Final Final

I took my last final exam of the semester today. I am officially out of school for the summer.

I was thinking that I would probably get a B in the class. I've had A's on all my work, but I know for a fact that I missed 5 days of classes. Yeah, I know, I know--it was unavoidable, I assure you. The first time, I did not call the teacher and let him know before class began, but for each subsequent absence, I phoned his office before class and left a message, stating that I would be absent. I figured that covered 2 excused absences, leaving me with three, which would deduct points from my total.

Before we began, the teacher made some announcements, handed back errant papers that had never been collected, then he had a few people stand while he announced that they had only been absent twice all semester. We gave them a round of applause.

Then he called one girl's name to have her stand, and he announced she had missed 1 1/2 days (she had left early one day.) Again with the applause.

Then he called my name! Me, and a few people after me. He announced that, according to his records, we had only missed 1 day. HHHHUUUUHHH????? The guy that I sat next to all semester looked at me like "Yeah, right!" I leaned over and said it must have been because I always called. Shortly after the folks with perfect attendance got their round of applause, the teacher confirmed my guess, stating that he knows life sometimes gets in the way and that when people made the effort to let him know in advance, he didn't count it against them.

So I may get an A after all. Still, I could be on the bubble because of the final. It consisted of two parts--a take home analytical essay that he gave us last week, and an in-class objective exam that we took today. I know I nailed my essay. I'm good at that stuff. You may not be able to tell it from my rambling here, but I actually write well. Everything that I wrote for this class all semester got A's with glowing commentary, so I feel very confident with that half of the final.

However, the objective exam was a different matter. It spanned 3 texts and all of our in-class notes. He allowed us to have all of our materials with us, but even then I could not find answers to some of the questions he asked. There were 30 questions, and there were 5 about which I had NO idea. I put answers in for four of them (3 were multiple choice, the other two were fill-in-the-blank.) I wrote an answer on one fill-in-the-blank question, but the final one asked the translation for a certain phrase, and for the life of me I could not remember ever hearing that phrase. I knew which text it was being drawn from, and after completing the rest of the exam (which was quite easy), I spent an extra 25 minutes thumbing through the text, hoping to God that the answer would pop out.

It didn't. I spent 10 more minutes checking the other texts, though I knew that was futile. So I had to leave it blank. That always saddens me. If I could have even come up with a reasonable guess, I would have felt better, but I was at a total loss.

So now I'm done. It's just a matter of waiting till the grade posts to know what my status is. Next step is to start saving money for next semester, though technically I need to find a job and EARN money before I can save money....

Blech

I haven't felt much like blogging for a while. I got laid off from my job last Wednesday. I didn't see it coming, and they gave me no notice. "Corporate downsizing." Lovely.

In honesty, I needed to move on--it was a part-time job, which was great for my school schedule, but not for my wallet. So I'm on the job hunt again. I'm looking for full-time with benefits at this point, and school will be my secondary consideration.

On a positive note, I have started cycling, so I am sticking with my plan to get fit, despite being kind of depressed. It's probably helping to distract me, since I'm putting a lot of thought and planning into my excursions.

I did have one other really cool thing happen--on Sunday, I went with my brother down to La Jolla, and met one of my all-time favorite cartoonists: Berkeley Breathed, the creater of Bloom County and Opus. He was very cool, and he did a quick sketch of Opus in my scrapbook.

So even on the blah-est days, there can be good things happening.

Read the book

A friend has a blog elsewhere, and he had made a comment about a particular TV show becoming banal over the years. Someone piped up with the comment "Read a book!"

He politely declined, indicating that not everything being broadcast is junk, just as not everything being published is gold.

This interested me for several reasons. First, being out in the dating world you tend to find a really strong dichotomy--people who watch NO television and look down on those who do vs. people whose entire cultural relevance is centered around what they've watched on the tube. There are other similar dichotomies--art lovers vs. sports fanatics, "cinema" enthusiasts vs. the-guy-who'll-watch-any-movie-playing, outdoorsy types vs. cloistered types. It's like gray doesn't exist anymore--it's either/or, baby, so get used to it.

Also, I am a bookworm. I love a book, magazine, blog--something that engages me with the written word. But there are some amazing TV shows and movies, and I would never tell someone to chuck one for the other.

I guess what bothers me is that while it's fine to have preferences, what makes us think it's fine to judge others for their preferences? The condescending tone ("Oh, I don't own a TV!") gets to me after a while. Granted, as a nation, we're a bit too lethargic in general, but this particular friend is quite active and doesn't waste every spare moment being passively entertained.

So does the fact that I don't like the snobbish attitude make me an anti-snob snob?

Movie Night

As much as I enjoy movies, I rarely ever go. A friend convinced me to get a NetFlix account, but even with that I hardly ever watch movies.

My brother frequently passes off DVDs to me to watch, assuming that because I have more free time, I'll get to them before he does. It seems to make sense, though I haven't really lived up to his expectation.

He grew frustrated with this, and wasn't going to give me a new DVD he had bought, saying "You won't watch it anyhow." I assured him that I would, and I sat down that night to watch it.

I've watched 3 movies in the past week--Rocky Balboa, The Science of Sleep, and An Inconvenient Truth. From my brother, I still have about 7 or 8 DVDs, and I have 3 from NetFlix.

I don't want to sit on my butt for that many hours at a stretch. I'm already too sedentary, and having hands that are free while watching movies tends to make me snacky. I'm warding that off by doing some simple scrapbooking while I watch, but it's still not a lifestyle I want to adopt. I'm trying to become more active, improve my health, not become even more motionless.

But it's hard to resist the appeal of a good movie. I don't regret the time I've spent on what I've watched, I just need to balance it with some activity. My latent laziness is fed by opportunities like this.