End of Semester

Hmm. What is there to know about Los Gatos High and the finals all of us students experience? Much to the chagrin of student and teacher alike, finals places a burden on what should be a smooth end to a semester. For at least half a year we (students and teachers) have become acquainted with each other. None of my teachers possess a "I-don't-know-x-student" complex, nor a "I-hate-you-all" complex. Seeing that, I must claim victory for the coexistence factor.

Last week, much as you guessed, we received finals. From Tuesday to Thursday, we would have two finals, each two hours, spaced apart by only fifteen minutes. The first finals I had were Algebra II Accelerated and Chemistry (I would've been in Chem. Accel. had they not done away with it). Throughout the final of Mr. Sakamoto, who decided to split it into three consecutive tests to complete, I, using the points listed by each question, dynamically calculated my grade. In the end run, I received an 89%. Though it seems small, keep in mind that a large percentage of my class earned 77%'s. For the class with the only A's and straight B's, it spells nightmare for others when they receive their report cards. As for myself, I have successfully rectified an earlier mistake of screwing up in the beginning of the class. My final grade of the class? 'B', exactly. Next semester will be different, and I plan to score higher, much higher, since there will be no apathy for the first two weeks like there was last time.

Wednesday, it was fun with History and German. German was actually hard for once. Frau Young assigned the National aptitude test for German students. I missed too many, in my opinion. I scored a B+ on it, but I am very disappointed, since had I gotten an A- or better, I would be eligible for a trip to Germany. History, I do not know. It was a somewhat easy test, and for the essay questions, I wrote a hell of a lot on them. With Mr. Betz, you never know how things turn out. I hope for the best.

Thursday was end day. I had Digital Photo and English 11 AP on the schedule. Digital Photo was fun. We turned in our projects and were free to do anything. Using my U3 USB drive, Tassadar, I uploaded my SC installation to the network. Eight of us, in moments, were lan gaming. I won after taking out the self professed RTS master through a combination of Archons and Scouts. What was really funny is that my strategy was Air-to-Ground attacks, and he had Anti Air massed. Ever seen a field of missile turrets three rows deep?

Shortly after this vegetation fest, the bell rang. In less than five minutes, I went from game-induced mindlessness to one hundred percent AP English writing level. Gods, that was interesting. Instead of reading a play, Ms. Smith decided it was time to do a pseudo-AP test drill. In two hours, we had to write three essays, dealing with three different prompts, unsure of which essay she would grade. In fact, she told us she'd pick a random one. That was a sweatfest. Twenty-four of us, all writing as fast as we can, trying to make thoughtful, well written essays. The first essay was not so bad, dealing with the rhetoric of an author who hates conductors (as in a symphony). The next one was bad. It was a meandering story about some guy and the disappointment expressed by his father at being left out in a sad kind of way. I tried writing about it as coherently as possible, but I feel I missed a lot of what I should've been writing about. The last essay dealt with the verse in Ecclesiastes (Bible) "For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief." I wrote a lot on that, arguing for it. Using personal experience and logic, I composed an essay on it. I felt it was my best.

Soon I will know the results of the finals. But 'soon' doesn't help with the anxiety in waiting.

Return to the Point of Origin

Ok, so I have been a bit quiet. Perhaps too quiet, but lets leave that to the internet tough guy for a final judgment (which coincidentally, by definition, not matter). Last time on this blog, we saw that I was accepted to UCLA, waiting for AP scores and commenting on neurobiology. In the period of null, I graduated high school, worked as an intern at CK12 and at NASA Ames, began networking with the college crowd, completed my first quarter at the University of California, Los Angeles, attended a business party at CommerceNet, celebrated Christmas and New Years at home, then returned to UCLA for quarter two.

This first week has been ok, despite the fact that the chemistry professor has been away on business and will not return to teach until next week, thus allowing the first weeks schedule to show itself to be lighter than normal. Anthropology 7, on the evolution of humans, is so far proving interesting in the reading, with the lectures being based solely off of the reading. Math 31B is going to be a bear, since the professor likes to revise his train of thought midway through the lecture. Since he lacks a microphone (I hear he will get one next week) he speaks like his voice box has a weak capacitor - he starts out loud then becomes very quiet, ramping back up to vocal clarity before fading away, yet again. But so far I've found if I rewrite my notes in front of the math book, I resolve any "data dropouts" that were written into the notes. On friday, at lecture, he put up an example problem - find the derivative of y=ln(x) and asked for the first step, testing all of us. I raised my hand and motioned that he should raise both sides to base e, so that it became e^y=x -> e^y y' = 1 -> y'=1/(e^y) -> y'=1/x. His reaction was to write "Suggestion by Ben" to it before solving it, then showed us what the book wanted us to do. To be frank, the books method was a warped chain rule (implicit differentiation versus chain rule; implicit differentiation wins for simplicities sake).

Psych 19 (Fiat lux on color vision) is an undisputably awesome course - we read scientific papers on vision (biology, chemistry, etc) and discuss the implications of the research and how that contributes to the greater understanding of sight as a whole. The professor, in my opinion, is awesome because he doesn't cater to entertaining the students and instead wants us to discuss the science like one does at a conference. Since he was a graduate of UC Berkeley, I am certain he was trained in the "old school"-style of science, a style I find most different from my other profs (not saying anything, just saying).

So far, so good.