Linkstew

In the process of updating my resume last week, I took a peek at the resumes of a few former co-workers. All of them included their final UC Berkeley GPA on their resume, so I figured I might as well.

When I've done hiring over the years, I've always been amused by people who included their UC GPA "to date" on their resume, and even more amused by the people who still included their high school GPA on their resume. Accordingly, I can't even remember for sure if I ever included either of those figures on my resume. I might have at one point, but it's been years since I actually have.

But my final UC Berkeley GPA seemed somehow more conclusive, and the same people who I'd laughed with about "to date GPAs" during hiring had included their final GPA on their resumes.

So I typed "3.277," and then stared at it for awhile.

"That's all I've got to say about the last 4.5 years of my life?" I wondered.

I could probably write pages about any one of the 35 classes listed on my transcript, but in the end,all it comes down to a few assorted letters, which in turn come down to even fewer numbers. The particular grades I already got in some of the classes are already starting to fade, and I was surprised when I looked at my transcript to see that I got a B- instead of a B in some class.

If the particular grades are already starting to fade, for how much longer will I remember the classes? I suppose that's one of the reasons I tried to write so much of it down.

But I'm still afraid that my last memory of college when I'm old and grey will be "3.277."

I got my last midterm back today -- I've been waiting to vent for a week, now, so that I could blow it all in one post, and then I won't have anything to bitch about for awhile, I expect. All that's left besides finals is random homeworks, a cs project, and a small in class essay. But I'm not really worried about that, because it's pretty spaced out, assuming I actually start the CS project this weekend -- it's a bit of a biggy.

So, my midterms...

• History of Technology
  • My Grade: 15.8/20. "C".
  • My Excuse: I didn't keep up on my reading earlier in the semester, so when the time came, I wasn't prepared. Or, "The first in class essay was open book, why the hell wasn't this one??"
• Neuropsychology
  • My Grade: 29/50. 58% in a class where the mean was in the 80s and the lowest score was 50%.
  • My Excuse: I was at a funeral 24 hours before the midterm, got back to Berkeley 15 hours before the midterm, and when I got home I found out I didn't have a book to study with. I mailed my professor, but he still hasn't responed.
• Linguistics
  • My Grade: 81/120. They haven't figured out a mean or anything yet, but that's 67.5%...
  • My Excuse: The test was too fucking long, and I approached a too long test in the wrong way. They dropped the question with the lowest score, but I got a 15/30 on two questions. One of them was a two part question, and I could have easilly done both halves, but I did the first half, went on to the rest of the test, ran out of time, and in my rush review I evaluated the question as "There's writing there, it's done." The other question I didn't spend much time on, because originally it was worth 20 points, but when they adjusted the test, the question became worth 30 points. The upshot of this is that I have an 81% in the class, which, according to my calculations, is the highest grade I have in any of my classes right now...
• Compilers
  • My Grade: 71/100, with a mean of 70-74.
  • My Excuse: I overanalyzed one question -- I wrote comments accounting for why I did things the way I did and I specified why I did things, but I still lost 10 points for leaving things out there. And there was another question on which I had no idea what to do. This one is really my fault -- I had plenty of time to study for this test. Oh well. But I got the mean, so I'm not too upset.

That's it. I'm done bitching about grades and my worst semester ever until June, I promise. And even then I probably won't care about it and won't mention it. I barely care about most of these anymore anyway -- I've had enough time to stop being mad about them. It's amazing what a little cool down time can do.

Bitch, Benjy, Bitch.

I've had better weeks in every possible way. This is the sort of week that I should probably go out and get drunk over, especially now that I'm 21 and all... but I won't, because it's too much effort.

Next time I have a test right after spring break, remind me to plan on my grandmommy dying... because then I would have known to study for my midterm after spring break before spring break. As it was, I didn't get to start studying until 12 hours before the midterm, and even then, my book was MIA, so I couldn't study very well. All things considered, the 58% I got on that midterm could have been worse -- For example, I was a whole 8% above the lowest score on the test!

Oh, and next time I'm taking a linguistics class, remind me to consider enrolling in that "How to take a two hour linguistics test in one hour" course they advertise on Sproul... Because no one finished today's linguistics midterm early. I certainly felt less than stellar about my performance on the test, and Kevin said he felt about the same way. So I shouldn't feel too bad, because even if I'd been totally prepared, I would have still needed a lot more time to do well on the test.

