Done With Finals!

Dead Week and Finals Week were always my favorites at Stanford. I know, I'm a little strange, but let's just say for argument's sake that I wasn't the *best* student out there. Dead Week was always the indicator that I had to get my ass in gear and start learning everything that I didn't need to know for my papers or midterms.

As a result, I would cram like nobody's business during Dead Week and Finals Week. It was really cool to finally be learning all the things that I had been hearing about from my professors throughout the quarter. Everything started to congeal into a single picture of the material I was supposed to have been learning. And then I'd take the final and move on to the next class.

This was typically a satisfactory strategy except for two notable cases. #2 was when I pulled an all nighter during spring quarter freshman year for my Comparative Politics class. This was back when I thought I was going to be a Poli Sci major. The class was about as boring as going to a four-hour meeting about what color wires should be used in setting up an electrical system in a building. Except that this meeting lasted for 8 weeks. Suffice to say, the day before the final, I had read 210 out of 2500 pages of material. Once the final came around, I think I was in the 1600 page range - not bad - except that I started falling asleep while writing my Final Exam essays. At one point, I tried to write, "In the world's eye" (which, by the way, is an idiotic statement, but I digress) and fell asleep while writing it. When I woke up, I saw that I had written, "In the world's hyena." Awesome. Except not.

#1 was my Computer Science final during my sophomore year. I was taking three classes in Spring Quarter, two for my major and an Intro to Programming course. For those of you who know me well, I am NOT a programmer. I have an analytical mind on occasion, but programming is not my forte. I stopped paying attention in class after the last midterm and figured that since the Final would be Open Book and Open Notes, I wouldn't have a problem. When I got the final exam, I flipped through all ten pages of it to see what topics were being covered. On page 7, I thought to myself, "OK, I think I know how to do this one," but every other page had stuff that was almost completely foreign to me. I had never had such a sinking feeling ever. So I spent the next three hours learning some of the concepts and then applying them to the final exam. Luckily, I took the class for a grade and not pass/no credit. Apparently, a D+ is a passing grade for the graded option, but is a No Credit for the easier option. Funny enough, before I got my grade, I prayed that I wouldn't get a C in the class. I should have specified.

Fast forward to this past Monday and Wednesday when I had finals for Accounting 100 (intro to accounting) and Accounting 121 (Financial Accounting). I was ready and had told myself that I wasn't going to be as behind as I was when I was an undergrad. And I'm actually proud to say that I was much more on top of the material this time around. Believe it or not, the Accounting 100 final was more difficult than the Accounting 121 final. I thought that the test in 121 was much more indicative of the material we had learned whereas the 100 final really covered some minor/esoteric items. It was more of a "I'm just making sure you read the textbook cover-to-cover" sort of test and those are really difficult to study for.

Anyway, I got A's in both classes. I really wanted 100% in Financial Accounting (I hadn't missed any questions on the two midterms), but I got two wrong. I know it sounds INCREDIBLY nerdy and all that, but the competitive side of me REALLY REALLY wanted to get them all right.

Next time I will.