Me being the sort of paranoid bloke that I tend to be, I have been eagerly scouring the registries of my various institutions looking for a backup course for summer, in the event that one falls through. Usually I look in the areas of the arts, humanities (archeology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, etc) and in Information Technology. This summer I thought it might be good for a laugh to designate one of my backup courses as an IT course… particularly as CSC234 – Advanced C++ Programming… which is a course that I have been wanting to take for many semesters, but have yet to have time to actually complete. Upon looking up the course prefix to locate available sections I discovered that in none of the traditional IT departments are courses being offered this summer, nothing in CSC (Computer Science/Programming), CIS (Information Systems), CTS (Technology), DBA (Databases) or Web (duh). Normally during the summer those programs are full of students, even two years ago when the programs were being redesigned and no one knew whether the course they took would exist at the end of the summer or not (Theory was that CAA or retroactive degree catalogs would protect them, and they did. Also new course codes were given a direct conversion matrix).
I found one department that offers an interesting course as a backup for the summer term, its SGD-113, Simulation and Game Development Program. Its a course that doesn’t do much for any requirements or anything, but it looks like a fun course. Unfortunately, I likely won’t take the course because I am in fairly popular courses for the summer and they are not likely to have any problems. Other alternates would be something like a literature course, but that would require me being quite desperate and ready to commit myself to reading during the summer, which I have heard can be quite enjoyable and is also quite portable. I have also placed a painting class as a backup, but the only problem with that is that it requires physical class meetings, which I frown upon during summer semesters, when I like to be flexible.
Note: backup courses are selected in the unlikely event that a primary scheduled course is canceled or needs to be dropped for some special reason.
Category: Academic
-
Lack of IT Courses
-
Woohoo! Grades!
All of my grades are in now, and all of them are A’s. I am like so very happy right now. I can’t believe I was stressing for 3 days over what turned out to be nothing. I felt like I had done A work in my drawing class, so I shouldn’t have been so worried at all, but I guess that “borderline” feeling just overcomes me.
-
Missing Grade
I now know all of my grades for Spring 2008, except for my Drawing II class. All of my other instructors have either posted their grades to the registrars, or sent emails, but my Drawing II instructor is still keeping me in suspense.
I feel like I did well with the drawing course, but with the way some of the grades on the assignments went, I feel like I may have not gotten the grade I would like in the course. All of my grades that are presently known are A’s. I feel like I worked extremely hard in the course this semester. My instructor even said that I had completed the most preliminary drawings of any student in the class. What I am feeling now is a form of confusion I suppose. I have been told that I have made progress and that I have tried the most attempts at the assignments, but yet I have seen the gradebook and know about how my mid-term in the course went, but somehow I still can’t pull together what my final grade will be. Worse yet…. when talking to my instructor last night, she didn’t seem to have a clue what our grades would be either. I am a little worried that my GPA might be harmed by this course, which would make me really sad. On the other hand, the instructor could be having issues of confidence in her own grading policies and that could be creating the feeling I am currently experiencing. The fact that the instructor hasn’t turned in grades yet is absolutely killing me. I suspect that either tomorrow or Thursday, the grades will be posted and I will return either very happy with an A, or I will be sad and mopey with something less.
It is times like this that I question myself… could I have done more? Could I have pushed myself just a bit harder? I don’t know. I feel like I gave this semester everything I had, but I feel like somehow I didn’t accomplish a lot. -
First of the Grades
Just got an email from my online Calculus instructor….
“Good morning, Curtis
Your Test – HW – Lab average was 97.1
Your midterm – Final Average is (95 + 83)/2 = 89
Your final grade is
0.7 * 97.1 + 0.3 * 89 = 94.67 = 95 = A
Congratulations”
I’m a bit bummed that I got an 83 on my final exam, but overall I guess I’m happy that I got an A in the course and the lab… now to move on to fixing GITI, so that I can add that grade. -
End of Spring 2008 Semester
I have now finished all course work for the Spring 2008 Semester. All that remains is the formality of appearing on Monday for a final critique in Drawing II. All that remains now is to wait and see what my grades are.
I feel relieved, somewhat relaxed, but a little exhausted after looking back over the past few weeks. -
Chapter 3 Complete!
After a great surge of creative energy, I have finished chapter 3 of my novel, now all I have to do is write a 1 page synopsis of my entire novel and critique some really bad poetry.
-
Sunshine On My Shoulders Makes Me Happy
ok, so its a little rainy and dreary outside, and well… my shoulders (and the rest of my torso) are covered. Oh, and I’m also under a tornado warning…
Anyway, returning to the point of this blog post. I woke up at 6:45am and was quite well rested and my multi-week writers block seems to have cleared up. I have gotten myself to a space where I can now think creatively and progress through my writing assignments. So far I have knocked out 3 of my remaining assignments, leaving only the completion of a poetry review and a page length synopsis of my novel. The poetry review will be the hard part. I hate the poetry book that I selected at the beginning of the semester and it is almost painful to read it. The book is Billy Merrell’s Talking in the Dark. I can’t stand it, its badly written poetry, although, it would be interesting as an autobiography. In poetry form it annoys me, but it could just be the line formatting he decided to use.
