My Bracket’s on Life Support

Well, half of the tickets to the Final Four have been punched (LSU and UCLA), and I’m 0-for-2 so far. The LSU win over Texas really hurt me today, as I had the Longhorns in the Championship Game in my money bracket. Oh well. Fortunately I could still wind up with 50% of my Final Four correct, as I still have UConn and Villanova alive, though I’d honestly be perfectly happy if UConn loses to George Mason tomorrow. What I absolutely need for me to have any chance at winning money is for Villanova to make it at least to the Championship Game, but if ‘Nova wins it all I’m almost assured of getting 1st place in the PSU Meteorology pool, which would be oh so sweet.
Needless to say, I was very excited last night when Villanova squeaked past Boston College 60-59 in overtime on a goaltending call with just over a second left, especially since most of the people I’m competing against had picked BC to go to the Final Four. Whew, talk about a bracket saver! A bunch of us had gathered at Sports Cafe last night to watch the Sweet 16 games while playing some team trivia (once again, we choked after leading going into the final question and didn’t even place, bah). There’s something grand about watching excellent, close games in the NCAA Tournament with TV screens every way you look while having a beer with friends and other sports fans. Did I mention that I love March Madness?
Oh, and by the way, I totally called the LSU upset of Duke in the Sweet 16, in all three of my brackets. Down with the Dookies! Though I must say I was crushed by Gonzaga’s choke-job loss to UCLA in the final seconds on Thursday night. I was this close to having 3-outta-4 on the night picked correctly into the Elite Eight. That would’ve been amazing, but it was just not meant to be.
I got back my Dynamics and Mesoscale midterms last week, and while I did alright on the Dynamics test, it still wasn’t as good as I’d thought I did coming out of the exam, so I was kinda disappointed. As for Mesoscale, well, let’s just say that my grade wasn’t too much of a surprise to me. I knew that I hadn’t had nearly enough time to study for that test, so I think that that’s what that exam showcased more than anything. I know I could’ve gotten 20-30 points higher easily had I had another day or so to study, which is kind of frustrating. Le sigh… At least I’ll get another crack at a good chunk of this stuff on the final, and now we know that Yvette literally tests us on knowing every detail/assumption about everything she’s mentioned in class. We didn’t know that going into the last test, since we’d never had her for a class before and she’s never taught this class before; we really didn’t know what to expect, but now we do. That’s the problem with classes that have only one midterm and a final. I’d much rather have two midterms and a final, because then we’re being tested on a slightly smaller chunk of material, and gets us used to the prof’s testing style without it costing us quite so many points. Oh well.
Long story short, my last two exams certainly made me much more motivated to find time more than just one day in advance to study for Monday evening’s second Cloud Physics midterm. So that’s definitely what I’ve done a fair bit of today, and I think I’m actually in pretty good shape heading into tomorrow and Monday, at least as far as studying and preparing is concerned, I think I’m more than halfway done making my “cheat sheet” that we’re allowed to bring into the exam. The exam on Monday night runs from 6-9pm, but I’ve gotta make sure I finish enough before 9 to make it home in time to catch all of “24,” haha.
For the most recent 2-week forecasting period (Washington, DC) that just ended for the WxChallenge Forecasting Contest, I somehow pulled out the top spot overall in the grad student category. It’s too bad it’s just the beta competition, and that they won’t start awarding prizes until the Fall 2006 contest, but still, maybe I’ll be able to get the hang of this forecasting thing after all… We’ll just have to see if I can keep the momentum going for the next two weeks for Birmingham, AL, though I expect Daniel’s gonna pull out all the stops (such as actually forecasting every day) to make sure he represents his home state well and comes out on top, hehe.