Exams already?

Well, exam already. But single exam that is half behavioral science, 30% statistics, and 20% health systems.

It is hard to take third term as seriously, largely because of the reputation it has. I'm wondering how much of that is perceived, as in, things are easier because the rumor mill has them easier, so you may study in a more relaxed but effective manner, which makes them seem easier.

Or maybe it's just easier. Who knows?

Third term, in the past, has been broken up into small two unit classes for each segment, where for our term, it's a conglomerate of not entirely closely related classes into a single 6 unit class.

I'm not sure if this means you can conceivably decel over third term since the rule is that if you fail a class worth 5 or more units, you have to decel; and if you fail a class of 4 or fewer units, you have to take a makeup exam. I'm not sure what happens if you fail the makeup exam. But since the entirety of third term is now over that 4 unit limit, what happens if you fail it since the term is only 6 weeks long? Do you just go onto fourth term and then take third term again when you get around to it? Do you have to then decel for third and fourth term? Dunno.

But regardless... the worst part of this exam for me was having to drag out of bed before noon for a change, since my pledge to continue showing up for class on time dissolved once the lectures were reliably going up on Sonic Foundry, thus I can watch them on "TV". I'm so predictable.

It had the potential to be a difficult exam, but I thought it was pretty fair. Surprisingly, I thought statistics was the easiest part, probably because since I'm afraid of math, I studied it the most, and part of my innate fear of math stems from my calculator-dependent upbringing, thus my inability to do basic arithmetic, which wasn't heavily required.

Plus, our professor had a tendency to say things like "While you have to know the principles behind a chi squared test, I am not going to make you calculate the value on a test where you're not allowed to use calculators because it's tedious and time-consuming."

Yeah... I'm going to stick with calling it "tedious and time-consuming" as a reason not to do it, rather than the truth of "Ishie may understand absolutely everything about chi squared tests, but when doing the calculations by hand, will add 6 and 2, get 9, and get the question wrong. Ahh, public education. My friend Slappy and I have had the "grad school while counting on fingers" discussion many times.

On the plus side, when things are calculation based, I am not very easily misled so long as the exam is multiple choice, because when I get my wrong answer, I do so in a way no professor would ever conceive of, so my answer is nowhere near any of the answer choices so I know I have to start over. No distractors for me!

So what to do in celebration of an exam I felt fairly good about but have no idea what my grade would be (watch me fail it)? Go to St. George's for dinner!

I've gotten kinda tired of a lot of the restaurants right in True Blue, as they tend to be more expensive, have food that isn't quite as good, and service that's somewhat poor (there's exceptions), so when I do go out, I'm trying to go to new places a little farther from campus, and I have to say, it's a good experience, and so long as you are back before 10 (didn't make it this time around), the extra five bucks round trip in bus fare probably is less than the savings on the food. Plus, the Carenage is beautiful.

Tonight's excursion was to the Nutmeg, which is about a block before where the bus's turn to go up to the station. There's a sign and you go up to the second floor, which has a nice, small dining room with several tables with a really nice view of the water. Food was good, service was good, prices were fairly reasonable, so thumbs up.

Tomorrow starts more behavioral science with statistics and health systems being replaced by epidemiology. Unfortunately, it also means we change our behavioral sci prof, and I really liked Mrs-Dr. A-M, who taught us the last week.