yep, I hate them.
this is the only thing that sucks about college.
I know some of the adults hate me now for bitching about learning and how you should enjoy and blah blah. but admit it you hated finals too.
If it’s any consolation, your professors and/or TA’s hate 'em at least as much as you do. I’ve been on both sides. They’re just one of life’s masochistic little rituals ;).
**Oooooo… **::whip::
masochistic ::smack::
**rituals **::scratch::
mmmmmm… ::sigh::
They’re supposed to build character, but you couldn’t prove it by me. However, if you can survive finals, you should be able to handle just about anything “the real world” throws at you.
ChiefScott:
I didn’t ask.
Please don’t tell.
Ewwwwww. I have to go wash my brain now…
JMCJ
Die, Prentiss, Die! You will never have a more glorious opportunity!
i second that
lots of finals… but when they’re over its one of the best feelings in the world!
Chief’s Domain - http://www.seas.ucla.edu/~ravi
yeah, until the grades come in. . .
Here’s the worst part:
this one class I have, the material was easy. The professor was horrible (really horrible; literally two thirds of the class time is just him writing out long word problems on the chalkboard WHICH ARE ALREADY WRITTEN OUT IN THE BOOKS IN FRONT OF US!), there are no TAs, and the students are either too unfriendly or too stupid to be of any help for group study. So I’m on my own. Not so bad when the course material was easy, but halfway through the semester the topics became hideously complicated. The questions were still simple, but impossible if the concepts escape you. I failed miserably on the second major exam. Now just looking at the textbook sends shivers down my spine, and opening it sends me running across the room to curl up in a fetal position in the corner. Not exactly the ideal study conditions.
I detest finals.
Here, this’ll make you feel better…
Law school finals are the be-all and end-all. There is no grade other than what you get on your 4-hour final. That’s right, after a semester of going through 30 pages of material, per day, per class, the final is your one and only shot at getting a decent grade.
Two down, one to go, for me.
Amen, brothers and sisters.
Max, I feel for you. I have a couple that are worth half my grade for the semester and that’s all the pressure I care to shoulder.
My difficult ones don’t start till Wednesday, but I’m already gearing up.
The topic says it all…
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same.”
Kipling
“Finals”, he says. Finals.
I have mid-terms.
I’ll see you guys in June.
SanibelMan - My Homepage
“Step away from the bell curve, sir.”
So as for that class where the professor, class notes and clasmates are all useless; I spent all day studying for it. Sort of.
I decided to bring along a book to read for study breaks. Study break number one started before I opened the text book. It ended when I reached the end of the novel. The text book was still sitting there, unopened, on the floor. Damn it.
I still have one more chapter ot take notes from before I can call it a day. I shouldn’t have come back to my room for a study break though. Or at least I should have stayed the hell away from my computer
(heavy sigh) I hate finals.
My quantum mechanics book has been lying open on my desk since this morning. Some day I hope to start reading it.
You think you have it tough? My strategy for finals is to not go to any classes, copy all assignments off my friends and learn everthing 1-3 days before the final. I deal with midterms by hoping that the teacher corrects the assignments and gives out the solutions so that I can look at them the day before. And I mean “look” literally. If I actually start doing the problems myself I get tired out and irritated.
Come to think of it, it’s not as much a strategy as a reaction. Being truly lazy like this takes dedication. It’s not easy to learn an entire differential equations course in 2 days.
I have a quantum mechanics exam on wednsday and thermodynamics on friday… how inconvenient. Studying for even 2 hours can make me act really strage, like walking around and making strange sounds like an idiot. I guess I’ll be getting strange looks for the next week.
I swear, if you saw me after I’d been studying you’d think I’m a lunatic. I have no idea what’s going on around me because I’m trying to solve equations in my head and I’m making strange noises for no reason. It’s like one of those machines from 50’s sci-fi movies.