I had three midterms the week before last, and last week I found out how I did on them. It's a little strange that I did the best in the class that I had the least experience with. I scored pretty close to the mean on my CS test and Neuropsychology test, but on my Linguistics test I scored significantly more than one standard deviation above the mean. The only points I lost were the points that pretty much everyone in the class lost because of a question which wasn't clear about what it was asking. So that's that.

Well, except that I have another midterm on Thursday, and after that I need to start planning what I'm going to write a term paper on for my history of technology class. But there's plenty of time for that. In the mean time, I have another Saturday to spend at work.

In short, I won't be updating much the next two weeks. Why? The end of the semester is rearing it's ugly head. Here's the run down: Tomorrow I have japanese homework due. Wednesday, I have a draft of my cog sci term paper due, my last cog sci short report, a japanese vocab quiz, and I have to give a presentation on australia for geography. Thursday I have my last philosophy paper due, and friday I have more japanese homework due.

Then, next week: Monday I have more japanese homework due. Monday Tuesday or Wednesday I have my japanese oral interview. Thursday and Friday I have my Japanese Final, and Thursday I have my Geography final. Friday, my cog sci term paper is due. And all throughout I've got work work to do.

After then, however, it's all over except for two finals. These next two weeks are the tough two.

Alarms started going off at around 6:30, and I was up by around 8. I was a little tired, as I was up until 4 working on my cogsci term paper topic, which was due today in section. Though exhausted, I was relieved to find that my cold had mostly abated, leaving me only with a dry nose and upper lip and a slightly gummy throat.

After taking a quick shower, I grabbed the movies I had to return and walked what seemed like forever to Reel. Then I walked forever back, and then another forever to class, where I only found myself no later than usual.

Allow me to remind you that I have class from 9 to 2 straight on Wednesdays, so a lot of my narrative will involve saying "I then rushed to my next class."

After cogsci lecture, I rushed to my next class, where I started my japanese homework and half listened to philosophy. At the end of class I got my second paper back, on which I got a B+. Hurrah! I then wandered down to Japanese, which is thankfully in the same building, where I continued to work on my japanese.

I then rushed back across campus to my cogsci discussion, where I turned in my term paper topic and short report and got back my midterm. My TA said that the average on the test was around a 65%, and if you got an 80%, that was very good. Hence, I was reasonably happy with the 79% I got, especially as the only things I really missed were multiple choice questions on which I guess wildly, and which were worth 2.5% apiece. However, I started feeling really good about my 79% when I looked at the sheet that listed grade breakdown so far by SID, and saw that about 90% of the people who got 90% or above on the first midterm got 75% or less on this midterm. It felt good to find myself consistent. I also finished my japanese.

I then rushed up a hill, grabbed a cheese danish, and listened to a presentation on Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, The Phillipines, Thailand and Burma. I then rushed back down the hill to participate in a psychology experiement, which is required of students in psychology courses ending in 0. Having finished that, I rushed back across campus to turn in my Japanese homework by 3 o'clock, just as the sensei was collecting the assignments from the inboxes.

Talk about non-stop... I'm exhausted.

I forgot to mention it, but there was a reason I was extra not looking forward to this Wednesday, and that was because I was getting both my Cog Sci midterm back and my first Philosophy paper back.

First, my grades on these items: An 88.36% on the Cog Sci midterm and a B on the Philosophy Paper. Considering I didn't study too much for CogSci, and I wrote the paper while delerious at 3 am, both of those grades were great news to my ears. However, both of these events also brought to my eyes annoyances...

First, the Philosophy Annoyance: My paper was graded by a different TA than the one who is normally my TA. In my case, that wasn't a problem, but someone else in my class was graded by another TA after he'd had a draft of his paper reviewed by this TA, and the other TA who graded his paper really destroyed him, which just wasn't cool. Hopefully he'll get a regrade, because it's just not cool to have the person who you're expecting to grade a paper change out from underneath you after you wrote your paper with a specific audience in mind.

And the second annoyance: During CogSci, I glanced at my TA's notes, and the only people she had down for grade changes were people going from 93% to 95%, or 92% to 94%. Argh! Such anal people in the world...

