Sleep Spent

The family is in town for the weekend. We’re driving down to SLO for the ceremony on Saturday.

Yesterday evening my mother came in and asked what was up with the tickets. It seems we had been given 10 tickets to the 9:00 ceremony, when my college is graduating in the 14:30 ceremony. I was afraid there would be some problem with this, but when I called and explained everything to a girl at the Bookstore, she said I just had to come in and exchange them. So I’m driving down tomorrow afternoon with my cousin to get the right ones.

This better be as painless as that girl made it sound on the phone!

I can’t believe I’ve made it through. I thought I was going to die last Friday, without sleep. And then today I had my two most difficult finals. But Physics is over, and I actually joined my Physics professor, Dr. Zammit, for dinner this evening. There were three other guys there; we had a great time for only $7.25 per person. I don’t know how I did on his test, but I think I’ll be able to pass.

My last final is Databases.

SELECT student_name FROM cpe365 WHERE grade = ‘B’ AND student_name = ‘Nick’;

STUDENT_NAME
------------------
Nick

There you have it.

I am now officially one step closer to graduation. I took the GWR WPE on Tuesday. I was all over that essay. It was on urban sprawl. I managed to find time to either discuss or reference:

• Winston Churchill
• Thomas Jefferson
• The London Eye
• Smokey The Bear

And I still had time to talk for half a page about my childhood in New Hampshire. It was great --- I even got to use the word “penchant!”

For the sake of the other folks, I sure hope they don’t grade on a curve.

I think I’m going to enjoy this Tech Writing class. At first, I thought it would be difficult --- I don’t know why, but I did. It may still require some work, but I am sure I’ll be able to get a good grade anyway.

Today in class, the professor (one Mary Forte, pronounced “Mary Forty”) asked for a modification of a sentence. She wanted us to remove to be, and she said that she particularly liked the way I rewrote it. Score 1 for Nick.

Later on, I noticed that one of her overheads contained this:

E’

Where she meant to use this:

E′

She had an iBook, so after class I showed her where to get the proper punctuation mark.

I swear I don’t mean to do it. Honest! But can I help it if I know the correct punctuation? Can I help it if she likes my sentence structure and word choice?

I can deal with another A this quarter.

I was a bit hasty with my post of Tuesday. Things worked out fine, and I got all the classes I needed. I just had to get a little creative. I’m taking a Physics class for the first time in ages, which means I’ll likely have to break out the integrals again. But it’s only 10 weeks, as I keep telling myself, and then I’m donedonedone!

In other news, I hooked up my phone jack tonight. I no longer have to borrow Jordan’s phone if I want to call someone, which is good for both of us. Now I just have to get a key so I won’t need to keep “breaking in,” and things will be gravy.

I have four classes that I need to graduate. Four. I am currently enrolled in two of them, but through a little bit of my own stupidity (in not getting the correct BIO class) and a heaping helping of bad luck, it looks like I may not be able to get the other two I need this quarter. The two CSc tech electives overlap, of course. And the BIO-151 class is full with a 30 person waiting list. Of course, I figured out that I had problems with all this NOW and not several weeks ago. But it really took calling the Advising Center to get everything straightened out in my mind. When I finally sat down to register/crash the necessary classes, the ugly truth was revealed.

This is the first time I’ve really had a problem with this, and of course it’s the quarter I’m supposed to graduate.

>_<!!!!!!

We’ll see if the BIO prof can get another lab opened, which is the bottleneck. If he does, the lab will still conflict with the Databases class I’m already enrolled in. I’m going to look for another life sciences tech elective, but the fact still remains that I cannot take both Databases and Networks at the same time.

Looks like I could be here another quarter after all....

Just to keep y’all up on the latest...

• I saw Radiohead at Earl’s Court last Wednesday, 26 November. It was AWESOME, of course. I don’t know if it was better than the other show I saw in Santa Barbara, but they played a fantastic version of Fake Plastic Trees this time which was certainly better than the one from before.
• Thanksgiving happened after that. It was a blast; I made chicken and rice. As stated before, there are pictures.
• Eli flew in for the weekend and we had a blast checking out London and Windsor together. (Pictures!) He really seemed to be a hit with the group, which was nice.
• The quarter is over on Tuesday and I still have three essays to write.

I have an essay do tomorrow in my Poly Sci class. I do not like my teacher at all. Mostly because she is stupid. And our book is outrageously bad. (One really begets the other, I guess.)

Case in point: IR: The New World of International Relations defines a ‘system’ as ‘something composed of many components.’

This is on page 5 of the book. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Crappy book or not, I’ll be done with my essay reviewing the recent John Pilger film “Breaking the Silence” very soon. And then: sleep.

I just read this interesting article and thought I’d open it up to those of you back home.

I’m in England now, with a bit of time left. Many of you will be registering for classes soon. Do you know what books you need? Can I get any of them for cheaper here? I’d be perfectly willing to tote a few textbooks back with me.