Fatigue

Sorry I've fallen off the face of the earth. I've been so beat lately. Probably not helped by the fact that my family recently became another statistic when my dad (an accountant) lost his job. It happened the night before my birthday and a huge pharm exam. Bummer, right? So it's been a rough few weeks.
On the bright side, we only have about 3.5 weeks left of classes! That's both exciting and frightening. I'm worried I'll have to retake orgo this summer. Wouldn't be the WORST thing, but it would be pretty frustrating.

Computer Fail

I take the same bag to school nearly every day- an LL Bean backpack I got in 8th grade that has served me through thick and thin. For whatever reason, I switched to a light shoulder bag Thursday. My class schedule was light, I had plans after school, and I really only needed to bring my laptop in. Sure enough, that little bag broke. Outside our library. And crashed onto concrete. So my laptop died, and since I'm a rebellious, immortal youth, I hadn't backed up the hard drive since October. I'm praying it can be fixed, mostly to salvage my pictures from our January vacation. Class notes I can get, pictures I can't. Everyone cross your fingers and say a prayer before  Tuesday!

Tests

We've had first exams in some classes so far. My animal behavior test seemed easier than it was- I lost a bunch of points on tricky things. I also lost 2 points because I forgot penguins were birds...but we'll pretend that never happened.
The pharmacology test today was hard. The first 3 pages weren't too bad. Page 4 was tricky. Pages 5-7 were really really tough (and had some high-point questions, of course). I stayed up all night going back and forth between studying and writing an ethics paper. If I'd budgeted my time better last week, I could have written the paper then and studied more for the test. Bummer. Too soon to tell how I did, but I won't get my hopes too high for now. Need to work on that whole "time management" thing!

Exempt!

Because I transferred as a junior, my core curriculum was a mess. What counted at one school NEVER counted at the other, and for a while I was sure I'd never graduate on time. Luckily, I scraped through and realized that I had just one class to take after I graduated, introductory history. Unfortunately, I'd have to take it at the school because I'd maxed out the number of credits to be transferred in, and it wasn't offered as an online option. Today, my advisor, the department chair, and the assistant chair sent me a joint email telling me how we were going to get me to graduate on time with nothing left to take. Basically, I'll need to drop my senior seminar, write an extra paper for my pharmacology class (yay!) to replace it, pick up the history and a one credit "miscellany" class (ballroom dancing, etc). Unfortunately, that puts me at 21 credits and the overarching college is dragging their feet about approving it...but it will be done. I have the entire biology department on my side. AND this means I'll save over $2k on tuition and about $150 in commuting costs, plus be able to work when I would have been taking this class. So now I'll be in the black for the summer before starting at grad/professional school and losing it all again. Means to an end, right?

Four down...

One to go! Only developmental left. Naturally, the two liberal arts ones were easy, the two sciences were hard. Oh well. I'm a senior...it's all good, right?


Gulp.

Productivity

I took off of work this weekend to study for finals...and haven't gotten much of anything done. Whomp. If anyone has any focusing strategies or tips, send them my way!

Do-Overs

I have never been one to beg teachers for extensions or breaks, and I never tolerated kids who did that. I'm also not a point-grubber. If I get something wrong, I read where the teacher is coming from and I learn from the mistake. If the question was SO egregious, the teacher almost always notices anyway and makes it void.
But then today happened. We had to do a "morphometrics" project for my developmental biology class. It was assigned just as we were leaving for Thanksgiving break, and to be honest, I knew then that it wouldn't be started until the night before it was due (i.e. last night). I have had the busiest two weeks, and since we had a major group project due earlier this week, I devoted myself to that.
Last night (erm...around 11:30), I decided to get started. The assignment was only two pages long- how bad could it be? Nightmare. We had to use this software called image J, and none of my data made sense. The directions for the second part said to use a CD that I wasn't sure we were given. A few texts/calls later, I found out some classmates also had no clue. I came in early today, and we made no progress. So I handed in what little data I had, embarrassed and stuck. After class, I swallowed my pride and went to the professor's office. I told her that I don't know where I went wrong, but I felt like I needed to know this for the final, and I'd take my loss on the project. Yeah, it was uncomfortable, and yeah, she chastised me for waiting (and for not writing some extra directions in my notes)...but then she said I could redo it and email her. What. A. Relief. I still don't understand 100% of the assignment, but I feel like now I could at least get an A or B on it (boy does my grade need it). So new lesson- take a chance once in a while. It helps that I'm not a class pest, I think. I might not always have the top grades, but I think that in general, professors tend to like me. For that, I sleep better at night.

The Next Two Weeks.

I need a nap already...
In case you were wondering, here's my classes this semester:
Microbio + Lab. Intro to Political Science. Organic Chem 1 + Lab. Intermediate Latin I. Developmental Biology + Lab. So ready to be done with it!

Sometimes I Know Things

Today's microbiology lecture topic was antibiotics. Sounds perfect, right? Ugh. It's known to be a rather droll class- just straight lecture from PPT for an hour. The professor is allergic to penicillin, so he decided to make that a big feature of the lecture. On the slide titled "Cephalosporins," he wrote "Can be used in patients with penicillin allergy." BAM. To be honest, I'm not doing that well in the class, but I'll be darned if I haven't learned this much working four years in retail. So I went to him after class and casually mentioned "Hey, I thought first-generation cephs had a 10% cross-over with patients with PCN allergies?" His reply? Essentially, "I don't really know." And turned away and kept packing his computer! I stood there gaping like a fish for a while, then thanked him and left. What the heck am I paying this guy's salary for?! Then I went to my political science class and had a great class-wide debate on national health care, which made up for it.
Then I went to work, where I got to fight with some guy who wanted a free replacement bottle of cefdinir suspension because he dropped the first one and it broke (those things are like $100!), and then some lady wanted to know the manufacturing locations of all sorts of OTC meds, brand and generic, because "she doesn't want ones not made in America, and she has the right to know." But hey, the good outweighs the bad 95% of the time