Finals: Day 1

Finals are this week and someone (cough, cough, the new curriculum vice-principal, cough, cough...) came up with the brilliant idea that finals, previously held over three half days each of two 75-minute periods, could be condensed into two normal block days with three 95-minute periods in each. Furthermore, it would also increase efficiency if these two finals days were put after three full, normal days of school, instead of being put in the usual, shorter, four-day week. So basically, this week has amounted to be one of the absolute worst of my existance. Let's first consider today's events:

6:00 AM - Wake up
7:00-9:50 AM - Go in before school to get started on the 16 problem essay test for physics. In the 20 years that Zaraza has been giving this test, the highest score ever was about 140/160. Thankfully, he curves it, and it is only worth 10% of our grade. Considering that I have about 98% in the class, it doesn't really matter. On the test, all of the problems are entirely conceptual, and points are actually deducted for using equations in the response. While I was extremely skeptical of the merits of this plan earlier, I can understand his philosophy now. Everything else we do in the class is entirely math-based, and it tends to be the case that people become so engrossed in their equations and math that they forget what things actually physically represent. A conceptual test is a good way to test whether people actually understand the physics that they apply mathematically. Surprisingly it ended up being a little bit easier than I expected. I'm pretty sure I got most of them right, except for one bizarre question that read: "Describe in detail how to remove dust from a jacket by shaking it." I had no idea what the question was trying to get at; so, with considerable arrogance, I made up a ridiculous scheme whereby a large Van de Graaff generator and massive electric field are used to eliminate the problematic dust. Despite being doable and relatively inconsequential, the test was very long--nearly 3 hours during which I typed three and half single-spaced pages.

9:50-10:04 AM - Break. Talk with Jon and Leeor about physics test.

10:04-11:39 AM - Take the 2nd half of the Spanish final: 130 multiple choice questions. On the composition section of the test, which I took two weeks ago, I learned that I got 98%. The multiple choice was extremely long and extremely easy. There's not much more to say. I talked to Sra. Flores after school, and she said that I missed 1 out of 100 on the grammar section, and 4 out of 30 on the culture/literature section (contained questions on all of the stories that we read months ago and that I forgot to review).

11:39 AM-12:19 PM - Lunch. I ran to the Hillsdale Library to drop of some books and pick up The Age of Reason by J.P. Sartre. Then I ran to the school library to swap my government book for the economics book (finally I get to start econ next semester!). Eat some bread in a few idle minutes.

12:19-2:10 PM - Take the calculus final. Culpepper decided to make it all multiple choice with no calculator allowed. I was actually glad that calculators weren't allowed because it meant that there weren't any weird numerical questions. It was interesting because it was very much in the style of the AP test (except for the fact that it was harder and there realistically wasn't a time limit) in the sense that there were very few brute-force differentiation or integration problems, but a lot of the questions were pretty difficult. I talked about the answers with Culpepper afterward, and while she didn't grade my test, I'm almost positive that I got 100%.

2:10-3:30 PM - Go to Thai Corner (now called Krua Thai) to eat... delicious.

3:30-4:15 PM - Speech practice... sort of.

4:15-6:00 PM - Go to Jon's house to study for ecology exam tomorrow. Our consciounesses (probably not a word) eventually just evaporated and our studies decayed into a state of semi-conscious, vegetative stupor.

I have no idea why I wrote this entry. The worst mistake of my life. I'm going to go take a bath. It's interesting how the entire body begins to ache with exhaustion after a lot of mental exertion.