Final
UGH I hate invigilating exams. I’d rather take an exam than stand around watching other people take one.
And then having to grade them.
Especially final exams, yo. Everyone just wants to be done with the semester at that point, including me.
ESPECIALLY FINAL EXAMS ON THE WEEKEND WTF
At least it wasn’t at 7 AM or 7 PM, as my final exams usually are.
UGH.
Hoy
I miss everything about undergrad…except for finals.
Like, the regular during-semester exams were okay. I never really minded those too much. But finals? I don’t know if it was because I was always taking 7-9 classes per semester and thus had a good amount of finals packed into a 5-day window, but they were always way more stress than everything else.
Which makes sense, of course, but still.
Though having to stand around and invigilate a three-hour final is not that much fun, either. At least nothing too chaotic happened.
FINALS SLDKFJSLFJSL
Final exams are always chaotic, especially if you have to try to coordinate four instructors and approximately 1,000 students across three different rooms.
BUT IT’S OVER NOW, so it’s time to grade.
Excitement overload.
Also, I’m pretty sure my blogs got lost in the mail. It says they got shipped, but it’s been more than two months now (I think?) and even with the postal strike that happened, I would have thought they’d be here by now. SAD NEWS. I guess I can just order another copy, it was only like $20.
Whaaaaaaaaaat
Holy crap, I did waaaaay better on that STAT 723 final than I thought I did. He must have curved it.
But anyway, that was the last final I’ll ever have to take for the last class I’ll ever have to take.
…
I say that, but then again, I’ve said that several times since 2008, so…
I’m a cayenne pepper. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU????/???
UGH, that test was brutal. Like, the problems were all very similar to the homework questions, but they were all similar to the six most difficult homework questions. The ones that required weird-ass tricks that were somewhat unrelated to the material we needed to know for the class.
But whatever, you know? Either I make it through this class or I have to stay an extra year and torment those who don’t want me around.
Those who shall not be named.
Yeah.
Blugh.
Why THE SHIT is 7 PM – 9 PM a valid time slot for a final exam? And why is it on the second-to-last day of finals week?
Oh well. Better to invigilate a final exam than take one, I guess.
Edit: So Scott and I decided to just stay on campus after the final and grade his section of STAT 217 tests. We were there until about midnight, haha. But at least they’re graded now so we won’t have to do them after we grade all the STAT 213 tests tomorrow.
BLAH.
I’M FREE
Had the final for Dr. Chen’s class this morning, which means I’M FREE OF THIS SEMESTER!
(Except not really. I have to invigilate a test on Monday at freaking 7 PM.)
BUT I’M FREE OF ANY CLASS OBLIGATIONS!
Now it’s thesis time for real. My goal is to get it done by May at the latest, but we’ll see.
I’m already ridiculously nervous.
End!
Okay, NOW I am officially done with the semester! Turned in my final paper and the corresponding data and R code. My grade will be what it will be—there’s nothing I can do to influence it now.
I also went on a nice 13-mile walk, which was especially awesome considering the fact that I have basically walked ZERO miles over the past week due to all the panic.
I wonder if the end-of-semester sadness is going to kick in this year. I haven’t felt it over the past few semesters, but who knows. That used to hit me really hard, man. Especially in the summer.
I should distract myself by packing. Instead, I’m going to distract myself by playing Quake. Non-semester mode, ACTIVATE!
(Sorry I’m so boring.)
Relief (sort of)
So this morning was the final for STAT 701.
(And I accidentally went to the wrong room at first because I totally forgot our final was in a different room than our normal one. Oops.)
It…it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, actually. There were a few super specific questions, but there were also questions that were very similar to the questions on our previous midterms.
So yeah. Now all I can do is wait for my grade and hope that I did well enough.
But that’s a huuuuuuuuuuge stress gone, at least. Now all I have to do is worry about my 601 project, which I’m really not too concerned about, since it’s just analyzing some data and then presenting said analysis, which is something I love doing, especially since I get to make a POWERPOINT!
(I love PowerPoint.)
Right now, however, all I’m going to do is go home and rock out to music for the rest of the evening.
I hate this time of the year
Things I should have done today:
- Studied
Things I did instead:
- Had repeated panic attacks
- Worked on my incredibly crappy fanfic
- Dealt with unreliable people
- Tried to ignore the present in favor of the future
- Freaked out because ignoring the present will cause me to have no future
- Made an obscene amount of stupid puns
- Cried in the corner
- Had more panic attacks
Another Productive Study Session Brought to You By End-of-the-Year Burnout
Calculus Dragon is the product of three Linear Algebra students who have their final on a FREAKING FRIDAY and just want to go home.
Yeah.
(Ignore the “L’Hopital” in the corner. I just felt like writing his name.)
WELL I BROKE THE COPY MACHINE.
Elaboration: After our Proofs final this afternoon (which was surprisingly easy), I had to go copy the tests for STAT 251 (‘cause, you know, I don’t plan ahead like I should and instead waited until the night before the test to copy them). So Wayne and I went back to Brink. We went up to the stats department floor and he worked on his SAS project while I started the copier.
The first ¾ of the copies went fine, but then the machine stopped so I went to check on it. I figure it was just out of paper; I was making 145 copies, after all.
But no. What was it out of? Staples.
