Hey there! It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted and to my few devoted readers, I apologize. ...there are a few of you aren't there?
It's been a crazy couple of weeks with the final exams and all that garbage, but IT'S ALL OVER NOW!! At least until next september. So here we go with a breakdown of what happened:
First of all about a week before the end of classes I was driving into Winnipeg and one of my rear tires blew out. I have never had a flat tire before. I've had tires that have been losing air, but not enough that I couldn't get to a gas station to refill it until I got another tire, y'know? Anyway, it's kind of rainy, I pull over to check it out and the tire is just completely bald. Check the other rear tire and its completely bald, too, but not blown out. So, yes I do have a spare and I get it out in anticipation of changing the tire. But! ...no jack. What can I say? It never occurred to me that the car wouldn't have a jack in it. Never fear though...CAA to the rescue. Yes, that one year membership is finally going to pay some dividends. But it takes them about 45 minutes to get out to me, so I sit in the car and wait. And when he finally does get out to me, the guy can't get the rim off the car, so he has to hammer at it with a big 4 x 4 piece of wood to loosen it up. This works, but its apparent that even if I had a jack I probably wasn't going to get the tire changed anyway. So, that's a good feeling. Anywho, the tire is changed, but my other tire is in such bad shape that I don't dare go to far on it without changing it. And besides that, I can't go all the way into Winnipeg and back on a spare in any decent amount of time. So, I head back to Elie (small town between Portage and Winnipeg) and get 2 new tires put on the car. This ends up taking awhile because they have trouble getting the other rims off too...then the nuts won't thread back on properly, etc, etc. After all this, it is way too late to make it into Winnipeg for any of my classes so I go home. That's my first flat tire experience. Did you enjoy it?
As for the exam stuff here we go...
Tuesday...Psychology was first up and occurred on the last day of classes. During the exam I wasn't as confident as usual, but I must have been narrowing those multiple choice questions down correctly because I ended up with a 95%. That should be an A+ for the year.
Wednesday...Classes are over, but I head back to the university for a 7 hour chemistry final exam seminar. This is conducted by a private individual who is awesome at explaining this crappy chemistry stuff. Once everyone who signs up arrives it looks like there are about 200 people attending. That's a quarter of the entire amount of people taking this chemistry course, which might tell you something about the profs. It's long, but it goes pretty well.
Thursday...a day off. I stay home and take care of Max, then do some studying when Shawna comes home from work.
Friday...English exam happened three days after psychology. 3 straight hours of writing. 2 essays and 4 short answer questions. I felt like I did okay. The biggest worry going into that one is that you'll have an essay question and you just won't know what to do with it, and you'll end up losing precious time and screwing yourself. Luckily I felt okay about all the questions. Haven't gotten the exam mark back and likely won't. Apparently you are just given your final grade and that's that. I am hoping it will be in the B range, but it could be a C+...depends on the marking of the final exam.
Saturday...no exams, but back to the university for a 6.5 hour physics final exam seminar. You'd think you wouldn't need these seminars, huh? I mean, they are suppposed to be teaching us this stuff during regular class hours! But, don't forget that my regular physics prof. is unintelligible...;-) The seminar is good and I'm all physicsed out by the end.
Sunday...day off...study.
Monday...day off...study.
Tuesday...the exam marathon begins!...Biology exam! Dun dun dun!! For biology, at this point, I don't really care anymore. Figuring out my marks up to that point, I realize I will need to get 80% on the final exam to move my mark from a C+ to a B. And since I haven't come close to the 80% mark on any of my other biology exams, I have pretty much bowed to the C+. I still studied, of course, but not as much as the last biology exam. And the results showed it! 60% on the final...which is a C+...coincidence? So, yes, the final mark in this course will be a C+. Biology sucks, but I will probably re-take it next year, to try and improve my mark. The dentistry program allows you to re-take one subject and replace your earlier grade with the new mark, so I guess I'll take advantage of that. Another perk, is that since all the lectures are on video tape, and I already have all the notes from them, it won't be necessary to go to the lectures next year. Maybe I can spend an hour a day studying biology instead of copying down notes. I also don't need to attend the labs since I already did that this year, so that's a nice bonus.
Wednesday...Chemsitry exam. This one was tough. It was not fun. Half of it was multiple choice and the other half was long answer. The multiple choice actually went better than I though it did. I ended up with a 67% on that portion. As for the long answer, I don't think I did as well, but I still haven't gotten my mark back yet. I would imagine my final mark will be a B for this course. Which is okay. Not spectacular. But, okay.
Thursday...last day of university...Physics exam. Didn't go too badly. Scared the hell out of me at first. It's a 30 question, multiple choice exam, and I skipped the first 4 out of 5 questions, so I thought I was in big trouble. However, I recovered after that and ended up with a 70%. Which means I should end up with a B or B+ in this course!
And then it was over...thank god. No more thinking about school work 24 hours a day. No more feeling bad for watching The Amazing Race when I should be studying. :-P The first year was rough. Overall I think I did okay. Probably not good enough to get into the dental program, but I'm close. And I've got next year to bring things up GPA wise.
Friday night I took in the Terrier game while Shawna went to her nieces' dance recital. I would have gone to the recital, but there weren't enough tickets! Seriously! Anyway, the Terriers won the Manitoba league championship and are now playing the Saskathewan league champion from Yorkton to see who will go to the national championship. Weirdly enough, the Yorkton team name is also the Terriers! Such a ferocious hockey name! Instilling fear in all they play! Portage won the game I went to 4-2 and also won again last night 5-3. It's a best of seven and they now got to Yorkton for the next 3 games.
Shawna and I went into Winnipeg on Saturday to check out a movie. We saw Sin City, which I really enjoyed. Shawna also liked it. We especially liked the fact that it wasn't the same as every other movie out there. I had no idea what it was about going in, so after the first 10 minutes of saying 'what is going on here?', I got into the flow of it and just had a good time with it. It's basically a cheesy detective novel/comic book come to life. Very well done.
Max has been feeling sick again, so we've been trying to cater to him. But yesterday and today he was very hard to satisfy. Just didn't seem to know what he wanted. He wanted up...cried...wanted down...cried. Poor little guy must really be feeling bad. He had some improvement tonight, though, so hopefully he will feel better in the morning.
2 weeks until I go to Calgary to make a living.
This saturday...Toney vs. Ruiz...check it out if you can!