Finals

Blogger was being a biatch the past couple days. The dumb thing is that I was writing this thing on how I have stayed loyal to Blogspot for 6 months and not switched to Xanga like everyone else. Such as, every single Asian person, plus Michelle Branch.

So I am not gonna post my thing about blogger and instead I am writing about finals week. Not for myself, of course I graduated last semester and I will probably not have to experience finals for at least a few years.

A lot of the younger people I know are going through their finals week though. I remember back then those were some of the most stressful times I have ever been through and it is definitely one thing that I will never miss about college.

Some finals week stories come to mind:

1. Freshman year, with a ECE final the next morning, I stayed over at IT and for some reason we were both up early. So instead of taking the opportunity to study, we played some Starcraft and I ended up doing awesome on the final. I think that might have been the last time I could say I did awesome on a ECE final. That's probably why I still remember it right now. Plus it can be a good argument to support the playing of Starcraft.

2. Junior year, me and the boys went to Denny's at like 3am. Me and Rod ordered skillets and while we had our books open, we didn't study at all cause P and Chras were too busy teaching me how to "deke" in NHL for Genesis. If I dig into my old notebooks, I could probably find the diagrams they drew for me. Too bad I still can't deke effectively. Oh yeah, the next time I tried to go to Denny's, it was closed and there was a sign on the door saying how the next closest Denny's was in Bloomington or something. That sucked, cause after that we could only go to Perkins and the skillets there are weak sauce.

3. 2nd semester Junior year, I had to go to this Driving School class for my speeding ticket and being the disorganized fool I am, I ended up accidentally scheduling it right before my CS 257 final. It was pouring rain that day and I barely made it to the exam on time. Good thing I am awesome and I ended up smoking that test too and getting an A in the class.

Speaking of this class, this was one of my favorite classes in my 4 years of college, not because of the subject but because of the stories from that semester. First of all, the teacher (Ponce) was this girly French dude with a thick accent, who was a nice guy but couldn't teach. You could sit through a whole lecture and not learn one thing. That's even worse when you consider that these were the 75 minute lectures, not your normal 50. Ok, but the real problem came when me and Will decided to make this retarded bet about who would miss class first. So I guess out of pride and the value of $10, both of us went to class every Tuesday and Thursday for almost the whole semester. I think eventually I caved and I had to pay for a game of pool at the Union or something. That experience taught me that self-inflicted misery is the worst. I could've slept in all those weeks but no.

That was also the semester of the "dudo" thread the day after my 21st bday in our CS257 newsgroup which we were reprimanded by the TA for. That's a pretty entertaining story but too long to share here. Maybe the Goods would care to recall the incident in his blog (hint hint).

One other thing I remember from the class was the rampant cheating during exams. The funniest incident was during the final, when Jimmy was looking all over the place and copying people's answers left and right. Then the TA came by our area and started accusing Will of cheating. This was the exchange:

TA - Stop copying off of other people
Will - I wasn't
TA - Don't copy!

Haha reminds me of my first traffic stop. I think I wrote about that story before. Let me find the link. Ok Click Here

4. (this story I just told a couple days ago so it is fresh in my mind) My second-to-last semester, I went to Grainger with my sister and we got hungry so we decided to go grab some Taco Bell. It was late so only the drive-thru was open, and we just picked up some tacos and drinks and headed back to Grainger. But she was scared to go in because "you're not supposed to bring food into the library." I told her it doesn't matter, don't worry about it. So she was trying to hide her taco in her coat pocket or something and asking me if I could tell she had a taco in her pocket. I was like no, let's just go. Finally she gets up the courage and starts acting like James Bond trying to sneak in with her one taco in her pocket. Meanwhile, me and Greg just stroll in with our bags of tacos and extra-large drinks in hand like the upperclassmen we were. If you don't find this story amusing, maybe you had to be there. Or maybe you have never met my sister and don't understand that she is the same girl who thought pep rallies were cool in high school. haha sorry mei but that story cracks me up so I gotta tell it.

I think later that same finals week was the Dave Chan tacos and 40s experience too. Good stuff.

Oops, I wasn't planning to write all that just on finals stories. All I wanted to say was that when I look back, all of us were so stressed out about this stuff like it was the last thing that mattered in life. (Ignore some of the stories above for the sake of this point). But now, I doubt that any of that stress makes any difference in my life today.

Ok, so I'm not recommending that people don't study for their finals, but my point is that if you mess up on one final, it's not the end of the world. No point in making it a bigger deal than it is.

PEACE - I'm outta here...