Lee McKusick

Well, here we are. Finals week my not be over at RIT, but for me, the war is won. Some battles have been decisively won with a minimal number of casualties, and some battlefields have been left with some blood after the smoke has cleared. Oddly, enough, my expectations of which battles would have which result was off. As I said, I had a few points to spare for my Discrete final. Not as many as I thought though, because I barely squeaked by with an A. There’s no reason an entire third of one’s grade should hinge on the final. It should be a cumulative assessment of previous work, something that genuinely reflects the effort put forth over the entire quarter.

And about an hour to an hour and a half ago, I finished my Data Analysis final. Let me first say that I am glad I don’t have to take Data Analysis II. Secondly, I’d like to say that studying, even if it is only going over the review sheet and previous tests the night before really does pay off. I went in there and I pwned that *****. I mean, you should have seen me. I was calculating confidence intervals and figuring population means like I was born with a TI-83 Plus in my hand.

It was beautiful. It was so artistically done.

(Bonus points if you get that reference, even if I’m not dying… To those of you who are uneducated in geekdom: here’s a clue.)

Anyway, so hopefully that should be enough to offset my somewhat abysmal midterm grade, and bring my final grade up to something relatively reasonable. I’m going to temporarily retract my previous statement and hope that in this case, the final is heavily weighted. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that there was a syllabus (Long story, but short version: Original professor had heart problems, we got a new one, new one does things differently…)

Scratch that, just looked it up. The syllabus for 314 (my class is 319, should be the same) says 10% for quizzes and projects, (should be full points), 60% for exams (Damn.), and 30% for final (Booyah!). So I should get a B.

3 A’s and a B. Not half bad if I do say so myself. Not sure what a B is worth, but if I say 3.5, that’s a 3.87 GPA this quarter. Heck, even if it’s only a 3, that’s still 3.75. Boo-fricking-yah.

Now I get to start thinking about winter quarter. Which shoud be interesting, because of the 2 week break 3 weeks in, which is gonna throw off everything. But I’m not worried. I should be able to handle the course load:

• Discrete Math II
• Programming III
• Web Site Design and Implementation
• Computer Crime (Tentatively)
• Intro to Fencing (Sabre)

Yeah, it’s exciting. And now, I think that I’ll go play some Guitar Hero II to celebrate!