Last week of Calc

I realize I’ve skipped a week or two of updates, there hasn’t been much to talk about and I was out one day two weeks ago so I needed to catch up. Its been slow all summer, but the one day that I am out my inbox fills up. But, I’m totally caught up now.

As for me, two weeks ago I woke up with Bells Palsy (paralysis of the face) on the right side. Didn’t quite know what was going on, took some benedryl thinking it was al allergic reaction, when that didn’t help I went to the ER the next day. They took blood to test for lyme and treated me for “general infection” because bells palsy is caused by a boat load of different things so they treat the most broad till they can narrow. After a week of that medication, I followed up with a doctor at the clinic at Hershey Med. (Side note, PSU students should definitely look into the health insurance, esp if they don’t have any through a job or their parents, ER bills are HIGH!).

So, fast forward a bit, I got the lyme results and faxed them to the dr to translate them (I was confused). They found an accute lyme infection, so I’m being treated for that. Which means 21 days of medication. And yes, my face is still half droopy. It doesn’t look as bad, especially if I’m not making any expressions. But if I try to smile or raise my eyebrows, you can tell. Its supposed to work itself out, but it could be weeks or even months. My eye doesn’t close all the way, so I have to put this ointment in it and cover it at night. The tape is irritating my skin, so I’m gettin kinda annoyed. lol

As for class, this is the LAST WEEK of calc. Two more class periods, tomorrow is review and is optional and then Thursday is our exam. I am so glad its just about over. And my A still stands, woohoo. I hope I get a good enough grade on the exam to keep it. The last webwork assignment is due on Friday, it has 22 problems and I think I have answered 4 of them. Its hard. I’m hoping to finish it tonight, I really want to get it done and run away with my 100% (150 pts) for webwork.

Speakers

If I have counted correctly all along, this is week 5 of calc. Somehow, the professor’s grading scale is amazing, and my exam grade is listed as a C. I will take it. So it makes my homework average A, Quix average A, and Exam average C. I like the odds lol.

My boyfriend graduated from Kaplan on monday. It was a nice ceremony. He got the outstanding student award for his program, he was surprised (the winners weren’t told ahead of time). He deserves it, he has a high gpa (had a 4.0 till last term, but hey.. 3.8something isn’t too shabby!) and he’s always helping his classmates and everything.

I do have a point for bringing that up. The speaker they had, I forget his name, but he started off talking about how he was trying to prepare to give his speech and what he wanted to say, and that he wanted to say something memorable, and so on. His son had told him that he was only 2 years out of high school and couldn’t remember the name of the speaker or what he had to say.  So in attempt to be memorable he gave his speech in the form of a top 10 like Letterman. I can only remember a few of the 10. One had to do with getting a job and the difference between a job and a career. A job being either the abbrievation of Just Over Broke, or… something like the cycle of earning money so that you can spend money you don’t have to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like and drive the car you don’t like to the job you don’t like working for the boss you don’t like… etc. Thats not word for word, but I’m sure you get the idea. And the last one was some kind of metaphor for success and how you get it.. all I remember is waking up and setting yourself on fire and letting others watch you burn. That sounds not quite right out of context, but it made sense. The idea was to get up and do something and show others you’re good at what you do.. or something like that.

So he was somewhat successful in being remembered, Its been 3 days since the graduation, and I don’t remember his name, but I remember some of what he said. Of course I wasn’t in the graduating class, so really the speech wasn’t aimed at me. But, I take in all the speakers I listen to no matter why I’m hearing them, and whatever sticks for whatever reason usually gets applied later.

It got me thinking.. I am 15 years out of middle school, I can remember the song we sang (Lean On Me), and we exited to I Believe I Can Fly – which was not the song we practiced, but I can’t remember what the other song was. There were student speakers, don’t recall who, and a commencement speaker, but I don’t remember who. Lets jump ahead. I am 11 years out of High School, I don’t remember the song, all I can remember is that there were 2 students that sang it and the rest of the class was supposed to either join in at some point or that was another song. I truely can’t recall. There was one student speaker from each of the school’s units (kinda like campuses only smaller) and the valadictorian spoke as well, and the principal. There was also a speaker, but can’t recall who. And I don’t remember music that we exited to. Ahead further. I am 4 years out of Community College, and I can’t remeber anything much about that one. It wasn’t very organized, the only instruction we were given is that if we wanted to sit next to someone, stand infront or behind them in line because the 2 lines were going to part in the isle, so standing next to them wouldn’t help. So now, I am just 2 semesters from graduation. This coming May someone is going to stand up at the podium, and talk to the group of students and gathered family and friends and want to say something memorable… but it seems I’m remembering less and less from each graduation. The most memorable speech I’ve heard, that I have remembered for at least the 3 – 4 years I’ve been here is a welcome speech that Chancellor Hanes gave to the incoming Freshmen one fall (which would have been my second semester here, since I came the spring before). She talked about the many definitions of the word pride and how at penn state we can be part of the pride that is penn state by becoming part of the family (pride of lions) and being the best student that we can be (doing something we can be proud of and our families can be proud of). There was more, thats just the general idea.

