Freeedddommmm!!

[SOLDIER #819]

Forgive me if there's already a thread like this.

The semester has finally ended for me. So happy right now. I can now enjoy my excessively long winter vacation. Oh yes, yes, yes.

Looking back on it... I have no idea where the time went. I still remember the first days in each class, the end, and very little in between. Though that's normal. I think the thing I will remember the most about this semester is how crazy some professors can be. Up until now I've either done my research or lucked out, but I had two crazy classes this year.

The professor for my business law class seldom lectured (and so therefore we had no direction), just made us do projects and write reports in-class, and then quizzed us during the intervals. He would then make our exams just in-depth enough to where we would have to write all the necessaries out on little cards and pray we got everything. And since we usually had about 80+ pages of material per test and the study guide basically said, "study everything"... Man. Meanwhile the class next door is breezing through the material and everyone is getting an A. YES. He did a good job in making a 3 unit class seem like a 5 unit!

And then there was introduction to statistics. Not the social sciences one, which isn't quite as hard supposedly. Either way this guy managed to cram about 12 chapters worth of material down our throats by the end of the semester, and though he went through it all I still don't know what the application of about over 50% of it is. He'd go fast and throw out terms that most of us had never heard before, then give us tons of homework with problems and applications he never taught us, so that could take hours and hours. He'd then put these all onto the tests. And man were those fun. We had to show our work, and by that I mean we had to do it in a particular format that only he knew, and which he only revealed partially during his 5+ hour reviews that took place outside of class. And then I'd have to do problems which, during the later tests, normally took up about half a page, but often enough one whole page. I'm a slow test taker, so I took about 6 hours on the final, but the average that time around was about 4 hours. Either way, I have never spent so much time on a class outside of class time in my life. And it was a general ed class. I hope this doesn't become the norm.

But they were both nice! So if I wasn't agonizing about whatever, we could have good conversations about whatever. And my Symbolic Logic and Economics professors were amazing. I learned tons in those classes. It is like they took all aspects of the course and aligned them into pure awesome. Especially Symbolic Logic. You'd think it'd be boring, but the whole thing turned into something akin to meditation. And economics taught me things I can actually use! Beautiful.

Now I have vented and can leave the bad behind! Do the same! Talk about your experiences this semester and whatnot!

I am so happy right now.

[Alpha]

I love that feeling. I remember skipping down the hill from University after my last exam (end of October), with precisely four months of summer holiday before me. There's nothing like it, and for some reason it makes you want to spend money. Anyone else get that? I felt compelled to buy new headphones after my last exam. Good ones.

Economics was a bitch. They only had two lectures per week, and they were both at 8am. When it takes slightly over an hour to travel to uni (plus somewhat-dodgy-but-still-environmentally-friendly public transport), this is not conducive to actual learning. And the lecturer was old! At least 70, probably in his late 70s. And talk about conservative! Imagine little old shoulder-length-hair liberal Alpha listening to this drone at 8am! So most of my learning did not occur in that environment. In tutorial, I had a young Vietnamese post-grad, who struggled to explain complicated principles in clear English. He was conservative too, and kept telling us about how his parents escaped from (communist) Vietnam. He was a right riot though, and once you bridged the language gap, he was on to it. I owe my economics grade to this guy.

I fitted in better in my environmental studies class. I enjoyed how they considered your own body as part of the wider environment; a wonderful holistic approach. We learned a lot about toxicology and nutrition, which I hadn't expected. I took a lot out of this class.

My religious studies course was titled 'Religions of the World', but it wasn't approached as you might expect. Each week we looked at a new theme, and these themes were built around issues, such as terrorism, the insights of psychology, environmentalism, etc. Within these themes, the different world religions were presented to us. I thought it was a fantastic approach to what otherwise would've been horribly linear and boring. Tutorials were great to debate, because we had a mix of people. The fundamentalist Baptist girl, the liberal Catholic (me), the quiet agnostic, and the atheist who had read so much Richard Dawkins that it wasn't funny. We became unlikely friends, and had coffee together after our exam.

