Christmas Break?

I managed a 3.5 in my JRN 200 class, which is awesome. My Macroeconomics and Lit/Cultures classes haven't reported grades back yet, so that's still up in the air, and of course I have one more final to take tomorrow so that class obviously hasn't reported anything back yet.

I'm little nervous at this point as far as Macroeconomics is concerned. I have a feeling that I didn't do as well as I was anticipating in their, and very possibly didn't do quite as well as I needed to. I may be taking that class again despite my hesitancy to do so. It was boring enough the first time. However, if I had put more time into learning the material than merely getting by there wouldn't be cause to worry.

In any case, it was a learning experience. Maybe it wasn't the one that I was looking for, but there you go.

I'm just excited by the prospect of being finished with my first semester after tomorrow morning, and getting to go back home for a few weeks. I'm also very excited to get to go back to work and see everyone there. I'm really enjoying the idea of getting to return to a work place that I feel super comfortable in. I'm excited to jump right back in where I left off in August, though even now the department is obviously structured a little differently.

It's an adventure that I'm definitely ready to take!

Final Number One

I drove back up to State this morning. It was interesting to watch as the further north I went the more snow there was on the ground. There wasn't any whatsoever in Adrian. Although even up here some of it has melted away.

Dad fell asleep early into the drive, and then mom did to. I think Shawn dozed off for a little bit during the last leg of the trip, but at least I had the radio going for company. I think it's more difficult to drive with everyone sleeping if you are trying to drive at night. It's not as distracting when it's light outside for whatever reason.

My first final is this afternoon. It's probably going to take me the longest to complete of all the exams that I've got this week, but I'm not extremely worried about it. I've done well enough in the class that I can't screw it up too badly with this one test. It's not even worth that much of the final grade which is good because it's my Lit/Cultures final and from his description of it it's going to be a bit complicated.

But really, that's not all that surprising.

Break Time

I think I've managed to round up all of the information for my third out of class story in JRN 200. Now it is just a matter of sitting down to actually get the piece written for Tuesday.

I've got time. I'll get it taken care of.

Lit/Cultures was actually kind of interesting today. Mostly it was interesting because people actually participated in the conversation and there weren't as many awkward silences. Although there were a lot of people absent today, so the class being smaller probably had a lot to do with it.

Most likely that's the case. Thankfully though the semester is almost over. I'm really ready for this Thanksgiving break. I'm a little burnt out on school and continual deadlines. I finally managed to finish reading "Liar". Now I just need to get a review written and posted for the SpartanEdge. I'm going to make my quota of three post this week and that is exciting.

Same Old Story

So I'm definitely glad that I checked the syllabus for my Lit/Cultures class. Apparently there was some reading to do for tomorrow, and the movie needs to be watched for next week. Or one of the next few classes anyway. Unless he combined some of the lessons and I misunderstood.

That's possible of course.

At any rate I have managed to get half of the reading done, and will hopefully have the other half read before I decide to get some sleep. I think I've studied enough for my JRN 108 exam in the morning. It's all multiple choice, so it should be fine.

In fact, I am very close to having things squared away for the break. I think that by Monday night I should have everything caught up to a degree.

Laundry definitely took longer earlier than I was anticipating. Thursday seems to be a popular laundry day. But at least I've got that out of the way. I just really want to have things caught up before going home for Thanksgiving. I'm excited about getting to go home and hang out with my family, especially since last time I was home I was so sick.

That was awful, though I guess if you're going to be miserably sick that home is the place to be.

No Homework?

My goal is to be caught up with homework to the point that I won't have to bother with it over break. The idea of being able to go home and not have to give school a second thought is incredibly appealing. Especially since it is so hard to get motivated to work on homework when I'm at home anyway.

As I write this I'm sitting in Lit/Cultures and am so lost. I miss calculated what I needed to read in order to be prepared for class today. We're talking about subcultures, but the way that the prof is trying to present the idea isn't very effectively spurring conversation. That is the way that class usually goes though, so I'm not certain why it's surprising every time.

Thankfully all we have to do for Friday is watch a movie. That will be simple enough, or at least it should be.

When I wrote the above earlier I didn't know yet what I wanted to write my final out of class article on for my JRN 200 class. I just finished filling out the tip sheet though, so hopefully that goes well. At any rate I've written down an idea. I'm much further along than I was.

I've Got Time

Yesterday was a strange day. I definitely ended up sleeping much later into the day than I would have anticipated, but if I was that tired than it was needed and therefore a good thing. I managed to get my article for the SpartanEdge written last night, and sent it off this morning.

That was probably the most productive thing I did all day yesterday. But that is alright, sometimes you need days like that.

This morning I’m going to go to church with a couple friends, and then maybe tackle some of the reading that I’ve been putting off. I’ll manage to finish it eventually anyway. At least by the end of the week. Minimum.

Sarah told me yesterday that I’m not allowed to buy any new books between now and Christmas. That won’t be hard to do, since I already kind of told myself that I couldn’t. I have other obligations that have to come first.

Especially if I want to go to Mexico during spring break, like I said before I think that would be a really amazing opportunity. Most definitely a good use of my time.

Anyway, at some point I have to start writing my paper for my Lit/Cultures class to. Although he did cancel class for tomorrow, so… I’ve got some time.

Rainy Dayz

It has been raining on and off all day. Rain, in an abstract way, is fine. It's when you have to walk to class in the rain that it's a bit annoying. Not only has it been raining most of the day, but it's cold rain. Cold rain is the worst.

My winter boots finally made it to my house though, so that's exciting. Hopefully they're the right size and everything. I don't generally like to order shoes on the Internet, but I really these boots and they weren't carrying them in stores. In fact, for a while they were on back order.

