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.
Time for GITI Repairs
Now that I have a week of free time, I believe it is time to work one some stuff with GITI.
Keychain – an odd little module I wrote to move all of my software keys out of the GITI notepad and into a separate space. The module is somewhat effective at what it does, but it needs a lot of work in the area of user friendliness as well as a bit more of a pretty interface. There are some critical flaws like not being able to edit information for keys once they have been entered.
Education – This module will never truly be complete or functional. This time I plan to hook up some code I wrote in January. I wrote very elaborate code for moving classes between statuses and being able to apply grades too all of my classes at the same time and also close them at the same time (as a result of the grade posting process). Unfortunately after writing all of that code, I never connected it to itself to enable it to work. I don’t remember why I did that, all I remember is that I didn’t have a use for it at the time, since classes had just begun. I must make it functional before grades are posted in a few days.
Schedule – There have been some functional changes to what schedule understands recently and not all parts of the module really understand what is going on with the new changes.
I am considering writing a new grocery list module, and also fleshing out the library module more. In addition, there are a lot of things that need to be done for any type of GITI public interface to exist. Presently GITI is only for GITI users, and there are a few public components that exist but aren’t part of any type of unified interface. I wish to change that and make GITI more friendly with the general web, and not just a stone face to the world that no one can do anything with. GITI has a new domain, one all to itself, so I am looking forward to utilizing that to make something public happen soon.
There are a lot of bugs that need to be fixed in GITI, but most of them are minor things or tiny repairs, perfect for this week of nothingness.
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…
Life As Viewed Through Facebook
Facebook paints an interesting picture of life. In the Facebook universe I have 116 friends and attend 4 schools, with a degree in progress at each. This is a highly over-optimistic view of things. While it is true that I know at least 110 people of the 116 it thinks are my friends, I only consider about 10 of them actual friends, the rest are acquaintances. It is true that I have 4 academic institutions (and probably 1 mental coming soon), but I am only actively seeking a degree at one of them (BA in SIS @ UNC-C) and passively earning a degree at another (AA @ Gaston). The other two are just places that have courses I like to take.
Also in my Facebook universe I recently purchased several of my friends. I purchased Chris for $540 and Guy for $620 (I keep having to rebuy Guy, hes in high demand). I really don’t get the fascination with buying and trading friends (called “pets” on facebook). Is the world so bored that we now much place values on people like that and then “purchase” them? There are several people I know on Facebook that I would love to “buy”, but I am afraid they would take it the wrong way (probably because I am not thinking of it in a pure way).
Overall, Facebook sucks and I really wish I had more to do today so I didn’t have to think about this shit.
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.
Blog It on Facebook
I think I have found the most useless Facebook application ever. Blog It by SixApart (powered by TypePad). It doesn’t seem to do anything unique. It connects to the Movable Type blog installation almost the same way I would manually, and then gives a really simplified editing tool. I don’t entirely get it. If anyone has found anything useful about it, I would love to hear from you.
Paranoid about Drive Space
Chris and I took a look at the use of drive space on my servers this evening and I was surprised by what was discovered. It would appear that my fascination with collecting porn and my ever growing digital photography store are taking over the most space on my file servers. Since I will be pursuing photography as an academic interest, this causes me a little bit of a panic. I have never liked having my hard drives even close to full, I like to keep things open and clear for expansion, getting close to the 50% barrier makes me nervous. I started looking at 1 terabyte drives this evening and found that they are surprisingly affordable and are available in very fast models. It is true that I have 250GB remaining on one of the drives in the new server, but this doesn’t comfort me. I feel cramped and I feel like I am just going to wake up one morning and find that all of my drives are full… drive paranoia.