Hello again and welcome to the beginning of the end. There are now officially two and a half weeks left in the semester. What does this mean? It means PANIC! I’m not actually freaking out, but I do have a ton of work to get done in the next two weeks before finals.
First of all, I have to complete my engineering programming project. I am working on a program that asks for an ammunition type and rifle type and then it returns velocity, distance and accuracy results for that specific combination of ammo and gun. It’s a relatively simple program to write but takes a lot of time to create all the necessary files and functions for it to operate properly. The other project I have to finish is for my Fluid Mechanics course. It is basically two problems that I need to solve. However, much of the information needed to solve them must be researched away from class time and from outside sources. Once those are done I will be a little less stressed out. Then all I have to worry about are my very difficult finals.
I found out that I have three finals on one day. At least I think I do. I’m not 100% sure for the time being. But I think I have three finals on Tuesday of finals week and one final on Wednesday of finals week. Then I am home free and ready for a flight back to California. Finals are going to be nuts as far as studying for them goes. I will just be happy to get through them and move to winter break. By the way, I think now is a good time to express how important time management is for college success. You know how all your life your teachers and instructors tell you to learn to manage your work efficiently. They were serious. You need to learn to manage your time wisely. I have something due every day of this week. It makes your life much less stressful if you divide your attention appropriately throughout the week. To go along with that, make sure that a part of what you schedule during tough times is a little bit of fun. Working for 8 hours straight is very draining. You do not want to do it, trust me. Take for example Monday night. I will be studying and doing homework for Tuesday and Wednesday, but at 2100 hours I will be taking a break for one hour to watch the show Heroes with my friends. It will just make time flow more smoothly. I will be studying pretty hard over the next few weeks and I will let you in on any mistakes or tips I discover in my next journal entry.
On to events outside of class. Thanksgiving, although a nice break from class, was possibly the most boring week I have ever experienced in my entire life. The campus was completely empty and there was nothing to do. Many of the campus based food sources were closed or on very limited hours. My parents were kind enough to arrange a turkey dinner from Winn-Dixie market, but the store unexpectedly closed early (even earlier then their holiday hours) and we were unable to retrieve this dinner on Thanksgiving Day. So those of us that were left went scrounging around for food and the car ended up at Denny’s. Let me first say, I did not eat there. You know when you watch a movie about Thanksgiving or Christmas and the Dad screws up dinner or something just goes wrong. Then the whole family ends up at Denny’s, because it is the only place open, and it is just the most depressing thing ever. I could not bring myself to live out that infamous scenario and decided to not eat there. I ended up eating waffles back at the residence hall. We did end up picking up the turkey dinner the next day and having a great meal the next day. It was actually really nice because they gave us a full turkey. Although I recommend making sure you have the proper preparation tool for turkey because it is not easy to carve a turkey with plastic knives.
To summarize the week, I watched a lot of movies (both DVD’s and Riddle Vision), I beat “Call of Duty 3” for Xbox 360, and I slept a whole lot. By the way, when you live on campus, watch Riddle Vision and rent movies from ERRSA. It will save you a lot of money on movie rentals and provide recent popular movies for your viewing pleasure.
If I could suggest one thing about Turkey Day, it would be to go home for the Holiday. This is especially important the first year. If you can’t make it the next years then so be it, but try and get home the first year. It is important to enjoy time with your family who you have been away from for a long time.
That’s all for now. I hope everyone had a great holiday and a great next two weeks. Check back for another update in two weeks and if you want to see some pictures from this past week and have a Facebook, then look me up for an insight into the holiday on campus.
Until next time, Good Afternoon, Good Evening and Goodnight