We had a quiz in class today over "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down". It was an open book quiz and of course I forgot to bring my book with me. Though I don't think having the book with me would have helped much. The questions were targeted more at getting a summary response based on plot points.

I am not the greatest at answering such questions, but hopefully I managed to do alright with this quiz. I'm sure I definitely did better on this one, than on the reading quiz we took for "House of Sand and Fog".

Deadlines, Yikes!

It took me forever to focus on finishing the module for my Lit/Cultures class, not because it was hard, but because I wasn't interested in focusing on it. The class has the potential to be interesting, and I'm not sure why it is isn't. For whatever reason the conversations that we could be having in that class don't seem to form like they should, I'm really not completely certain why that is.

Anyway, when I was supposed to be focusing on that I couldn't focus, and then once I got that done I decided to put my computer away because it's battery was dying and I'm not near a plug at the moment. Of course at that moment I decided to focus on wrapping up my JRN 200 homework, and was SO FOCUSED on that, that I nearly forgot to blog.

That wouldn't have been good. I apologize for being a little scatterbrained at the moment. I would like to note however, that I'm really enjoying the weather this week. I was afraid on my walk to class this morning that it was going to get cold again, because with the rain it was a bit chilly. However, by the time I was headed to my second class it has already gotten warmer, and the rain has abated.

It's pretty awesome. Now, if I don't hurry up and post this my computer is definitely going to die. Deadlines, yikes

FYI

It was another riveting day in my Lit/Cultures class. Did I need to to go to class today? Probably not.

Today we actually talked about the book that we're reading, but the prof. started the class by asking for a synopsis of what we had read. What is the point of doing a synopsis on a portion of a book that we have all supposedly read? There is no need to catch anyone up, because we should all be on the same page.

I don't understand why he thinks that asking us to minutely summarize what we've read is an adequate way to spur conversation. FYI, it's not.

He said that he'll be posting grades for our first paper this weekend, finally. That means Sunday I get to see how I did. Hopefully I didn't do too terribly considering it's twenty percent of the final grade in that class.

Peer Review

Lit/Cultures was as productive today as it is on any other day... in other words it wasn't productive in the least. We were supposed to have outlines with us detailing the paper we're to turn in on Monday. I definitely put my outline together last night, and probably won't be using much of it when it actually comes to the paper.

At any rate the entire class period was devoted to getting into groups and doing 'peer review'. The thing is though, for many of us what came to class today isn't much of a representation of the final product so it was difficult to offer an constructive advice.

The questions that we had to answer were really wordy and involved. It was just a general mess. Getting into groups was definitely more hassle than it should have been as well. He was adamant that we be in groups of three, and I mean ADAMANT. I was shuffled among a couple group settings before everything was finally established and we could begin to tackle the assignment.

Oh well. I'll get the paper written at some point this weekend. Hopefully I'll focus in on it before Monday after class, but we'll see how motivated I can get about it. Motivation is the key.

Steak and Twinkies

The following was written as I sat in my Lit/Cultures class earlier.

We are going over the paper that we are supposed to write in the next week and a half. In fact, we are more specifically going over how to write the paper and have been doing so for the past half an hour...

Do I really need to point out that I'm bored?

I'm thinking that since I'm not going home this weekend that Saturday day would be prime time to do laundry. I actually really don't mind doing laundry, in its own way it's kind of relaxing. Plus, doing laundry never feels like wasted time because I can get in some studying while I wait.

Now we've moved on to discussing the reading we were supposed to do today...

I am now back in my dorm room, the rest of this picks up from there. So I don't feel like I've been very productive since getting back from class. I really do have some reading that I need to do, and maybe I'll be motivated to do so after I post this. I woke up later than I had intended to this morning, and then felt kind of crappy to boot. However, I eventually made it out the door and to class.

I debated going, but as it turns out I'm glad I did. My JRN 108 class is always interesting, but today we had a guest speaker and he was pretty cool. He's teaching a class next semester that sounds really interesting, but I don't think I'll be able to squeeze it into my schedule.

As you can tell Lit/Cultures was as fun as ever... Economics was alright, but I definitely forgot to review for today's quiz like I had planned to. That was kind of a bummer, though I don't think I did too badly on the quiz. We shall see I suppose. I have come to one conclusion though. It seems that Economics teachers have an obsession with food. My current professor likes to talk about steak, ALL THE TIME. Which is fine, cool, whatever. It just reminds me of taking Economics in high school where the teacher ALWAYS seemed to bring up twinkies.

Laundry, maybe?

At the moment I am debating whether or not I want to go do laundry. I kind of want to wear one of my hoodies, but they're both due to be washed, so in that respect it would make sense to go do a load. Although I just did laundry last week so I'm not really to the point that it is something I need to do. In fact, it was last Thursday that I did laundry, so it hasn't even been a week...

I'll probably end up going down and doing laundry.

In other news I seem to be keeping up better with all of my reading. I have found that it is all about pacing. I have a chapter and a half to finish in my Elements of Journalism textbook and then we have another textbook for the same class that is referred to as the "big blue book". I have three chapters to read in there.

The nice thing about "the big blue book" though is that the chapters are rather short so at the moment I'm concentrating on EoJ. My goal is to finish reading them by about six or so because fellowship is at seven.

I'm so organized, I even managed to blog this Wednesday! I had my Lit/Cultures class earlier. I tell you what, that class is an excellent excise in wasted time. Oh, and the professor is really good at dodging questions. Basically we spent the whole fifty minute class period going over responses people gave on the online module from the first week of class. We had to critique them and the thing is that even though the names had been removed from the entries they had been written by people in the class.