Calc Exam

So I know its early for a “weekly update” but, I gotta say, I’m a little mad. Our exam was in angel, which I expected.  There were technical issues ALL OVER. First, the professor’s microphone was causing problems so he was having to go out and come back even before class started. THEN when I looked at my exam, it didn’t all load. Like I had a true/fale question that asked if for a given function, the roots were 2 given x values. I had no given values. My question read for the function (x squared times something with an x plus something) are and the roots… I was confused. So I looked at number 2 and it read for teh given function are the values x=9 and roots. Like no fuction and only one x value. So I skipped them while I was waiting for the professor to come back so I could ask him. When he came back, he filled in the blanks for me and I went on. Further into the exam I had a question and NO ANSWERS, like 4 blank spots. So I asked him about that, he told me to solve it on paper, skip it, and we’d talk after class. So I go on.. and I hear someone say they had 2 identical answers for one question and so I looked at that question and I had 2 missing answers! So then he asked if others were having the same problem and everyone said no. So I asked if I should log out of angel and go back in. Well that fixed it. Finally, but I had to go back and fill in all the answers I had already filled in. So by the time I was done I was so frazzled, I thought one of the answers wasn’t listed so I chose the none of the above answer. WRONG. I submitted it, got a 68, looked back over what I got wrong, wrote down what I thought was right (because some of the answers he had were not what I had, but I didn’t know how they were wrong).. and sent the prof an email because I didn’t have time to stick around. There were only 2 of those, and on further thought (where I put none..) the answer was there, it was actually the same as the other slope question. GYAH! I was thrown by a negative sign. ALWAYS a negative! So, my quiz and homework averages are both A so this exam won’t to too much damage. I will do better on the second one. I am so glad there are only 2 exams. AND that there are only 3 weeks left! WOO!

Calc, week 4

Weekly calc update..  we have an exam on thursday. I am not looking forward to it. Even though, in theory I should be fine. I have all my notes, formulas, examples and calculator, at my fingertips for use. And its multiple choice. I just know that I’m not good at math, in general, and there is 3 chapters worth of material on it. That is the part that I don’t like, its stuff from the very beginning until material we will finish covering tomorrow.  Jess will be over tonight to work on the homework that is due on friday. We have stuff due friday, saturday, and sunday, but the professor said that some of those might be pushed back till next week. I can’t see how we could finish up what we need for the exam, and possibly review, AND get 3 sections of new material all done in 2 days. I asked if there would be a review, which he said the day before the exam the class can ask questions and he’ll answer them, that is the best type of review (in his opinion). So that will probably be most of wednesday. Today we started on the last part of new material for the exam, so we’ll do that tomorrow.. maybe one other new thing (but I hope not). I am hoping of the 5 things he has set due this weekend, that at least 3 of them are pushed back. Jess and I will do at least one of them tonight, and start the other based on what we learned today. I swear if I wasn’t working with Jess, I’d probably fail miserably. This way, we do the assignements and turn them in (which, webwork lets us know right away if they are right or not) and we figure them out. We get different numbers, so its not like we can copy answers, but its still nice to be able to lay out the problem and have two brains working on it.

Week 3

The third week of summer calc started this week.  So far I’ve got 100% on the webwork (homework that gets graded) and a C average on exams. Soo thats something like a C in the class so far, which I’m happy with.. I’d like to get a B, but I don’t see that happening.  I’m working with a friend who is also taking the class, so that helps. We meet up once a week and do the webwork for the week. We are up to the middle of chapter 2 already, which is still things I’ve seen before during calc last semester. It was just at the late drop deadline that I dropped the class, so I got pretty far in, I just wasn’t passing. This time, at least I am. Well, our exam is next thursday. I hope I do well on it. I don’t like that it will have 3 chapters of material on it.  But I’m hoping that with my notes available to refer to formulas and things, that I’ll be ok. They are multiple choice questions, so maybe that’ll make it a little better.

