Lee McKusick

This is one of the three weeks out of every year that every student here at RIT dreads, loathes, and is excited for all at the same time. The fear and loathing springs from the fact that these are tests. Tests which are likely worth a large part of your course grade. Could that be a natural source of anxiety? Naaah…

But on the other hand, this is is finals week. FINALs week. It’s the last one before we get two whole glorious weeks of break. Once we hop this hurdle, we’ll be home free. I, for one, am rather exuberant about that fact.

As for my own war, I’ve won two battles already this week. Both my Intro to Multimedia and Discrete Math finals are finished. 99% on IMM. Of course, I didn’t have to take that one since I got an automatic A for winning the Jeopardy challenge, but I was bored, so I did it anyway. And Discrete, well, let’s just say I had a few hit points to spare, so I could afford a missed question or two. Damn you, Euclid…

Tomorrow brings another battlefront, Java Programming, but that should be a cakewalk. It’s all mulitple choice and all conceptual questions, so if I don’t know it well enough to pass, I deserve to fail.

The only one I’m relatively worried about is Data Analysis. I loathe statistics. I depise them with a fiery passion. It wouldn’t be so bad if I knew how I was doing going into the final, but whatever. I’ll make it work somehow.

On another note, pending acceptence, I am no longer a networking student. Professor Lawley “turned me from the dark side” as she so eloquently put it, and now I am an Information Technology major, planning to specialize in Web Design and Development, and Interactive Media. I’m excited, because it will likely have a much broader array of appealing career options. I like networking and all, but there’s not a lot of room to flex my creative muscles, so to speak (and most of the creativity that is there, probably shouldn’t be. Jury-rigging things isn’t an optimum solution, hehe.).

So yeah, I’m excited about things to come. Should definitely be interesting to see where my path leads from here.

To the rest of RIT, good luck with finals, whether you’re taking them as most of you are, or grading them. As Prof. Lawley explained today, all of the stress that students feel before finals, professors feel afterwards. “For every six hours you spend studying, we spend twenty grading.” So bonne chance, viel glück, בהצלחה and bona fortuna!

finals