Semester Wrap Up

Random Musing
My penultimate semester at the University of Michigan has finally come to a close. I am very relieved. Though simultaneously sorta freaked out. One more semester until graduation. Sigh. A bit of information for all of you: graduating in three years is not a great idea.

Anyways, in the spirit of avoiding thinking about the horror that is my future: All of my final papers were due sometime last week and I don't think any of them went horribly (fingers crossed!). Plus, my last finals (Physics 107 and The Victorian Novel) were on Wednesday. Four and a half straight hours of exams. Those were fun times.

I think both of them went pretty well actually. I already got my grade back on the Victorian Novel final (which went very well, by the way) but we only got a final grade back in physics so I can't say for sure what I got on the final exam. Considering that this exam was worth 40% of my final grade though, that I was at a solid B beforehand, and that I ended up with a B+ in the class, I think it must have gone well. And while a B+ might not satisfy a lot of over achievers out there, I was more than happy with it.

Physics 107: 20th Concepts of Space, Time and Matter has been the bane of my existence this semester. I hate physics. Admittedly, my experience with it is limited to a high school physics class and this one college course, but I'd like to think that doesn't make my opinion any less valid. While the professor for the class was a very nice man, he's not particularly talented when it comes to teaching. And subatomic particles are boring. Fact.

I only took the class because I needed to fulfill my quantitative reasoning requirement for graduation. It was this or statistics and given that this class was three hours a week and stats was four hours a week, physics seemed like the best option. I don't regret choosing physics, cause I do think I would've hated stats more, but it didn't make this a fun semester. It was too much work that I had absolutely no interest in doing.

I will not be taking any similar classes (aka: science/math classes) next semester. It's my last semester at UM, and lucky enough, I get to take classes that I'm actually interested in. Jane Austen, American Adolescence, Modern British Literature and a poetry tutorial make up my class schedule; 15 credits, 9.5 hours of class (yay for RC classes), and class only three days a week: Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. It's all very final semester of college. And while I'm excited about all of my classes, I'm especially looking forward to the poetry tutorial.

It's a half hour a week to discuss your poetry one on one with a particular professor. You read that right. Half an hour of class. And it does get me four credits. I find this very happy. I'm taking my tutorial with Ken Mikolowski, who was the professor of my Writing Poetry class this past semester, which I really really enjoyed. I'm excited to work more closely with him on my writing.

Before doing any real work (well, academic work) whatsoever though, I'm enjoying my winter break. No class, or class-related activities until January. Tis an exciting prospect.

I'm actually going to be sticking around Ann Arbor until the 23rd - even if I am done with academia for the year. I decided to take the opportunity to make some money instead of just heading back to Novi. So now I'm working some long evenings at the library. This shouldn't be too awful since most people will either be gone for break, or studying for finals and thus not harassing all of us wonderful individuals at circulation. I figure I'll be able to finish a couple of books while at work. The only issue this raises is what I'm going to read. I'm just about done rereading Harry Potter - which I'll reassure you is just as delightful as you remember it being - so I need to move onto something else. This is the kind of problem I like dealing with. Really beats figuring out what a proton decays into.