Linkstew

One of my goals this semester was perfect attendance, but when the day was done, I didn't quite make it.

I actually missed my first three classes way back on Wednesday, November 13th. I had a 172 homework assignment due that due that was giving me fits, and by 10 am that morning I hadn't made much progress. Instead of go to class and split my attention between lecture and my homework, I decided to stay home and focus on my assignment. I'm going to console myself that I missed those classes because I was working on a homework assignment.

Looking back now, I never would have made that choice. The assignment was due at 2:30 (the beginning of class), but I figured I had until 4pm (the end of class) to turn it in. At 3:30 I only had three questions answered. I needed to turn in what I had, so I started out the door for a brisk walk up campus to Soda. When I got to Hearst and Euclid at 3:55, I got vaguely worried when I saw a few of my classmates walking onto campus. When I got to Soda, I found the classroom empty, and the teacher gone. I don't know if my clocks were off or what, but that finding incredibly frustrated me.

I suppose I could have tried to email the instructor to turn in the assignment, but between only having three of the problems done, and not wanting to contest the instructor's "no late homework" policy, I didn't bother.

To make things worse, that night, I had a Ling 106 assignment to do that also gave me fits. In retrospect, I suspect going to my 106 discussion that day would have helped me significantly in writing that assignment.

Just as I predicted, once I missed one class, I missed many more by the end of the semester. I missed two more 106 discussions, missed a 172 discussion, and missed every 160 discussion. I also missed every one of the last four 160 lectures, and 3 out of 4 of my last 172 discussions.

But, I went to every Ling 106 lecture this semester. Of course, Shannon claimed that I missed a lecture at Raleigh's after Ling on Thursday, but Jeremy backed up my claim of perfect Lakoff attendance.

I'm pretty sure that I never managed perfect attendance in even a single class before, so attending every Lakoff lecture feels like at least a partial success in my goal of perfect attendance this semester.

I realized today that I can count on one hand the number of things I have left to do before I graduate. Now, first of all it's unprecedented that the number should be so low before Thanksgiving. Second of all, I can count how far I am from graduation. On one hand, baby! Check it out:

1. Finish my CS 160 Project. [1]
2. My last CS 172 homework assignment is due on 12/2.
3. My Metaphor term paper is due on 12/4, and then that class is done.
4. My CS 160 final is on Monday, December 16th.
5. And my CS 172 final is on Wednesday, December 18th.

[1] Okay, admittedly, that CS project has about 5 major chunks left to do (two of which are due in 9 hours), but as a CogSci major, I think I'm justified in applying a fairly high level of abstraction on this point.

Whew, today's midterm was a killer. I only had 75 minutes to do a test that I think would have taken me about two hours to do well. Needless to say, I felt a little rushed. And on top of it being too long, I just wasn't entirely sure what kind of answers they wanted on a lot of the questions. The problem was I just had too much to say about any given thing they asked, so I wasn't really sure how to reasonably constrain it to what they were looking for.

I've got the feeling that I'll get the test back and for most of the things I got wrong, I'll say "Damnit, I knew that, but didn't think that's what they wanted." If it'd been an interactive test (like an interview), I know I would have been able to show that I knew what I was doing.

Bah, grumble. I'll just have to wait and see.

In other news, tonight finds me working on my Ling 106 midterm. Here's a Lakoff quote about the topic of one of our three midterm questions from yesterday in lecture:

"Doing a metaphorical analysis of the etymologies of 150 or so words would make a great dissertation, but it would also take some real intellectual courage. Indo-European etymology is a nasty field. It's a cutthroat business. You'd be attacked by pretty much everyone."
-- George Lakoff

Yeah, so I've got regular assignments due on Thursdays, which explains why these quotes keep getting passed off as content on Wednesdays. Sorry.

"I'm 28 now, and hopefully I'm still... Shoot! Never announce your age to the class."
-- My CS 160 Professor

So I'm sitting in CS 160 right now, and 6 people in front of me (out of about 30) are using laptops right now. In particular, these are laptops that are issued to us for a minimal deposit, for use in CS 160. And important to this story, these laptops comes with wireless cards.

So it's true that these laptops are being used "in CS 160," and I suppose that's good. But what's bad is what the people in front of me are using them for. Here's the rundown:

1. The girl in front of me is the only one who seems to have lecture notes open. Even better, she actually looked at the CS 160 newsgroup at one point. However, she's also on IM, and she's written at least two emails. All things considered, a 9/10.
2. The guy over by the wall to my right is browsing around some forum or another. He is also using IM.
3. A guy at the front right of the class is browsing around Amazon, and is also using IM.
4. A guy over at the left is looking at what looks like car manufacturer sites. Oh, and he's using IM.
5. Another guy over at the left is just using IM.
6. And the girl to my left has the dubious distinction of being the only one not using IM. Dubious because she's busy apparently planning a trip. Right now she's buying plane tickets, and earlier she was looking up restaurants and entertainment sites.

If I had my camera with me, I'd do something like Berkeleysucks.com's annoying people in class series, but I reckon that'd be even more disruptive and annoying than all the laptops put together.

What? Who, me? I'm just blogging. But it's not like I'm using a class laptop or anything -- I'm just using my trusty PowerBook! And the only reason I got my PowerBook out in the first place was so that I could experience the irony of writing this entry.

And for the record, I'm not on IM.