School's out for summer!

I am really glad to be done with school for a few months. I really need a break from it for a while. And no more commuting to Sylvania!

I was a little worried about my grades this term. I wasn't feeling motivated after the first couple of weeks and started to slack off. There was a ton of reading, which wasn't a problem, but I procrastinated heavily on all of my essays (a total of 10 this term) and wasn't really very into studying statistics as I should have been. Even with all of that, I still feel that I learned a lot. My final grade average for PCC will likely be a little under 3.80. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to be more dedicated and committed to school if I want to keep an average like this in PSU. At least most of it will have to do with economics. And I'm hoping the summer break and a new school will help me to be excited about it again.

Statistics II  (MTH244) - This term was more about applications of statistics while the last term was learning the basics. I wish that there had been more time for this class. I could have used another 2 or 3 weeks. It felt kind of like a little too much was getting crammed into this one class, but there wasn't enough for a third term. Or maybe it was just me. My exam (3 of them) and worksheet (3 also) scores generally weren't as good as they were last term. Deciding which significance test to do is still a bit confusing to me. I was worried because I had to get at least 155 points on the final to get a "B" and after taking it I wasn't very confident. I haven't seen my final, but grades got posted and I did get a "B". I'm still not sure I did "B" work. The instructor was retiring after this class and I put a little "Have a great retirement!" thing on the last page (bonus question that I didn't have enough time to answer), so maybe she was feeling generous. I'm hoping that this is pretty much the last math class I have to take.

History of Middle Eastern Civilization (HST104) - Tons of reading. Only one essay, which I could have done a lot better on. Higher than average scores on both exams. 100% scores for all online discussions. I did learn a ton about the Middle East and why things are like they are. It was a confusing mess that I never had the patience to learn about before. It's still a little confusing, but things are a lot clearer now. And I definitely have a better understanding of the Crusades now. I learned way too many incorrect things from TV and movies. The lessons and readings were all pretty neutral and seemed fair and honest (very different than "Fair and Balanced"). I was a little suspicious of one of the students though. She was a Muslim who didn't seem to have much real world experience. She seemed sheltered and ignorant that there was anything besides her particular flavor of religion. I called her out on this once (she was saying disparaging things about Shia Muslims. She was a Sunni) and she feigned knowledge and intent, but it mostly stopped after that. Some of her responses seemed coached or written by someone other than her. I wondered if she was having one of her relatives post some of her stuff. Or the instructor was conducting some kind of social experiment. Whatever the case, I feel that I never went anywhere near inappropriate and tried to stop responding to her most of the time. I did ask her to clarify some of the things she said, but her replies were usually vague and frequently questioned by some of the other Muslims in the class. The instructor was mostly hands-off during the class. I really don't know why we pay more for online classes. You probably get less, the teacher does less, no classrooms are used, etc. Online classes should be cheaper if anything. Kind of a rip-off. Overall, this was a fairly easy "A" for me. The only one this term though, I'm sure.

Native American History (HST218) - Wow! This class was packed with new knowledge goodness! I've been wanting to take this class for a while and I'm glad that I was able to finally fit it in. There was a lot of reading for this class also. We went through the entire textbook (that usually never happens), had two other books to read (one of which had an essay assignment, the other had a lot of important info about the Indian Wars of the 18th century), and read a peer-reviewed article and write a paper on it. Our midterm and final exams were all take-home essays (7 of them for both). I procrastinated too long on most of the essay stuff and could have done a lot better on them. I keep telling myself that I won't do that any more, but it usually happens anyway. I took copious notes for this class. If I could have written faster I would have taken even more. The twice a week lectures were the main source for essays so I wanted to have plenty of material. We were limited to that, dot-edu and dot-gov web sites, JSTOR articles, and the three required books for sources so it was much easier to take good notes than to do tons of research and more reading. For my journal article review I choose one about Prophetstown (on the Wabash River in Indiana) because of the proximity to Fort Wayne and the association with Little Turtle, Anthony Wayne, and all the battles and stuff that I never bothered to learn about when I lived there. Indians meant next to nothing to me when I lived in Ft. Wayne. There were tons important events that happened in this area of the country. I had no idea. I even had numerous Indian friends in Elko but I never bothered to learn anything about their history or culture even then. This class made me realize just how complicated the Indian story is and made me appreciate and care even more about them. We've been bad to them. Really bad. Manifest destiny, racism, Eurocentrism, etc. And we still are not being particularly nice to them. There was so much to learn. We skimmed and skipped tons of stuff. And this is only Indians who were indigenous to the United States. Apparently next year this will be two classes instead of one. There were a lot of people in this class with very few dropouts. From what I understand this class is unusual in that way. My stats class only finished with 12 people, while there were nearly 30 in this one. I haven't got grades back for this one yet. I have no idea how I did on any of the 9 essays. A couple of them were OK, but most of them got done at the last minute and could have been greatly improved. I think I will be lucky to get a "B". Shame on me. I've always liked history and should have done better. If I thought there was a future in it, besides teaching, I would probably major in history instead of economics. I wish I had time to take more history classes.