My final grades for the Fall 2004 semester are in. All of my courses with the exception of Western History and Culture came out as As. As a result I should probably forgive myself for my performace in WH&C. Somehow forgiving of the self is just so much harder than forgiving others. In reality though, I guess I have nothing to forgive myself for. I did what I did in the course because of who I am and my personality traits, goals, aspirations and motivations. There is nothing I could have done to change the situation other than immerse myself in material that would end up stressing me out. Could that have caused me to have 4 Ds and only 1 A (in WH&C of course) or would it have still not been good enough and resulted in me still having the D in WH&C but also having that result in all of my other courses as well from the stress? Those are questions I can not answer. All I know about my learning style is that I don’t really study. I attend the lecture, read what I need to, and try to generally experience the course. That was somehow the easiest with Abnormal Psychology. I don’t know how everyone else’s brain works, but if I remember something just for the hell of it, it is usually a very temporary memorization, but if I dive in and experience the course it doesn’t leave me. The morning of the Logic exam people were trying to cram it all in and remember stuff, I was fairly calm and relaxed and more concerned with an English project due later in the day. I performed well enough to still have an A in the course and feel really good about the exam.
I haven’t done much in the few days since my last exam on Friday, just sort of been here and have been sleeping a lot. I have been working with clay some, but not as much as I should be to get better at either my wheel or handbuilding techniques. I have a new 1/3 HP (250 Joule/s) wheel coming next week that im excited about trying on. Reopening old hobbies is a slow proccess, but I am enjoying it more now than I did in the past, I guess because now I have the resources to explore it more fully and therefore enjoy it more completely.
I have found myself logging in to GITI every day since exams, even though all sections read as being fully complete with nothing to do, even the active course section at the moment. I guess I will formally activate those sometime in January. During this time since exams GITI has been in a state where I could easily tare it appart and it wouldn’t affect anything, but I haven’t gotten that much motivation back yet. I have given thought to giving myself a system of being able to pre-request numbers from GITI in blocks, so I could ask GITI for a block of like 10 numbers for me to be able to use during a week, so I could issue numbers without being at GITI or having to interact with it directly to have my organizational systme be effective. I don’t know that I can seriously see myself walking around with a sheet of pre-printed Avery labels with barcodes on them. How would instructors react to me slapping a barcode/number label on their pop-quizes? I guess it would be similar to either the way that Dr. Presler or Betsy handled it. Betsy found me to appear highly organized and didn’t think I was nuts when I gave her a paper with a GITI number and barcode on it. Dr. Presler’s reaction was a little more like a blank stare and a laugh. Other instructors don’t seem to notice, including Dr. Frakes. I don’t know that I will ever get to a point where GITI’s barcodes are actually in active use, but for now I like knowing they are there, so as I become more GITI-centered in the way I do things, I will be able to convert instantly. Its strange how GITI’s numbers (actually, they are MySQL issued auto-incriment index numbers) have evolved. The numbers started as just being there because they were required for the safe operation of a SQL table, but then I got more attached to them in my coding, and now they are essential to everything I do with GITI, they make things make sense. I think I should write a debriefing sheet for GITI sometimes though, people expect too much humanistic logic from GITI, not just its linear logic. There was a project due in Enlgish on the English exam day, Patrick, one of my group members saw GITI ID number 0505 and thought it was the final draft because it had a higher number than the actually final draft, which was 0412, even though I had defined each of the numbers for him. Luckily, Betsy is very understanding and didn’t kill our grade for the paper being a little late (I think GITI confused her occasionally too).
Anyway, final grades are in and im farily happy, and apparently im good at having tangent thought.