disalarming

An hour ago, I decided to lie down in bed for a minute, which turned into an impromptu nap. Thankfully, it was short, but it was definitely not something I needed to spend my precious time doing. Between now and Friday evening, I have to do the following:

• Study for my five-chapter comprehensive Chinese midterm
• Write an outline/tentative script of sorts for this outlandish love story/tragedy musical for oral Chinese
• …learn and memorize dialogue and lyrics for above musical
• Pack for my upcoming weekend getaway to Nanjing
• Finish planning my Nanjing itinerary: book hostel, pick out which sights to see, etc
• LAUNDRY
• Tidy up my room a little so it’s not an absolute mess when I get back from traveling

I barely have time to breathe, let alone do anything else, as my pending exams are going to be the death of me. Which is why this week, my motto is “rest is for the weak.” Rest? Who has time for that?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

10 days. One final paper (already written, but needs to be edited). Three exams. Two shifts at work. Two huge suitcases that need to be packed. One room that needs to be emptied and cleaned. Countless goodbyes.

That’s all that is standing between me, home and this summer.

I can totally do this.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

In high school, I never really bothered doing any of the extra credit my teachers sometimes offered. My grades were always excellent and most of the time, I just couldn’t really be bothered to do it. However, in college, that has changed dramatically.

If my professors offer an extra credit option, I do it. If my professors allow students to edit/revise work and hand in an updated version of the original assignment for an improved grade, I do it. If my professors provide an option that involves anything with boosting a grade, I do it. (This might sound like there are a lot of extra credit options in my classes, but there actually are very few extra credit opportunities. When they do happen, they come in all different shapes and sizes!)

It’s not that my grades are worse in college than they were in high school. On the contrary, my college GPA is higher than my high school GPA. It’s just the fact that there aren’t as many overall points that make up a course grade in college, particularly as classes are run on a semester-based system rather than a year-long one. If, over the course of 15 weeks, a class only has three 60-point tests that comprise your overall grade (so, 180 points total for a college class compared to the hundreds of points for a high school class), extra credit does wonders if one of those three tests has a poor result.

Take what happened in one of my classes today, for example. We received our midterm exams back, and the overall class results were all over the grading scale. There were several 100’s but there were also a handful of failing grades (the lowest score was 25%!). However, my professor had offered an extra-credit option of writing a short essay over break, which I completed. Thank goodness that I did, as the extra credit points saved my current overall class grade from getting walloped by the midterm exam!¹

For the tl;dr crowd: always do the extra credit. It never hurts and it just might save your grade!

1. I did not do poorly on the exam, but my exam grade was lower than my current grade in the class, so the extra credit saved my class grade from dropping any further. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I have a million and one things to do as I wrap up my first year in college and prepare to move back home for the summer. I have no idea how I will have the time or energy to do it all, but somehow, it must be done!

• Finish studying for my remaining exams
  I have two exams left. One is for French, and the other is for Chinese. The only bright aspect about these two exams is that I have already done (and aced!) the oral portion, so I just have the reading comprehension, listening, grammar, and translation component of the exams. Still, it’s nerve-wracking; French is one of the hardest Romantic languages, and Chinese is one of the hardest Asian languages. Remind me why I’m double minoring in French and Chinese again?
• Ship my cousin her birthday package
  My cousin has sent me loads of drawings and photos she’s made during the course of the year to use as dorm room decorations. Have I sent her anything in return? Um, I sent her a Christmas gift, but that is far from enough. I have already picked out something, both of which are National Cherry Blossom Festival-related, and I need to get to the post office and send them ASAP because I feel like a horrible role model with being lax in sending gifts!
• Email my work supervisor with my available working hours
  I took four days off work this week so that I could concentrate on studying for my finals rather than work, and I need to make up my missed hours next week. My supervisor is fantastic and is letting me pick whatever hours work best for me next week, so I need to double check with the working hours of my workplace (it changes every day) and then come up with a schedule that works for me and email it to her for approval.
• Clean out my room and pack up my things
  My room is an absolute mess, and I need to leave it in better condition than it was when I first moved in. Not only do I need to clean and vacuum and dust, but I also need to begin packing up my belongings and sort out what I need to store over the summer, and what items I will need to bring home, and possibly if there is a place nearby where I can donate some of my stuff. I also need to figure out if I need to order any more storage boxes from the storage company – the boxes that they already gave me do not look like it will be enough to store everything!
• Figure out what I’m going to do over the summer
  I have some tentative plans set for the summer, but none are as definite as I’d like to be. I’m still on the lookout for a summer job, I’ve only just begun to sketch out some possible ideas for my Etsy shop, and I need to get my driving permit so I can take the driving lessons that have already been booked in order for me to get my driver’s license (finally!). I’d love to just take summer as it comes, but I’d like to have at least a few definite things in store for me!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.