Coming Back to Earth

My brain is starting to firm up again. Studying for finals was rather consuming in both time and energy. In some ways, the snow was a good thing. I couldn't get out of my driveway for at least two days so there wasn't much else to do but study. My last final was Wednesday night (biochem). Walking out of the exam room was anticlimactic but I felt lighter and very much less stressed than I had for the previous few days!

The biochem prof put an extra credit question on the final: draw a picture of your TA for four points. Not only is that a generous set of points, I figured that artistic ability wasn't an expectation, that simply drawing anything at all, even a stick figure, would suffice. I made a minimal effort, drawing the head of my TA (she has a distinctive face). I found out later that some people drew these elaborate scenes, for example, their TA dressed in robes, standing on clouds and holding a glucose molecule with flames shooting out of it (and that person in particular probably should have spent more time on his exam and less on the drawing). But some people didn't draw anything at all! That was four free points they threw away.

When I was getting settled in the exam room for my Animal Nutrition final, my first thought was, who the hell are all these people? Most days there were around 50 of us in lecture. But there were more than 90 registered for the course, and while they couldn't be bothered to show up to lecture, they dragged themselves into the final. Almost every day, the instructor gave informal pop quizzes (show of hands only, nothing graded) and she put those questions on exams nearly verbatim. Besides the fact that college education in the US is expensive (and I happen to know that quite a few of these young people work so they surely have some vague idea of the cost of things), there is sort of the larger issue of the need or desire to learn the material. I can only shake my head.

There are any number of strategies for studying and taking exams. My primary preparation method is grinding through all material that has been made available to me. Biochem prof videotaped the final exam review. I didn't have any burning questions and didn't attend the review session itself but I watched the tape online. Animal Genetics prof didn't assign anything directly out of the textbook, which was in fact listed as optional, but quite a few of the homework problems were drawn from solved problems in the text. I worked all of the problems in the text, checking methodology and solutions before tackling the homework that had to be turned in, and read the text for good measure. But as I listen to other students in the classes talk amongst themselves, it's clear that they are not using any of these resources. Again with the head-shaking.

Things are starting to return to normal. I'm giving the house a thorough deep cleaning--the squalor was starting to really annoy me. In addition to usual cleaning tasks, this means I'm taking light fixtures apart to wash the glass parts, oiling the kitchen cabinets, tightening up wobbly chairs, wiping down walls and baseboards and vacuuming all sorts of crevices and crannies where dog hair tumbleweeds lurk. I'm tackling a room a day.

Today the snow has at last melted enough that I was able to take the dogs out for a walk. Since in these parts nobody shovels sidewalks and the cities don't plow side streets, the super cold temps turned all the fluffy snow into compact ice pretty quickly. It was far too cold for Harry in particular (it got down to 3 F here one night and 8 F the following one). There's no way I'm going to take him out in that kind of weather. Following our very long walk this morning, they are all blissfully crashed out in their chosen napping spots--Mimi in an open crate at my feet (she's never more than a couple feet from me, ever), Harry over by the gas stove, and Azza back in the bedroom.

Things will be pretty quiet here at CircusK9 for the next three weeks. I'm working on arranging more volunteer/shadow opportunities, and am going to try to get a job or research position for next term. I might have something lined up for the spring term already but that's months away. I'm thinking about posting brief reviews of books that particularly piqued my interest just to keep the writing part of my brain active.

As a side note, for those of you that know me personally (I'm pretty sure based on the stats that I have a couple of regular readers that stumbled on the blog by accident), I have FaceTime and Skype. Email me to get that info if you want it.