Boing… boing… integral from 0 to infinity blerk… boing…
You think you have it tough? My FRIENDS have your “copy all assignments off my friends” strategy! Last weekend I spent both days working on an eleven page paper for a class, then went home to my room, and two minutes later got a phone call from a guy asking me to write HIS eleven page paper! Eh, I did six pages, he can’t say thank you enough but he still hasn’t paid me. . .
And as for the timing of exams, get this: I only have two courses with exams during finals week. One was to be Tuesday, the other Friday. The prof. of the Friday class said that he knew how much we wanted to get home as soon as possible so he wouldn’t keep us any later than necessary; he rescheduled the exam to Monday! WTF??? So now rather than having all weekend and Monday to concentrate on one exam, then the rest of the week to devote entirely to the next, this one “considerate” professor messed with my time budgeting so thoroughly that I’ll probably fail both!
ugh.
The school I went to had three hour blocks for finals. One “good guy” professor told us that he understood that it wouldn’t be possible to finish all the essays in three hours, so he was going to let us work on them for four straight hours. After two hours I decided I was no longer interested in sharing my ideas about the politics of Eastern Europe, and turned in my exam. I got a C, but also my freedom.
Daniel: Once I wrote an essay for my friend about the evolution of sports. Of course, sports is pretty boring topic to write about so I wrote it about Roman culture, cause that’s what I happened to be interested in that week. It’s hilarious how I just grabbed the topic and turned it into something completely different and still got a good grade. I just put in some references to sports and so on…
Okay, which is worse: final exams or final papers? As an upper-division Anthropology major, I am done with all my GE classes, and am now taking mostly Anth classes which are too esoteric to actually give final exams. Instead, I am assigned the ultimate joy: PAPERS! Yay! I had to return my library books the other day, and had so many that I couldn’t fit them all into my backpack. Yes, research is so much FUN!
However, I am happy to announce that I am DONE, and next quarter is my last one, and since I’m almost almost done, I only have to take a couple classes - and one of them is Modern Dance. This last quarter was my most difficult ever, so I’m overjoyed that my next one is looking to be a lot more relaxing.
~Kyla
“You couldn’t fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.”
Kyla sez:
" I had to return my library books the other day, and had so many that I couldn’t fit them all into my backpack. Yes, research is so much FUN!"
Oh, boy. Welcome to Hell, my friend. Just you wait. Soon you will have so many research books that you can’t fit them into your CAR to return them. You will begin to write papers where the prof asks, “only 35 sources in your bib…don’t you think you’re being a little dependent on selective research?”
I MISS exams. I liked having a finite amount of information which you could learn in four days of hard study. It only ruins a week of your life instead of a whole term/year/decade.
Rejoice: grading exams is more difficult than you might think (it’s a crappy feeling to grade a test which you realize is taking you longer to grade than the person spent studying for it) so revel in the fact that next weekend your profs will still be hard at work while you’re experimenting with that cut-off 2 liter plastic bottle and shotgunning canned beer.
on writing papers for other people:
My roommate called me over to the adjacent dorm building to write a paper for him. I still have no idea why we couldn’t do this in our own room.
The paper he wanted me to write for him was a two page autobiography for a medical school application. My first reaction was, WTF??? How can someone in his second year of college, pre-med, not be able to write two pages about himself?
So here’s what I wrote:
"Ever since I was young, I have hated writing my own papers. Whenever I have to write one, I always get someone else to do it for me. This paper you're reading now: I didn't write it. My roommate, Danny, a much better human being than I could ever hope to be, is writing this right now.
I treat him like shit unless I want something (such as a paper) out of him, then I act real nice. When the paper's done I treat him like shit again. Want to know why I haven't stopped him from writing this essay yet, even though I can see right over his shoulder what he's writing? It's because even letting him write this stuff is better than doing the work myself.
I am now going to tell you about all of the shit I put him through just because I'm an asshole. By the end of the essay, you will agree with him as to how big an asshole I am. . ."
At that point I lost interest and just went back to my room to go to sleep. He found someone else to write the autobiography for him.
“I’m just too much for human existence – I should be animated.”
–Wayne Knight