I suppose I should get back to writing about my under cover homosexual and his curious best friend… -
Progress of the Semester
With 1 week remaining of this semester, it feels as though I have made a lot of progress this semester with things. There is only one course causing me concern. Drawing II is leaving me with a lot of uncertainty. I don’t know what to expect during the final critique next Monday, I don’t know whats she is looking for, and on top of that, I don’t really have a feel for how I am doing in the course and on top of that, there is a final exam that will be administered before the final critique, and I don’t know what will be on it. Earlier in the semester with the way things were being graded and then the way things went on the first test in the course (the mid-term I suppose) I began to question if I would be able to get an A in the course. Slowly I started thinking that it might be my first B on my Gaston College record, but I am terrified that when the final grades are in that I will receive something less than a B. I am questioning why I didn’t force the instructor to discuss my performance in the course with me (via intervention of the dean) or simply move the course to audit status or any other act of academic uncertainty. In general my policy with courses is to stick with the course and have faith in the instructor unless failure is imminent, and then, well… I go to plan B. The only other course that feels in limbo at the moment is Creative Writing, and that is of my own fault. If I complete all of my assignments before the end of the semester (and I will), then I will get an A, no questions asked. No other courses are at risk even in the slightest. This evening I calculated my minimum final exam score to receive an A in my online math course… as long as I get at least 60% on the exam, there is no doubt that I will get the grade I am seeking. For all other courses, things are in motion such that my grade is already secured (such as Descriptive Astronomy Lab), or all that remains is to do well on a final exam and everything is clear. I am presently very nervous, but I think it is because for me to have a semester where things are lining up this well, the As start seeming like they are imprinted on glass balls and I just have to keep them floating in air for the duration of the week starting May 1 and ending May 6 to keep them at the end.
At this point in the semester I am usually exhausted and ready for things to be over, but this semester, other than some mathematical logic fatigue, all things are calm and easy. -
Summer Classes
As all of my readers are probably now aware, I will be taking Digital Photography during the summer semester. I tried taking only one class last summer, but that didn’t go too well, I obsessed over it and didn’t let it have time to rest between interactions with it and overall I feel that I didn’t get as much out of it as I would have if I were doing other things as well. This summer my plan is to have a single complimentary course in addition to digital photography. I am considering something along the lines of a fitness class. I began looking at the various course offerings last night and found two that seemed like they would fit what I was looking for. I found CPCC’s BIO155, Nutrition, but that seems a bit too obscure and not useful. CPCC also has HEA110, Personal Health and Wellness, which matches more closely to what I want to take. The other option I gave myself for the summer was the potential of a history or literature course, but so far, that seems like it might be a little too much reading for a summer course. I want fun courses during the summer, I don’t want to be the sad boy looking out of the library window, down on the other kids outside playing and wishing I was one of them. No, none of that for me (got close enough to that during Summer 2004). I want something exciting and motivating for summer. I might have plans for things other than classes this summer, so I really don’t want to be tied down with a lot of reading and excessive bullshit.
Lets take a look at my summer semester history:
Summer 2004 – Art Appreciation, Sociology of the Family, General Anthropology
Summer 2005 – Java Programming
Summer 2006 – {Academic Break}
Summer 2007 – Creative Writing 1
Summer 2008 – Digital Photography, ….
Summer 2004 was hard and long, but was still a lot of fun, and the only course I regret is General Anthropology. I hated the course, but somehow still got a B in it, even though I did the very least I could in that course.
Summer 2005 was a challenge for me. I had never worked with any language that wasn’t based on C, so Java was like diving head first into an orientation to object oriented programming. Overall I enjoyed the course, but I could have used a bit of a buffer with other material at times.
Summer 2006 wasn’t fun. I went through a very bad spring semester and nothing made sense to me, I just sort of lost it. This was my first break in 7 continuous semesters. I remember being bored a lot during this semester.
Summer 2007 returned me to having an academically active summer. I loved the course, it made me a lot more expressive and sort of taught me that artistically, I have no boundaries.
I don’t yet know what will happen this summer, but I believe it will be productive for me, or at the very least, I will learn a lot about optics that I didn’t know before. I will try to keep things posted to the blog regularly as the summer progresses, oh, and I will fill everyone in on what happens when I get to register on Thursday at 5PM for summer classes at CPCC.
BTW, if anyone wants to enroll in Digital Photography with me, there are 6 seats remaining in the class and there is no requirement to apply for admission to UNC to enroll. The course is designed to be transfered to other institutions and is open to everyone. Course description and enrollment information -
Astronomy and my view of our Universe
Tonight while doing some astronomy homework I managed to get lost in the last 2 chapters of the textbook, “The Beginning and the End” as well as “Life on Other Planets”. I don’t know how I got lost in these chapters, but they are more philosophical than the rest of the textbook. Its is very interesting to read about the big bang on one page, detailing how the universe began, and then a few pages later reading the few possible ways it could end. The most spectacular of ends involves all of the matter in the universe recollapsing once the expansion of the universe is complete, and then the tightly packed matter beginning to have gravity again, as well as internal heating and the whole damned thing starting all over again in a seemingly endless pattern of recycling. The most bleek is that the universe never reverses and everything keeps going away from everything else until radioactive decay has its effect on all matter in the universe and all protons fall apart, effectively ending the universe once and forever. Between these two theories, I am most likely to believe the recollapsing universe theory, since it seems as though the universe is constantly recycling and gravity tends to bring everything back eventually. The process is very plausible, since it would allow everything to be heated back to its original temperature, effectively breaking everything back to single electron elements (hydrogen). Funny thing is, go to the string theory people, they will tell you that our universe is much like a lightbulb, there is more than one in the box and one burning out isn’t a big deal.
We are star stuff and we are the way that the universe knows itself. It is possible that we are the first sentient life to exist in the universe (at least in this iteration of the universe cycle), which means we are somewhat of an accomplishment. We can’t know for sure if we are alone, but even if we aren’t, we can’t be sure that other civilizations would be as curious as us and want to explore space, or if they would be as persistent.