Last night were the mtv music awards. I don’t normally care about awards shows, but the trailer for New Moon was going to be debuted so I watched. Twilight/Twilight Cast got 5 out of 6 awards they were up for. They got best fight (rob pattinson and cam gigandet), breakthrough performance (rob), best male performance (rob), best kiss (kristen stewart and rob), and movie of the year. The only thing they didn’t get was best song, paramore was up for decode but miley cyrus won with her song from the hannah montana movie. The trailer was AWESOME, at least I thought so. Looks like they’ve kept a lot of the book elements in the story. It also looks like they are working with a bigger budget, especially where the special effects are concerned. JacobWolf looks amazing, Jacob well.. Taylor.. looks amazing.

There was also an exclusive  “sneek peek” and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, but the clip they showed wasn’t new really. It was sort of extened from piece of an early trailer where dumbledore visits young tom riddle on the orphanage. We just get to see a little more of the burning wardrobe with young tom looking amazed. But still, always glad to see some harry potter. And I can’t wait till july to see the movie. Its gonna be awesome!

World of Warcraft update, I am level 71 and almost finished with the quests in netherstorm… which I think will complete Outland. Then I can go into the new areas for the wrath of the lich king expansion and start questing over there. I picked a mastery for alchemy, I went with transmutation. I’m not quite sure what thats good for, aside from making gold on the items needed to gain the transmute mastery. Its actually the easiest one, that doesn’t require a instance run. But its pricey, unless you are lucky enough (or smart enough if you do this on a second toon) to come across (or save) enough motes to make primals of the elements needed. You need 4 primal mights. To make 1 primal might you need a primal earth, water, fire, air, and mana. For each of those primals, you need 10 motes. Some motes are easier to come across than others. The ones that are harder to find cost more at the auction house. You also need a Philosopher’s Stone, which is a trinket that you make for yourself and then equip. I believe this is needed for all transmute things. Between farming and buying, I finally got my 4 primal mights, turned them in, and got the mastery. I guess I need to train up in alchemy to get more recipes, then maybe I’ll see what is special about the transmute mastery. What I’ve read on some WoW forums is that the transmute mastery is a good way to make gold.. which I could use.

Summer Semester

My online calculus class started this morning. I logged on about 15 mins early just to make sure everything was still working. The first 50 minutes was spent getting everyone else set up, able to talk, able to see anything and then review the syllabus. It kinda reminded me of any other class on the first day, it usually is all about  how the class will run, what the schedule is and so on. So we had about a half of actual course material. The online homework probablems are open now, I’ve done one problem so far. But we didn’t get very far in class. I’ll probably finish that section of problems when I get home tonight. I want to keep up or a bit ahead since I do still have notes from last semester that I can use to help with the first couple sections.

Last week was too short. As much as I wanted to do nothing, I did find myself doing stuff. Laundry, of course I feel like I’m always doing laundry. Friday I planted tomato plants and attempted to save a couple cucumber plants that were in a topsy turvy but couldn’t. Those things are NOT easy to use and after losing THREE plants to it, I hope that mom doesn’t bother with buying more next year. The one with the strawberries is going good, the holes are on the sides for the plan to grow out of. We have berries growing, they’re green, but they’ll turn soon. The regular veggie one, that you are supposed to be able to do tomatoes of cucumbers in, doesn’t work at all.. it kills the plant. I can’t understand, but the ones that I’ve taken out of there it looked like it pinched teh plant from the root in the foam thing that is supposed to hold it in place. I tried to re-plant the cukes, but they’re dead. I planted the roots in the ground anyway, and left what was there of the stem just to see if anything happens.

I did play World of Warcraft, and it took some internet searching to find the SIMPLEST thing to get exalted status with stormwind. I can’t believe I never finished quests in that one low level area, and then forgot about it. It took me about an hour to pick up EVERY quest in Lakeridge and do them, turn them in, etc.. the ones that had to go to SW I did, and ended up exalted without having to finish 2 or 3 of them. I bought a low level horse mount because I didn’t have enough gold to buy the epic, then went out to where I am questing now and earned up enough gold to buy the epic horse mount. I have a pinto (low level) and a white steed (epic).  My next target is either Exodar or Ironforge to get exalted in. Eventually I’ll get them all, there is some kind of achievement for that.. and there is an achievement for 10 mounts too. I have 6 far: a frostsaber (low level tiger), a swift mistsaber (epic tiger), the swift zhevra (the recruit a friend mount), a snowy gryphon (FLYER!!!), a pinto, and a swift white steed. My next training level is expensive I think, and so is the epic flyer, so who knows when I’ll add to my collection. Probably another exalted status something from one of the other alliance areas.

