Never Miss an Opportunity to Pee

Just checked my final grades--I made an A in Biochem! That was the only class in which I didn't have a solid A going into the final. I am so relieved. I thought that I did really well on the final exam but those kinds of feelings can be tricky. When you leave an exam thinking that you did really well, it either means you did really well or you buggered things up so badly you can't even recognize how poorly you performed. On the other hand, I studied myself blind for that exam. For the final, we were allowed to bring a notecard which we had to get from the prof in advance. Here is one side of my notecard (the scan got clipped but you get the idea):

Clicking on these low-res images brings them up in all their original res glory.

Keep in mind that these are just the items that I chose not to commit to memory. There were many other bits and bobs that I felt that I knew well enough that I didn't need to put them on the card. The notecard was 5x8 inches so there was a substantial amount of real estate available; I only used half of the other side. Still, I spent days working out a compact notation system for the things that I wanted to put on there.

I ended up with 500.50 points out of 500 in Animal Genetics and scored 103% on the final. I kind of tanked on the second exam in Genetics with a score of 90% so doing well on the final plus the extra credit points I racked up throughout the term really helped me. I've long had a personal philosophy that included the tenet "never miss an opportunity to pee". I'll have to add to the list "never pass up a chance for extra credit points".

French and Animal Nutrition were in the bag before I even started preparing for the final exams and projects. Those were my As to lose, in other words. By luck I got a great partner for my final French oral exam. We had to have a 45 minute conversation with each other while the instructor listened but we could chose from among 12 different topics--she gave us the list in advance. My partner was amenable to practicing and we put in almost 4 hours of practice for that 45 minutes. So of course we did well. He has the craziest sense of humor, very dry, and always surprised me with some new joke or twist even when we were traveling through familiar conversational territory. You know you are advancing in a language when you can tell and laugh at jokes. Prof complimented me on my variety of conversational segues and bridges. I was very pleased that she noticed because I had in fact been deliberately working on learning and using those types of phrases. Things like "So, Andrew, tell me..." or "Well, I think that ..." or "And then what?" or "That's neat/strange/interesting/too bad!" or "Really?". We all use these kinds of phrases all the time in conversation. They are what make language flow and feel natural. If you can use them in a second language, you sound more natural.

All in all, a successful term. I may only have a couple more terms left before I have taken all the classes that I might need. The plan is moving along!