Finals Are Done!

My first quarter at the University of Chicago is done! Wooooo!!! It's very exciting to be done, and this means I can spend a whole 3 weeks in Portland doing what I love best: nothing. My finals schedule, I'm told be some, was brutal, so I figure I should let you guys know what it looked like:

On Thursday reading period started, which meant that professors could not cover any new material and most classes were canceled. Some professors decided to go about business as usual (I had a rather large calculus assignment due on Friday, for example) but instead of lecturing they held mandatory study sessions. On Tuesday my humanities professor gave us the prompts for our final paper: a 3 page essay due on Friday. I chose to write mine on the differences between Aristophanes' and Plato's accounts of Socrates. Though only 3 pages, it meant that a lot of time that I could have spent studying was instead spent writing.

I then had a lot of time off before my physics final at 8:00 in the morning on Wednesday, universally recognized as the worst time to have a final. That final went rather badly, to say the least, but apparently my physics professor curves grades (he said he never curved anything when we took the first midterm) so it all turned out alright. Then, also starting Wednesday morning, my civilization studies professor posted the prompts for our final paper online, giving us 48 hours to complete a 3-page paper that covered the entire quarter. Again, while 3 page papers aren't really a problem, they have to be extremely concise if you are going to cover an entire quarter of material. Mine ended up being about 4 pages, but with some margin manipulation and size 11 font, I got it down to 3.

Finally, Friday morning at 10:00 I had my calculus final. Looking at how other people were doing, I thought I did really well, even though my final score was not the best. My grade in the class is entirely based on the curve now. First quarter of Honors Calculus here guarantees you a grade of C- or higher, so I know I didn't fail the class (actually, I wouldn't have without a curve). I want to thank my professor now: he gets grades online 5 or 6 hours after we turn anything in. Instant feedback is great, and takes away so much of the stress involved with grades. I got back to my room at noon-ish. This gave me only 24 hours to clean my room and pack for my trip home. And boy did it get cleaned.

But now I'm home! Portland is just as gray and bleak as I remember it to be. For the first time in more than 4 months, I got to sleep on my bed at home under my own covers. I woke up and didn't have to trudge the block to the dining hall for breakfast. My guinea pig was there squeaking for me when I got home. I can sit on the couch in the living room and not have to listen to a conversation about Marx's views on pornography. It's a strange thing, to be sure, but being home has just eased all of the stress out of my veins. Even though I ordered all of my civ and hum books about an hour ago, I feel like I don't have to do anything.

That aside, I do want to do things this break. I hope to gain a better knowledge of Python programming and have some interesting things running by the time I get back to school. I want to study calculus, because I constantly make stupid mistakes and false assumptions. I also want to play some board games and get in better shape. And I need to make better copies of some of my music. It has skips in it sometimes and that should get fixed (the iTunes ripper is not a good one). I probably won't accomplish nearly what I want to in these categories, but it should be fine. It's good to be home.