Done With Class!

Amazingly Rad Tran didn’t quite kill us the last half of this week, like we’d been fearing it would. It certainly wasn’t fun, and involved many trips to Eugene’s office to ask him questions about the exam corrections, but eventually I got as much done as I cared to correct. I think I at least got my exam grade up into the 60s somewhere, but I know I didn’t earn back quite everything (which would’ve gotten me a 74), because correcting the last little bit of one of the problems was total bull and way too much work for 11pm on Thursday night. Apathy was definitely another factor. Gotta love apathy. But despite Dr Clothiaux’s continued insistence, these were not good exam questions. They would’ve been fine homework problems, but in an exam situation they were terrible because of how much work they required. Oh well, it’s over now. Unless Eugene gives us back our most recent assignments next semester to correct, if it’d make a difference in our grade. Aren’t classes supposed to be contained within a single semester??
The snow geese had been honking for most of the week, and they finally got their wish Thursday night, when central Pennsylvania got whacked by a good snowstorm that moved up the spine of the Appalachians. It didn’t start snowing until after 10pm, but by the time I had given up on working in Walker on the exam corrections at 11pm, there was already over an inch of snow on the ground. I brushed off my windshield, but by the time I’d finished brushing off the back window, the windshield was completely covered again, that’s how hard it was snowing. Pretty cool if you ask me. 🙂 By the time I woke up Friday morning 7-8 inches of new fluffy snow had fallen, yet because the snow had mostly stopped by 3am (meaning we got all that snow in 4-5 hours!) it wasn’t quite enough to delay classes on Friday. Bummer. But hey, at least we got a good snowstorm, so we can’t complain too much.
Once Rad Tran was done on Friday, we really didn’t know what to do with ourselves in the TA office with absolutely no work to do (unless you count studying for finals, but who wants to do that?!?). Eventually Daniel & I decided to walk downtown get some lunch at another new place (well, new to us), India Pavillion, for their lunch buffet. Now that’s the way to sample a whole bunch of good food you’ve never had before, a buffet. It was really good, but we both probably ate a bit too much. Mmmm, naan bread and chicken masala… So when we got back to Walker we discovered that Amber, Kerrie & Caren’s game of tic-tac-toe had morphed into a bunch of morbid but absolutely hilarious drawings (I even added a couple of my own to go with the theme), little cartoons of all sorts of inventive ways to commit suicide. We were so proud of it that we hung it up on the corner of the whiteboard in the TA office, go check it out! My favourite was Amber’s drawing of a guy who’s thinking to himself “I’m allergic to bees!” while bashing a beehive with a stick. Seriously, it’s some great stuff. 🙂 Can you tell we’re all glad the semester’s over?
Last night at team trivia we actually won first place for a change! I think that’s definitely the first time this semester that we’ve pulled out a win at Sports Cafe on Friday night. It’s always nice to get free wings out of answering some trivia questions, can’t beat that! Afterward, Frame, Vic, Daniel & I headed up to Kerrie & Brian’s apartment to watch “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” with them, Amber, Mario, Caren, Aviva and a couple of her friends she brought along. People seemed a bit more interested in just hanging out than watching the movie though, which was fine, both were fun.
Today I’ve basically been doing just about everything I could think of to procrastinate. Haircut? Check. A little Christmas shopping? Check. (To everyone who was lobbying for me to keep my shaggy, curly hair at least a bit longer to see if it’d grow into an afro, my apologies, I know you’re disappointed. But it’ll be getting long again in 2-3 months, don’t worry.) Vacuuming, sweeping, mopping and cleaning the apartment? Check. Talking to Mike for awhile on the phone? Check. Writing a new blog entry? Check. Various IM conversations? Check. Doing laundry? Check. Man, talk about a full day! Now it’s time for bed, aww shucks. But in all seriousness, I’ll hit the books hard tomorrow after church, though I don’t really know how much good it’ll do for the Rad Tran final Monday morning. I just don’t really have much of an urge to study about radiance, irradiance, solid angles and optical depths, plus anything else that can be derived from the radiative transfer equation. I just don’t. I can’t imagine why not, they’re all so interesting…