Do Nothing Week

Well, I have to work from 9:30 – 4:30, but thats ok, I like my job. When I get home I don’t have anything like homework or tests to worry about.

Grades are in, I did ok, compared to how I thought I was going to do. I got a C in programming (which I expected, I’m not good at programming – at all), and  C in Project Management (I went into the final with a B-, must not have done well on said final, but its ok, I passed woohoo!), and a C+ in Bi Sci, which is awesome because I didn’t do well on 2 of the exams but I knocked everything else outta the water. I think everyone got 100% on exam 3 because it was take home, so if it was turned in with answers, chances are they were the right ones. All of my quiz grades were 100s (her quizzes are easy as long as you show up, and she drops the lowest, so my zero grade for the one class I missed where she gave a quiz, was dropped), and the few assignments she gave I got all As, so its balanced out nicely. I know I completely bombed that final, but I wonder how many more points I would have needed to make that C+ into a B-. lol Over all not my best semester, but with the classes I had, I did ok. I should have done better in Project Management, that was the final I studied for! But I think I looked at the material too much. My gpa is still in good standing, not quite a 3.0 yet, but I’ll get there by graduation (NEXT MAY!!!). Hopefully this one class over the summer (Calc..) I’m able to do well in to give my gpa a little boost. I’m not counting on more than a C, but I can hope. The material online is making it sound like this professor wants to give us every opportunity to do well in the class.

I checked blog stats today, I do that from time to time, and I have over 3400 hits. That is amazing! I hope that those reading are finding the school stuff I talk about helpful, and the random stuff at least a little bit amusing. Its been a while since I’ve pointed out the ways to contact me, or ask a question to have answered in one of my entries, so here it is: jenimparato@psu.edu.

Finals are OVER!

I took my last 2 finals this morning. It wasn’t quite as horrific as I thought, programming was worse than project management. I’m pretty sure I did well enough to get decent grades in the classes. My grade for Privacy Law was posted, I got a B-, I really thought I’d get an A because I got 100+ on the final and good grades on all of the assignments, but I did get Bs on 2 of the exams. Either way, its a good grade, I’ll take it. The only grade I’m a little worried about is bi sci, because that teacher is so frazzled she does everything at the LAST minute, so points are flying all over the place.. and I don’t know how I did on the final, probably not fantastic. But its ok, all I need is a C, and I’ll be happy.

I have a week to do nothing, well, come to work and then go home and do nothing, before my summer class starts. That is going to be interesting, Calculus online. At least I’m taking it with a friend, so hopefully more of the information sticks in my head. I so hate math. All math. Tonight there is a “practice meeting” with the professor in the virtual classroom to make sure that we can log on and see and hear everything.

We presented the check for Boobies Ball to Leigh from FYB last week, this is the latest news release about that.  Boobies Ball Recap.

A small WOW update – I have reached level 70. YAY! I want to finish up in the area I’m doing quests in now before I head over to the new areas for Lich King. I need a group to help me run through Tempest Keep, for a book I need for the potions mastery for alchemy. I’m not really good in dungeons unless I’m 30 levels too high for them. I ran my boyfriend through the Stockade and Razorfen one night, got him some XP and money, possibly some items.  I was able to do 2 low level stormwind quests in the stockade, which helped a bit with the sw rep that I need to get so that I can buy a horse mount. Actually, an epic horse. lol

Finals Week

I have 4 finals this week. One today at 3, Privacy Law, which should be easy the professor all but gave us his exam key. He did a jeopardy type review saying “these are questions similiar to the final” meaning.. these questions will probably show up in some form on the final. So, pretty much the whole class (of 7 lol) took notes. He also told us there would be an essay question, which he told us EXACTLY what the essay question is. And then gave us a 3X5 index card and told us to fill it with whatever information we wanted to for the final or essay, front and back. The front of my card has the essay info written all tiny, and the back has the info from the jeopardy game. And the extra credit will be a question about each of the cases that he assigned us to read (but forgot about) while he was away, I have that info on the back of the card as well. I only had notes that I typed on 2 of the cases, so before the final I’ll skim a couple of the others to get the main points and add it to the card. But he told us, 15 questions and the 5pt essay, plus 6 extra credits. There is no way to NOT get 100% on this exam. I like easy finals on the first day of finals week. yay! Tomorrow I don’t have any finals. Wednesday I have a final at 1pm, BI SC. I have to finish the last 2 chapters of the take-home final, which I’m glad is worth 100pts, over the 50pts that the comprehensive part of the final is worth. We also have, as part of our final, a 100pt test on the last couple chapters we went over. Thursday is going to be the worst, 2 back to back finals, starting at 8am. Programming and Project Management, same professor, same room, 10 mins between them. And this professor writes a 2 hour final – EVERY SEMESTER! So thats 2 solid 2 hour finals. Oh.Fun.Day

Next week I start a pretty routine work schedule, well no. Next week I can work from 9:30 – 4:30, but the following week until the beginning of July I have that online Calc course that I have to sit at my computer from 9 – 10:30 Monday – Thursday, so I will start my day at 11amm unless of course my professors lets us go early. Wow that is gonna be weird.

