Ryan Prins' Blog

Yesterday was finals day for those of us in the 1st year of the Informatics program. Many of us had our INFO 311 final in the morning and then the CSE 373 final in the afternoon. This was the final step for us to be on break for the rest of the quarter.

The INFO 311 final was not as bad it I thought it could have been. I got up to campus early before the test and got some coffee and sat in the MGH commons and studied the 11 page study guide that I had put together for the test. During this time I didn�t want to be around anyone else and I just wanted to focus on the test that I was about to take. I knew that I would need to do well on this test since I messed up pretty bad on the midterm. So, the pressure was on to do well. I was pretty nervous going into the test knowing that I needed to do well, but once I got through the first page of the test I was feeling pretty confident about doing well on this exam.

I ended up completing the exam in around 35 minutes out of the two hours for the exam. The funny thing was that when I turned the exam in the professor asked me if the exam was too easy and I responded that I thought it was fair, which it was. Then later he was walking around the room and he went into the breakout room where people were also taking the exam and he was asking them if it was too easy and he had mentioned that someone (yours truly) had already completed the exam. My friend Rufino was like I bet it�s Ryan and the professor said it was. He just laughed right then and then I had to laugh when he told me this after the exam.

But, after the exam it was time for lunch and a little break time in the TE lab before I headed to work for my one hour shift between exams. It wasn�t bad at all, but I just wanted to be done and just be on break. So, I ended up talking to Jamie for the shift and then it was off to the CSE exam.

So, this is where it gets interesting. I had spent over four hours on Sunday going through all of the lecture notes from the past quarter highlighting key terms and important things from the slides. About five minutes before the CSE exam I was going to get out my notes and my book for the exam, except there was a problem; I didn�t have my slides! I have no idea where they are, well a pretty good guess (iLounge), but nevertheless I didn�t have them for the exam. So, this threw me off a bit, but I had no choice but to take the exam with what I had, so I just tried not to think about it. I feel confident about this exam, but not as confident as I am about INFO 311. But, hell, the quarter is over and the night was still young.

After finals and later that night I had invited some people over to celebrate St. Patrick�s Day and the end of finals. We just had a low key get together watched Animal House, had a few drinks, listened to music and just had a good time. It was fun to have the info crew over and to also have their significant others come over as well. We hear about them at times throughout the quarter, but I personally had never met any of them before. So, it was cool to meet them.

Like most of our little gatherings we always have a kickin� time, this was no different. It was good just to chill, talk, and relax. It�s amazing how good of friends I have mad from being in this major. I can tell you right now that I didn�t sign up for that, but I�m damn glad that I have had the pleasure to meet all of the people that I have so far.

A few people ended spending the night at my place; a few had to be driven home. It was a short night, with little sleep, but it�s all good. The lack of sleep was worth being awake for a better part of the night. But, yeah, it was a good way to end the quarter, to say the least.