So I got my last English paper back today.

I got an A+. Katie, the teacher of the class, who has been teaching English 1A and 1B for 4 or 5 years (she's a sixth year graduate student), said that this is the first A+ she's ever given on a paper.

This scares me. This makes me nervous. I honestly didn't think the paper was that good. Maybe her judgment was impaired when she was grading it? I don't know. I didn't think it was an A+ paper.

But do I look like I'm about to complain? For starters, this means that I don't have to rewrite that paper this weekend, and can instead devote the whole time to studying. I don't know how much it will pull my grade up, if any, because I didn't get A's on any of the other big papers. Maybe it'll get my grade up to a B+, though. I don't know. I'm still expecting about a B, though before I wasn't positive of a B. Now I'm pretty sure I'll get at least a B. I guess I could get motivated and take out the syllabus and all my papers and calculate what I should get, but I'm not that motivated. In fact, I'm downright lazy.

An A+! What's going on here? Something's fishy. But I'm not complaining. I'm just worried.

Well, the grade I got on this Midterm rather surprised me... I got nicked a point because I said that 7+4+2 was 15, when it's really 13. And I lost a point for not explaining how I came up with a recurrance relation I used. And that's it. I got 28 out of 30.

Woohoo! Yahoo!

I'd love to sleep more. I'd love to have a ton of time to just sleep and sit around and read and do whatever. Not to have to bother with all that stuff that has to be done right this very second. But sleeping more can't happen. It won't happen. I lose out on my precious sleep.

I'm currently enrolled in a full 16 units for the fall. 4 of those units are for an Art History class, which I'm taking exclusively to fill the Art & Lit breadth requirement in LnS. Now, under normal circumstances, 16 units would be a perfectly doable schedule.

But if you throw my duties as an RCC in there on top of that, and the occasional coding I suspect I'll find myself doing for Intelegenesis this fall, 16 units will just be painful. Eh, who needs sleep anyway? But then Steve pointed something out to me.

I can fulfill my breadth requirements with classes taken on a Pass/No Pass basis. For now, I'm enrolled in Art History on a Letter Graded basis. If it looks like it will be easy, I'll stick with the graded version, and it could give my overall GPA a bit of a boost. But if it looks like it will be the extra brick on my back which will make it break, I'll take the class p/np, and the class will be a non-issue.

I suspect I'll have to be careful not to be too lenient about the class, though. It would really suck to NOT PASS a Pass/No Pass class.

And with the re-discovery of the Pass/No Pass thing, I'm now again considering taking a Japanese class, to see how it goes. With Japanese, unlike Spanish, I have a fair amount of motivation to learn the language. I'd been terrified of the thought of taking a language class at Berkeley, because I knew I'd get reamed by it. I'd try my hardest and probably manage at best a B, I think. But if I can't get reamed, then what's the problem?

So in the spring I'm considering taking Japanese 1A on a Pass/No Pass basis, Philosophy 25B, to fill my History Requirement for LnS, English 1B to finish up my Reading and Composition Requirement, and Asian Studies 10 to fill my International Studies Requirement. If I took that schedule in the spring, then I would only be left with an American Cultures requirement and a Biological Sciences requirement for the college, and whatever requirements I have for CS. While I would in theory be able to apply for the CS major after this fall, I'm still planning on waiting until after the Spring, just so I can have all those requirements out of the way, and even more breadth showing up in what I'm taking. And if I can't take that combination of classes for some reason, I'm going to try to take classes that fill the same requirements.

So last I knew, I had gotten a B- in math. I was a bit disappointed by this, as I thought I had been doing B work, and when I worked out my percentage in the class, it was a B-. So I accepted the grade, and got on with my life. There wouldn't have been much use in questioning it, I don't think. But then a couple of days ago, my TA emailed me and said "Oops, I made a mistake when I was calculating everyones grades, and I told you a lower grade than you got."

It should be noted that when I first read this, I misread it as "You got a lower grade than I gave you", but I quickly reread it, figured out the right meaning, and read that my grade was actually 1/3 higher, so, since he reported a B- to me, I actually got a B. Woohoo!

In retrospect, I realize that, while I got a B- by percentage, I got the B with the curve. I knew I did pretty well above the mean on both midterms, and so the B- just seemed wrong, though I accepted it at face value anyway.