My international relations class was a hoot. The lecturer was so openly left-wing that it made me happy. He was always on about how Obama is the greatest thing to happen to America. And he'd know; he was an American. Boston, he was from. He never hid his bias, which I thought was a good thing, and not just because I agreed with him. I doubt many actually disagreed though. University is usually the breeding ground of these types. My tutor was really scruffy and alternative. He had really greasy hair, perennial stubble, and a feather earring. Sorry for being vain, but those things do get noticed. He was a centrist, which always confused me, but he made a good moderator of discussions. Oh yeah, and my lecturer for this class is off to West Point (or some other US military academy in the North East), despite largely being a pacifist. He said he was invited to teach students why anti-Americanism existed, why it is dangerous, and what can be done to counter it. I gave him a loud cheer for that.

[Jin]

The first half of this school year was a bitch and the next half will be even worse. But you know what, I don't care right now because I'm now officially on winter break and although it would probably be easier to continue thinking about university throughout the break, I'm not going to.

I'm creating a pile in my room of all the stuff I've had to read (excluding books and research for assignments). So far it's about 3 quarters of a foot high. I'm going to continue adding to it next semester and see how large it gets.

Historical Methods and Historiography - This course has been surprisingly fun so far. I was really worried that it'd be too dry as it's pretty much all theory, but I've really enjoyed talking about said theories. Even when they're as complicated and inaccessible as Foucault and some of the post-structuralist writers. So far, assignments for this course included a mock grant application paper and a very short article comparison paper.

19th Century Britain - This is another course I took because there wasn't much else available. I've never been big into British history, but I've been rather enjoying the course so far. The readings are brutal though. I don't understand how anyone can assign a 400 page book to be read for the following week and expect people to read it analytically while they have other courses to work on as well. Craziness. The only assignment we've had in this course so far is a 1500-2000 word historiography paper. Next semester's going to be a bit more frantic though.

Stalinism - This is a course I created myself essentially. Before I graduate, I have to write a 50 page honours paper and I wanted to guarantee that I was able to do so for a topic I enjoyed so I collaborated with one of the profs we have here to take an independent reading course regarding Stalinism (how does Firefox not recognize this as a word?). It's been great so far. But it's about Stalinism, so how could it not be? Two assignments so far in this course: a 3 book historiography paper which was something like 1500 words and a 20 page research paper on Stalinist Foreign policy, which I'm handing in later today actually.

Economics - What was I thinking taking this course? I suck at economics. I did surprisingly decent on one test, but then bombed another. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to keep a B in it as my degree requires, but it's going to be annoying as hell. I haven't done a shred of math in four years and it shows. It's way more trouble than I thought to reacquaint myself with how to properly study for a math based course. Bloody hell.

All of my courses are year long, so I'll be back with them next semester. This year has been quite busy so far.

[Rocky]

long story short, I aced all of my finals (excluding Calc's final, ugh), kept my 3.5 cumulative GPA, along with my scholarship to go with it, and now that it is break time, I will continue to work and when I'm not working, I'll be playing halo 3 for about 8+ hours a day hopefully. I sleep with my hands in a bucket of ice, lol.

[Xanatos]

I had a lot of free time this semester, due to the fact that I didn't took many cllases from the second year and I still have some classes left from the first year although I'm not obligated to attend them. Only three days on university every week made this semester a vacation for me and the classes were more than interesting except for English.

English is officially the worst class I ever had, a mind torture, all because of the professor. It's really sad when I must correct my professor almost constantly but to study something that's fit for an elementary school is simply unforgivable. The classes took forever to end, it wouldn't be much of a problem if her accent wasn't so damn annoying almost unbearable. The paperwork's were OK though, and I only needed to listen her 2 hours per week.

Building Materials, surely the best class I took this semester. Most of the time we were on construction site or in the laboratories witnessing production of various materials, we were allowed to examine and test the materials for ourselves. Needless to say this was far better than learning from any book and the professor was the best one I had so far. I can't wait to see how will I do on the test in couple of days, hopefully better than Hydrology.

It seems that choosing Hydrology wasn't exactly my smartest move. Classes and assignments are OK, but the tests are killing me, no matter how much time I spend on learning they keep getting harder and harder. No other choice than continue to struggle and hope for some miracle.

I must admit this semester was interesting, sure there were some lousy moments but there were plenty of good ones. Even tho this semester is over I need to continue to work hard since the exams are starting right after the vacations.