One more to go

I finished my statistics final about 2 hours ago. I think I did pretty well, but I doubt I will get better that a "B" on my overall grade. It's kind of strange since I feel like I know this stuff way better than I knew the material for calculus, which I got an "A" in. I think my present instructor cares more about making sure her students know the material rather than giving a higher grade for whatever reason. I tried not to worry too much about this final and get stressed out. I think it worked pretty well.

In my philosophy class, I opted to not take a final exam. All of my points were from attendance, homework assignments, two weekly online discussions, and a couple of extra credit assignments. So, I am completely done with this class, although I might make a couple of more online posts, even though I have meet the posting requirements, because the discussions are still going on. The number of posts have been declining in the past few weeks and its getting hard not to ridicule some of the ridiculous stuff that's being posted. Its like some of these people have already forgotten everything we learned in the past 10 weeks.

I only have one final left - political science. This one will likely be pretty hard and I'm going to have to spend a lot of time in the next two days studying for it. I'm not really looking forward to the exam and will be glad when it is over.

Then I have a week off to try to get rid of some more of the stuff I don't need. In the next two weeks I have to do that, find a place to live, get moved, and then start a new school term. It's going to be busy.

Wasting time...again

I don't feel like doing any more school work tonight. Even though I should. I have a group presentation in my political science class on Friday that I should be working on. I hate this project. I have had to keep my mouth shut about gigantic holes in our project. I tried to be the voice of reason during our first group meeting and I just kept getting shut down by the other starry-eyed pie-in-the-sky members of my group. I'm at least 15 years older than the next oldest member and it shows. Plus we each have to get up and make a 5 minute presentation on our specific parts of the project. I'm not looking forward to that. I should have already turned in my bullet points to the guy who is doing the group's powerpoint presentation, but I still have until tomorrow night and will probably procrastinate as long as possible. I shouldn't, but I just can't get motivated to work on this stuff. It's not like I don't know the material. I think I probably know a lot more about it than the other group members. I just don't feel inspired and am not looking forward to it. It would be smart just to dive in and get it done, but I don't feel like doing the smart thing. I just want it to be over.

So, in the spirit of wasting time, here is a list of some of the music I'm listening to tonight.

• Swan Dive - Hed PE (one of my all time favorite songs. Some might wonder why this is)
• Take Me to the River - Al Green (smooooooth)
• Beautiful Disaster - 311 (there is something about the harmonics of this song that I really like. This song really isn't all that good, but it speaks to me if I don't listen to the lyrics)
• Try Again - Aaliyah (died too young. I would have liked to hear more from her.)
• Love and Happiness - Al Green again (like butter)
• Back to Black - Amy Winehouse (she's a complete disaster. Wacked out druggy and alky. A total skank. But I LOVE her voice.)
• Rehab - more Amy Winehouse (if you know anything about Amy Winehouse this song is totally ironic and kind of funny in a sad way. This is the first of her songs I ever heard and thought it was something from the 60's. I rate her voice right up there with Patsy Cline)
• Use Me - Bill Withers (I've been getting into more late 60's and early 70's R&B/soul and this is a classic)
• 13 Years of Grief - Black Label Society (not much into heavy metal anymore, but these guys have several songs that I really like)
• Will It Go Round in Circles - Billy Preston (more R&B goodness)
• Tell Me Something Good - Chaka Khan & Rufus (this song makes me feel good. I think that's the point.)
• Shining Star - Earth, Wind, and Fire (this is a great 70's R&B classic. But I almost puked in my mouth when I found out it has been covered by Stryper and by some stupid band I never heard of that was on a Hannah Montana album. I'm very disappointed. I hope I can just forget these ugly facts.)
• My Baby's Got Sauce - G. Love & Special Sauce (alternative hip hop/bluesy/R&B mixture. A little different than most of the stuff I listen to)
• Jungle Boogie - Kool & the Gang (how can you not like this song?)
• Cisco Kid - Method Man and Redman (sort of a hip hop remake of the classic War song)
• Crash - Methods of Mayhem (I really wanted to hate this song after I found out that Tommy Lee founded this group. Reminds me of "the good old days" and makes me want to ride my motorcycle.)
• Cowboys From Hell - Pantera (I still love these guys. I'm not too old!)
• I Just Want to Celebrate - Rare Earth (even more R&B goodness)
• Hold On! I'm Comin' - Sam and Dave (I first found out about these guy from "The Blues Brothers" which is the greatest movie ever made!)
• I Wish / Superstition / Uptight / Higher Ground - Stevie Wonder (all masterpieces from the Master)
• For the Love of Money - The O'Jays (why not?)
• Mexican Radio - Wall of Voodoo (kind of a wacky mix of new wave synthesizers and a spaghetti western soundtrack. Fun stuff.)
• When Worlds Collide - Powerman 5000 (science fiction power rock! The album this song is from is  "Tonight the Stars Revolt!" and has a bunch of great stuff on it.)

Spring 2011 classes - cheaper books

My plans for which classes I was going to take didn't quite come together like I was hoping they would. The course description for the one class I really wanted to take (BA199 - Sustainability in Business) changed sometime in the last month. I hadn't gone back to look at it until Thursday night, which was the night before registration opened. I think this is a new class that hasn't been offered  before and the description and prerequisites were changed. This class requires having taken the intro to business course first. I don't have time to do that. This is going to be my last term at PCC. Oh well. It's not a class that I absolutely have to take. I just wanted to because it sounded interesting and applicable to what I want to eventually do.

I did end up taking 2 classes at the Sylvania campus again. I wanted to stick with the same statistics teacher for MTH244. I'm signed up for the 9-11am class again, but this time on Mon. and Wed. This class is all about applications of the material that we are learning this term. I already have the textbook and only have to buy a workbook for $12.70.

I kind of wanted to take another class at Sylvania that started right after math (11-1 on M/W) to cut down on commuting time, so that had some affect on the other classes I was considering. One of the classes that would work was one that I had been wanting to take for the last two years, HST218 (Native American Indian History). The instructor is rated pretty highly, but with tough essays and a lot of reading. I think I will probably be challenged in this class and will end up liking it. I just hope there aren't any group projects. The books aren't terribly expensive and I can get buy two of them used and one new for about $71. That's about $22 less than new. Pretty cheap as far as textbooks go, especially for three of them.

For my third class I really had to put some thought into it. A bunch of different classes that seemed like interesting electives were only 3 credit classes. I need 12 credits for full-time student status and this would have only given me 11. I had no interest in another one credit class as they require way more work than you might think. So I ended up picking another history class, HST104 (History of Eastern Civilizations: The Middle East). And its online so I don't have to drive anywhere and can probably work on it when ever I want to. I do like that about online classes. But I will miss lectures. Sometimes they are had to substitute for. This instructor is also highly rated, which is usually a good sign. People are commenting that this is a tough online class with lots of reading, but with fairly easy tests. That sounds pretty good to me. Although I've had some interest in the subject of this class, I probably would have never seriously considered taking this particular class right now if the recent events in the Middle East hadn't been happening (Woo hoo! Go Middle East! Exciting!). There are two not terribly expensive books required that I think I can get used for about $43, saving about $36 off the price of new ones.

This could potentially all change. Probably not, but it wouldn't be the first time I changed my mind just before the term started.

I'll mostly just be glad to get this term over and done with. The last two weeks are always the most stressful.

Oh, and I'm moving at the beginning of the month. More on that later.