Semesters End

You can tell it's near the end of the semester. The other students, who are traditional students, rather than an adult program student, such as myself, are getting loopy and not being able to focus as well. We had our last official statistics class tonight. We reviewed for the Final which is a week from tonight.

At first it looked like no one was going to show up. There were the few that haven't missed any classes, or perhaps one or two for legitimate reasons, such as myself (Kidney Stone). I suspect that is the group that will do well in the class.

I and another guy who's a bit older, 26, kinda chatted quietly while the late teen/early 20s girls jabbered like a flock of noisy birds. Don't get me wrong, they are nice enough, but I don't care about Survivor, Paris Hilton, personalized sneakers and the like.

Tonight was slightly different though. Many were talking about their grades and what they'd have to make on their various finals to pass. I can laugh about it now, but I probably did it too, my first time around. Now I don't care. I'm keeping sufficient mental note as to my general grade and that's good enough.

I believe with Statistics I'll get a B for sure, but if I do well on the final I could get an A. While a younger student would look at that and say, "Well gee, I'm doing fine, I'm gonna slack off. " Not me. I did that before. If a little bit of studying can get me an A vs. a B in the class I'm going to do it!

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My Business Law class is a totally different situation from my Statistics class. I'm doing well in there also, but the students are all adults, so we don't have the same, "It's almost winter break!" mentality. I think there is one traditional student in the class, but you wouldn't be able to tell by looking. They may be 'traditional' in the technical sense, but is really an adult who is just going to college for the first time. I bet that's quite an experience!

I had to give a 2 hour presentation Saturday afternoon for the class as well. It ended up more like 2 hours and 20 minutes, but that was primarily because the prof. got a little long winded with his explanations for the various items I spoke on. That was kind of frustrating. But I understand why he did it. He wanted to make sure everyone fully understood.

I think I got my group and A out of it, but we'll see. There was another group up after us and the third is presenting on Friday. I think he would be willing to give more than one A, but I suspect he'll give the best group an A and then curve the rest down. I think we were better than group 2, but group 3 could be pretty good. They have some smart people in the group.

One of my group members thought it was pretty funny and brave of me to more or less tell the instructor to shut up on one of his longer running explanation. As soon as I saw an opening I took it. I don't think he was mad, but I needed to keep things rolling. I didn't want to spend all day on it.

We also had an exam Saturday morning. I'm not sure that was very fair considering I spent 8 to 9 hours preparing for the presentation and then have an exam to prepare for as well? Luckily it wasn't too hard and my memory kicked in where needed. So if I did well on that, that'll be sweet. I scored an 87% on the first exam, so if I score similar on this one, that'll be good.

He has stated that he'll grade on a curve at the end, so I'm thinking, even if I have a high B, I could still end up with an A in the course. That'd be sweet.

Boy this is a far cry from those Cs, Ds and Fs I got my first time through college. Granted it's only the first few classes, but I'm also much wiser in the ways of the world so these things make more real-world sense now than they did way back when. I also understand the importance of hard work and diligence that I didn't back then. Plus my social life doesn't include as much drinking! LOL ;)