Replacing the staples in that particular copier is the hardest freaking thing ever.
So I manage to mangle the damn staple holder to the point where I’m pretty sure it’s broken. I’m totally freaking out because I’ve got 37 more copies to make, and Wayne, with his seemingly boundless patience, tries to fix the staple holder for like 15 minutes before we’re both like, “okay, screw this” and I leave a frantic note with the gist of “sorry, I broke the staple holder ‘cause I’m an idiot” and went to Kinkos to make the remaining copies.
Got home at 9:45. I have my probability final tomorrow at 7 AM.
Screw finals week, man.
Nerrrrrrrrrrvous
Linear Algebra Saturday Study Session!
I honestly don’t know which final I’m most worried about. I have three—one each on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday—which is good ‘cause I have extra time to study, but bad ‘cause tests make me ANXIOUS and waiting to take said tests makes me OBSCENELY ANXIOUS.
Also, they’re all comprehensive. I don’t think I’ve ever had a semester where all of my finals have been comprehensive.
Haha, welcome to math, eh?
VvVvVvVvV
(In Alice Cooper voice)
SCHOOOOOOOOOOL’S OUT…FOR…SUMMER!
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII LIED…IT’S…FINALS!
Anyway.
I’ve taken like 400 classes at UI and this is the first time I’ll have a final on a Friday.
GROSS.
In not-even-slightly-related news, I found this Tumblr about 15 minutes ago and am entirely in love with it.
Everyone’s cranky today.
I think Christmas Carnage is probably one of the most underrated Rage Quits Michael’s done.
Anyway.
I’ve got my last two finals of the year tomorrow: calc II at 7 AM and then computer science at 7 PM. I honestly don’t know which one I’m more worried about. If this semester screws over my GPA I’m going to be pissed. I already screwed it over with Linear Algebra in 2009, though, so I don’t know what I’m complaining about.
Juuuuuuuuuuuust complaining.
Bye.
I am Golfer, hear me Fore
I pwned that calc final. Thank you, Leibniz (and Newton)!
Have some sillies in celebration.
STATS MARATHON
Holy crap, I’ve never taken a 5 hour final before.
What’s even better is the fact that it was a 5 hour stats final.
Wow.
Sorry, I can no longer think straight.
I love you, mom!
Happy birthday!!
Also, can you make me good at math? ‘Cause I’ve got my Linear Algebra final in less than three hours.
Stats + Primes
So I finished my stats final today. The 3 questions asked resulted in 27 pages of answers, and I think I did pretty well. Here are some things on which we were tested:
- starplots
- biplots
- principle components analysis (PCA)
- exploratory factor analysis (EFA)
- computing the variance of a set of principle component scores (stupid eigenvalues)
- explaining why fitting an EFA model to original data is the same as fitting it to the standardized data
- finding the Fisher direction and standardizing it to unit length, then finding the related Fisher ratio
- finding the value of the Fisher ratio along the first PCA direction
- finding within group variance/covariance matrices
- computing posterior probabilities using the Bayes formula and the normality pdf’s.
ALSO THIS.
Freaking awesome!
I think my favorite’s the non-primes.
Why must finals week be AFTER graduation?
Well, I didn’t have a panic attack like I did last semester…probably because I know my 4.0 is impossible.
Whatever.
One paper and one online test left, and then I’m DONE.
THURSDAY, PLEASE HURRY UP AND GET HERE.
Ugh.
HOLY CRAP I SURVIVED.
Sorta.
Right now I’m dead, due to my frantically moving out of the dorm this afternoon.
Therefore I bid you goodnight. Or whatever.
Happy birthday, Rob!
Stress = stats ability?
Huh.
Um, wow.
You know that miracle that I was wishing for yesterday? Um, I think it happened. Either that or stress gives me incredible statistics abilities, ‘cause I swear that stats test was the easiest test I’ve ever taken.
What the hell.
Now to freak out about Symbolic Logic!
Sorry the blogs are short; I’m just in freaking-out mode.
The world! The world! The world is on fire!
Have you ever had a panic attack?
Have you ever had multiple panic attacks in a row?
Yeah. That’s fun.
Tonight I stood (or was curled up in the fetal position, rather) on the steps leading to the Statistics department for quite some time, due to the fact that I couldn’t really move. Or breathe, really. I have a big stats test tomorrow at 10, and I’m really, really freaking out over it, obviously. I’ve never felt so hopeless and utterly afraid in my life.
I need a miracle tomorrow, seriously. This 4.0 is desperately needed.
Indiana Jones and the 25 Credits of Doom
I’m sorry, Rob. I don’t mean to be so freaked out, but I’m under so much freaking stress right now I’m about to die.
Honestly, this 25 credit thing was basically a breeze up until dead week started. Seriously. Now it’s hell on earth.
Will that stop me from attempting to do 28 credits in the fall?
Of course not. You know me.
OOH! OOH! But guess what I found!
RICE UNIVERSITY.
Behold! This is one of the professors there:
Mark A. Kulstad
Emphases: LEIBNIZ, History of Modern Philosophy, Epistemology.
This man, I want him. If I can’t stalk Leibniz, I’ll stalk the guy who studies him.
Oh, and the school also held the first annual NORTH AMERICAN LEIBNIZ CONFERENCE back in January. Amazing.
Eigenblogger 