the gaps are the repeated numbers, but only one copy of each repeated number. That way, I only have to remember, say, six numbers instead of seven. I picture the number and where the gap is, I look below the gap and see that there’s a number–because the number is below that particular gap, I know that number must belong (repeated) in that gap.

So anyway, that’s a little insight into how my brain works. I’ve always had a knack for remembering things–particularly numbers–and I usually remember those things by mental images associated with them. It took me a long while to realize that some people don’t remember things that way, so it’s only been over the past few years that I’ve really thought about how I remember things. I have a knack for multiplying and adding numbers in my head as well. Maybe I’ll post my method for that sometime. But, I don’t really need to do that ’cause I already know how I do… I suppose that would be a post specifically for the readership.

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Rain Man was the movie of the night. I�d been wanting to see it for some inexplicable reason for about two weeks now. I could only vaguely remember certain parts of it from some time before when I guess I saw fragments of it on television or something��Two-hundred forty-six tooth picks��. Anyway, it was a good movie. Tommy Cruise plays his token roll�shrewd businessman wanting nothing but more money and luxury. That part of the movie didn�t impress me in the least. However, Dustin Hoffman did impress me. The guy can flat act. His Academy Award for The Graduate was well deserved and so was his Award for Rain Man.

Anyhow, I got quite a bit of studying done today. I still have a substantial amount to accomplish by Tuesday, but at least that amount is less substantial than it was yesterday. I�m understanding the material for Signals & Systems, so that�s encouraging. I really think I can ace the final, but I�m going to have to buckle down and pound some information into my head to get it done right. About half of it is memorization, while the other half is application. The memorization isn�t the problem, it�s the tricky applications that the professor could dream up for the final. He�s generally a pretty fair professor though, so I expect that if I�m prepared for the exam, then I�ll do just fine.

Music rocks my world�

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