I exempted out of my philosophy exam, isn’t that nice?

As of yesterday afternoon I still had no idea what to expect for the philosophy final.  We had been assigned a decent chunk of reading to do for the class that I had more or less, or rather completely, ignored that included such things as Aristotle’s Ethics and some philosophers that followed him in the classical period.  Having not read any of it I was desperately looking forward to the exam review so that I could get a grasp of what I needed to cram for.  Well, on Thursday we got our exam review finally.  And at the end of class, right after my laptop’s batteries had finished dieing for the day, he announces a little bit of information of high interest to myself and a vast chunk of the rest of the class: if anyone in the class is currently at the grade of A, B+, or B they did not have to take the final exam.  They could take it if they wanted to and have the chance to bring the grade up but he did warn as well that it had a chance to bring the grade down.  I, choosing not to press my luck, am absolutely fine with a B.  I was actually surprised to be one of the people who wasn’t getting a C in the class.  A B is a-ok in my book.  Turns out it was going to be a take home exam anyway.  And on top of that it wasn’t due until a week from Monday when the exam is scheduled for a week from Saturday.  I think it all boils down to the fact that he’s retired and most likely does not want too much reading to do for finals as well as not wanting to come in on a Saturday morning to administer the exam in the first place.  All in all it works out fine in my opinion.

So now all that’s left for this semester is my Japanese final, my Asian History final, my Asian literature essay, my Rhetoric presentation, and my Rhetoric essay.  I am even trying to get started on my Asian literature essay this weekend.  I have a good idea as to what I’m going to write for it.  I just have to actually put to the grindstone and get to it and get it over with.  The same thing with my Rhetoric projects.  I’m doing the presentation and paper on a rhetorical critique using fiction/theme criticism of mid-90’s alternative music.  Sounds lofty, doesn’t it?  Anyway, in particular I intend to display some of the inherent fatalism and escapism displayed in the pieces.  Fun!  I figure the hardest part will be narrowing down the music selection.  Beyond that the criticism itself is fairly formulaic and I merely have to plug in the information, infer a few things, and the rest will like as itself.  I’m not expecting it to be too difficult.  The hardest thing will probably be studying for the history final.

For the Asian history final I have to go over more reading that I haven’t completed yet as well as be familiar enough with the information to be able to write two essays in the alloted time.  Luckily we’ve been given the essay questions ahead of time and also are being allowed to bring in a sheet containing ten words that will be used and defined in each of the two essays; so twenty words total.  And they’re being particular about the word count; including the word ‘the’ counts as a second word and will throw the count off.  No matter, I think the questions are easy enough and with some cramming I should be able to pass it off fairly well.  My Japanese class will be more structurally difficult simply because it’s more implementation of concepts than the history will be.

I’ve paid attention throughout the semester and have done (most of) the work so at this point it should mainly be plugging this information into the required sentences and translations.  Easy enough, ne?  Maybe, we’ll see how it turns out.

Played Starfarers from Catan the other day with Tuten.  That was a ton of fun!  Look forward to a thrilling write up of it on my other site, Moving Pieces.