Perhaps there's a moral here? The only one I see is "Question Everything", but that wouldn't get much accomplished for anyone. I tend to question very little when it comes to grades, and I just take what I was given. This can be observed in my 61c grades, where I didn't even bother to ask if I could redo the homeworks that were missing from my overall grade, though in retrospect the extra points, while they weren't really necessary, would have been a nice cushion.

I'd been studying like a madman for my 61c final, when suddenly I realized that all I had been studying was The Memory Hierarchy, which was only about 1/5 of what would be on the final. I had this realization at around 0200, which meant I had around 15 hours until the final. So I read all the lecture notes from the second half of the course as quickly as I could, and eventually went to sleep at around 0800.

Having gone to sleep so late, it was pretty much a given that I would miss lunch. What was unexpected, however, was being awaken at around 1000 by a phone call, which I was too tired to pay full attention to, but it was for Michael, so that was alright. And then at around 1230, I was awaken by Keith, as he entered the room. That wasn't really his fault, though, and I don't hold it against him. And then I finally got out of bed when I was woken up when Michael entered the room at around 1400. So being a bit cranky from lack of sleep, I took a shower, and then, being hungry, ate most of my leftover Szechuan Chicken, and departed for my final.

By the Power of Szechuan!

Heh. I only wish I felt super powerful going into the final. As it was, I felt that I would do alright, but I felt far less prepared than I had hoped I would be. Overall, I felt that I would do good enough to get the A I needed, but it would be close.

When the Bell Tolled.

I spent the whole three hours on the test, and there were two questions I felt completely horrible about, two I wasn't too sure on, and another one which I had mixed feelings about. I wandered back to my room, angry at myself, and pretty certain that I would probably get a B+ in the class, at best.

So I finished up the rest of my Szechuan, as I had missed dinner to take the final, and then began planning what I would do the next day.

The Next Morning, the Verdict was in.

Computer Science people have strange sleep schedules. We all know this. Thus, the 61c finals were graded and our final grades were available by the time I woke up. Heck, they were probably available before I went to sleep, but I didn't check.

So I logged in, noted the login message which simply listed the point breakdown for grades, and slowly typed 'glookup', and after a few moments of silent contemplation, hit enter.

It should be noted at this point that the minimum grade for an A (not an A-, but a straight A) was 175 points out of 200. Going into the final, I thought I could miss 13 and get still get my A. 13 points out of 70 is a fair amount of points, so I figured I didn't have too much to worry about, but after I took the final, I was very worried. I assumed that my last homework grade would eventually be entered, thus giving me the 13 point allowance. I had given up on trying to get points for my homework assignment and lab assignment that had been lost, each of which were worth two points. As it turns out, my last homework assignment was also apparently lost, meaning I actually only had 11 points to spare on the final. I wish I had known this before the final. Or maybe not. I also wish I had tried harder to get my points back on the missing homework and missing lab, but at the time I figured I had plenty of breathing room. But those are things I can only regret now.

So anyway, after a few moments of silent contemplation, I hit enter. And then after what seemed an eternity, and what was in actuality probably upwards of 10 seconds, my grades flashed across the screen.

The first thing my eyes fell on was my score on the final, which was 59/70. I had missed 11 points, which, as far as I knew, was less than the 13 I had to spare. Then I saw my final grade, which was 175 1/3 out of 200.

It was around this point that I realized that my last homework had never been graded, but I didn't in particularly care, because I had got an A. Granted, it was an A by 1/3 of a point, but no one will ever see that. Unless they're reading this, but that's not what I meant.

So you got an A, so what?

Well, see, the point was I had to tell the story about how close it was, and make the story sound like I didn't get the A. Would the story have been better if I hadn't gotten the A? I'm not sure. It would have had a different tone, that's for sure, but I don't know if it would have been any better.

Anyway, I've got three more finals left, and I plan to spend the next three days doing math problems until I'm dreaming math. Granted, that won't help much, because I don't remember my dreams, but maybe, subconsciously, I'll be able to do Fourier series. But I don't start doing the math until tomorrow. Tonight, I'm going to finish up reading my Psychology, so that all I have to do Monday night and Tuesday is review what I've already read. And then, Finally, Wednesday.