Winter Break! December 31, 2009
Posted by acc73 in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farAfter two weeks at home, I already feel the death grip of boredom choking around my neck. I have done everything I need to as far what I want to do while home. It’s a pretty short list: visit friends (check, went to the bar and had lots of fun), eat (check, people are more willing to cook for you if they feel like they haven’t seen you), receive Christmas presents (check, pretty sweet receiving money.), and catch up on my TV shows (the season finale of Glee was so good!!!! They won sectionals, next up regionals!) After that, all I can do is sit on the couch and sing to myself. I need something to do!!
Quickest Final Ever December 16, 2009
Posted by acc73 in : Uncategorized , 9 comments10 Minutes, I arrived at 7:10 and by 7:18pm I was re-checking answers and handing my final to the professor, that’s all it took for me to finish my final.
Senior year can be considered the peak of your college career, because you have a full understanding of the game of college at Cornell and you know what to do in order to get by and be successful. Coming into EAS 1050 also known as dinosaurs, one-credit pass/fail course I knew all I needed was a C- and no one would know if I slept through all of the class and studied only a few hours and I would be good to go. The final was a different experience both good and bad.
A dinosaurs class full of non-majors you think maybe talking briefly about T-Rex, spending a class or two watching the Jurassic Park triology (or is it four I don’t remember anymore), but no this professor who mysteriously looks like Santa Claus with his long white beard and his jolly belly wants to give us the gift that keeps on giving: a long technical lecture.
By the time the final arrives, he asks if anyone is going to go for the record of finishing the final in three minutes, and I think this class is a joke, but come the final it was anything.
Question 1: Which one of these is not a dinosaur? Ornithischian, terapod, therapod, tetrapod.
Uhhhhhhhh, were is the simple part about matching the dinosaurs name with its picture I know what a T-Rex is!
So I blindly checked any answers which made sense and hoped that I pulled out a solid C- in the class to show that I was satisfactory in my knowledge of dinosaurs. Judging by the looks on my friends’ faces, all I could do is just laugh and say on to the next.
Study Week December 10, 2009
Posted by acc73 in : Uncategorized , 2 commentsNothing like study week to have a few unscheduled days to catch up on a semester’s worth of learning I was clearly to lazy to do. Finals have already begun last night officially at 7pm with students already moaning and complaining about how hard the exam was. Walking to the library, I can hear the conversations of people calling their moms and dads saying, “I failed the test” or “it went ok I think the mean is going to be low anyway”. It’s moments like this which can really depress you at Cornell, because you know eventually you are probably going to be on the other side calling your mom all teary-eyed and sniffling trying to withhold the disappointment from a bad final. I know the feeling and I have made the call, but I try to look at things at a glass half full sort of way: at least Cornell prepares me to accept and learn from failure, because after your first good cry after a bad final you mentally prepare for the worst in your head and more willing to work hard to avoid that situation as much as possible. Tonight is my first exam out of five, so here’s to getting over the freshman anxiety of finals!!!!
Last Day of Classes December 4, 2009
Posted by acc73 in : Uncategorized , add a commentToday marks the last official day of classes, and this probably is the most exciting day of the semester for me. Not because it’s the last day of classes, but because I am always interested to seeing how each professor decides to end their semester. There are a dozen different ways for a professor to end the semester: completing his last lesson and then everyone half-heartedly claps at the end of the semester or they may give life lessons at the end of class. This year was a little bit different as my finance teacher got creative when it comes to their last class.
First Prize: Weirdly enough the class I hated the most had the best ending of the semester because Rich Curtis did a little bit of everything in his last lecture: game show tips, trivia, youtube videos, life lessons, and even a magic trick. The last portion of our class was about personal finance and an essential part of personal finance is recommendations about what to do if you are on a game show.
Scenario 1:
If you are on the game show, let’s make a deal and you have the opportunity to switch the door you choose in the first round, always do the switch. The probability of the switch being right is 2/3 while the probability of being right with your original pick is only 1/3.
Scenario 2
On Wheel of Fortune, don’t leave it up to chance be sure to buy vowels before you give away your turn choosing the wrong consonant.
Scenario 3 If you are on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, call the professor for sports questions.
After gaining knowledge about how to be prepared for a game show, he then proceeded to have a slideshow of all 300 students in the lecture. After the picture slideshow, he proceeded to share his life lessons. The biggest one that struck me was the people who seem the hardest are probably the people who care about you the most. Maybe, just maybe all these months the professor has been a jerk it was for the greater good or maybe not.
You would think this would be it, but no no, it continues next he presented a musical tribute to finance first, a youtube featuring a Columbia Business School MBA student impersonating their dean who lost the Federal Chair job to Bernanke. Check out the link. Then we were provided with a musical of finance starring Rich Curtis singing about options and all other aspects of finance with his TA’s providing chorus.
Finally, he performed a card magic trick. First he had a stack of about 300 cards with one person’s name on one card. Next he picked a student to randomly shuffled the deck and out of that stack a student was picked to pick a card out of a random deck of cards that the student shuffled. He then proceeded to guess the card three times and all the guesses were wrong. Lame trick right!?!? Until he told the girl to read the ithaca journal classifieds for the week!
Personals
| JENNIFER,_you will select the4 of Spades_in class this week!! 12/04/2009 |
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He knew the person that would be selected and the card they would pick days before we even had the class!
Needless to say I was pretty impressed with the ending of the class, and
Just Don’t Care Anymore December 2, 2009
Posted by acc73 in : Uncategorized , add a commentThis is around the point where everything academic related seems to be coming to a close. I have signed my offer letter with NBC Universal, talked to my advisor and as long as I pass all my classes with a D I am going to graduate with a degree and job in hand. It’s an empowering feeling, but my motivation to do work is coming at a standstill. This means times that would normally be used to complete work is used for higher priority goals: playing Madden 2010 or my favorite hobby as of late napping. A nap is a time robber, because you set your alarm for a quick half-hour nap next thing you wake up three or four hours later wondering where the day has gone and just shrugging it out and deciding to watch TV. I tried to pick up a new goal of completing the 2010 LA Marathon, but it’s become hard trying to find the motivation to be physically fit. I am a black man graduating from an Ivy League school with a great job, pretty much I feel like I have the pick of the litter when it comes to graduating. All I have to do is get this finals session over and the next semester then the World is Mine!!!!!