06 May 2010

Real Life / School and website maintenance

For a week now, ever since the final exam on the 29th of April, I resisted checking my final grade for my macroeconomics class. I truly felt that my efforts in the class absolutely did not pay off in terms of grades. While I understood the majority of the material that I was being presented, I was graded on whether or not I was able to take exceptions to the material and explain/understand them.

I took the test Thursday thinking that I had ground to make up due to past grades and thinking that all the past grades would probably damn me to a failure (for a $2000 class). I needed to perform almost perfectly. The test I was given was nothing more than Groundhog day--testing on material that was beyond the material covered. At this point, we were into realms of "what happens with X when Y, Z, alpha, and Superfly are changed?"

My mindset was, "I don't need to rehash all of the reasons that I've been semi-depressed for the past four months, and relive all the problems of this class." I'm not a strong person in any sense of the word. I did seventeen-hour days, twice a week for four months to take the class. At least for me, they sapped my energy. Granted, it wasn't all the fault of the class. It was compounded by the fact that work, which takes up eight of the seventeen hours, was and still is highly unsatisfactory.

Since grades have been posted for two days, I steeled my nerve and decided to check online. I received a C+ for the course, to my surprise. It is tied for the lowest grade I had ever received in a college course. On the other hand, I didn't remember any high-school calculus over twelve years later and I definitely didn't know much of macroeconomics, so I consider this somewhat of a victory. I think that the grade can be attributed as much to participation and effort as to scores on assignments. Of course, it could also be partly due to the rather bad class evaluation that I submitted too. Whichever reason, I don't care.

I'm glad to close the book on this stressful period. This was my hardest university course ever, which makes plenty of sense as it is in the graduate level. I had a far easier time with Chinese and Japanese than I did with macroeconomics.

Thankfully, this means that my university education continues, and with hopefully far less difficulty. I am more confident that I can continue and pass the remaining courses I need to pass. It may mean that I have to take tests and possibly write a thesis in order to earn a Master's degree, but I think I will be up to the task. I did entertain thoughts of withdrawing, and almost did in February. However, it worked out in the end and I am extremely glad for it.

Yeah, this is nothing but a self-congratulary post while I'm still sitting on the non-publishing of the most recent Megane 6.7 MSTing (which by the way is pretty funny if I may express my opinion). On the other hand, ten years of writing MSTings has been a good hobby, while my Master's degree will hopefully allow me to choose my employment and my compensation for the remainder of my life. I love you guys, and I definitely want to keep writing MSTings for you, but unfortunately this stuff comes before. The positive is that if I get to the point that I don't have to keep struggling to make ends meet, hobbies will definitely be allocated more time, including this writing habit I picked up more than ten years ago.

I've rambled long enough. New MSTing will be posted by this weekend, hope everyone enjoys it, and thanks for the support!

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