Annoyed

Its presentation week, or the last week of classes before finals. I have a group presentation today and two tomorrow. This is not why I am annoyed. The presentation for today is finished and we are ready. One of my presentations tomorrow is ready, project management. That one has been ready for over a week. But, the presentation due at 9am tomorrow is NOT ready. Well its 1/3 ready, my part is just about complete. I have my program (well form), all of my code, my documentation, the “main content” as far as the market research and my form is concerned. The paper is completely layed out, all it needs is my group-mates parts, and a summary, so that I can do the table of contents. And then there is the powerpoint. Which, is easily pulled from the paper and documentation and code snippets. I have come to the point that I don’t care. I’ve worked on the paper a little this morning, I have class this afternoon, and when I get home I’ll finish everything. If I get nothing in my email or on Angel when I’m ready to print, so be it. I will NOT come up with 2 other prototypes. I will NOT send out ANOTHER email. I will NOT wait till midnight for their stuff. AND They WILL NOT present with me because I WILL NOT add anything tomorrow morning. Because once I print the paper, and make sure the powerpoint is complete as far as I can with my information, I will SUBMIT it in the dropbox along with a note to the professor.

Of course, the professor is fully aware of the issue. I am in another class with both of my teammates for Programming. The one individual is ALSO in my Project Management group, and was the cause of some issue, and may end up being taken off of our powerpoint because the person hasn’t added anything to it and has got until 5pm today before it gets submitted, and if it gets submitted without anything adding anything to it, the person’s name gets taken off. My PM group and a quite lenghtly discussion about said issues last week, and the professor tried to be fair about the whole thing. He knew the issues we had at the beginning, but we were able to resolve them. That all fell apart when said member didn’t show up at a group meeting to help finish the paper and do the powerpoint. The conversation escallated to the point we had to go to the professor’s office to try and settle it. The professor wasn’t taking a side or anything, just pointing out where things went wrong (like agreeing with the fact there was plenty of time to let someone know they couldn’t make it to the meeting!). We left there and it was kinda settled, all the person had to do was add a lesson learned to our power point and re-upload it. This has yet to be done. SAME person didn’t show up to work on the Programming project we have. The whole group agreed to meet during CLASS time to put it all together because the work day was given to us by the professor to do JUST THAT. And STILL didn’t come. Sent me a text at 9:30 saying “be there in a bit” but at 10:45, STILL wasn’t there and class was over. NO excuse not to come during a time we’d BE IN CLASS ANYWAY! The other team member came LATE like 10:30, but at least he was “almost finished” but I was also told the work would be posted to our team files last night and as of like 2 mins ago still NOTHING. But even though I am annoyed, I don’t care. When I get home today I am going to finish the summary, and table of contents. Then do the powerpoint of my things, and when its all done if there is nothing for me to add to it, so be it. I’ll print and submit. I don’t care.

Yeah, the Myers-Briggs thing annoyed me at first, I thought it was real negative, but ya know.. I am kinda like that. I don’t care about excuses. I don’t care about small-talk, I want to get to the point. In a project, I want to GET IT DONE. I don’t want to deal with people. Especially people who fall short of what they say they will do. I’m not perfect. I don’t say I am and I don’t even try to be. I just want effort. I give effort, I like to see effort. I’m even willing to help if I can, I refuse to do other’s work. I’ve done other’s work before. did a whole presentation in one night by myself (well with the help of my boyfriend who goes to another school) because group members just didn’t do a damn thing. I’m too old to deal with people who can’t manage their time. I have the same course load any average IST student has, and I’m involved in clubs. I got my work done. No excuses why others can’t. I refuse to believe there was no way work could be finished when it was supposed to be. RE-FUSE.

Finals are next week and I couldn’t be happier. Not that I enjoy tests, I’m just glad its over. And for a week I won’t have anything to do but go to work. And then, well I’ll have calc, but its the only class I have.