Winding Up/ Winding Down

That's right, the semester's winding down here. Or possibly winding up. What's certain is that stress is flying away away away and I'm ever so happy to see it go. I've finished all my assignments for the semester and am looking forward to finals. I'm a strange person in that I don't stress out about finals. Generally I've learned all I need to know over the course of the semester. When finals come around I brush up on the old stuff and then just go in and take the final, it's that simple.

So right now I feel completely at ease, just waiting for the scheduled hours of my finals. So far one's behind me. It was especially easy since the final was just presenting a semester long project for a programming class I've been taking. I've been putting in the work for the past couple of months and so the actual presentation was simply a good chance to show off all my hard work. The project I chose is devoted to one of my hobbies, role-playing games. The idea was basically to set up an interface that can handle all the combat maneuvers and rules that go on so that combat can be expedited. I only did a preliminary prototype version of it, but I think it's got great potential. The best part about that class this semester was learning a great straightforward way of programming a GUI (graphical user interface, eg what you're looking at right now), and drawing graphics to the screen.

Sometime before Monday evening at 5 I have to take a four hour (max) test for my Structural Dynamics class. That's been a tough class in someways. The concepts and math behind the scenes is confusing and difficult to understand. Once you get a handle on the basics, however, it's relatively straightforward, lots of calculations though. That's definitely been the toughest class of the semester. Structural dynamics, for those non-technical people (practically everyone that reads this I suspect), is studying the way buildings vibrate. It's used to figure out how much a building will sway so that the building can be strong enough to sway and not break itself, notably in a strong wind or earthquake.

Monday evening after 5 I have a super easy final for my senior seminar class. The class, while enlightening and informative, has not included a difficult technical side to it. Some of the work has been arduous, but not hard to think about. The final is going to be really easy, our teacher promised us that if we studied for it we would be wasting our time.

Tuesday morning I'll attend the final presentations for the rest of my programming class. I presented early because I felt like my project was completed.

Tuesday around lunch time I'll be locked away working on my last final, for Structural Steel Design. That's been an awesome class. The teacher is absolutely superb. Excellent at explaining difficult concepts, funny, charismatic, understanding (but not a push-over). He's challenged us without overwhelming us. I've learned so much in that class.

When I'm done with that final I will have completed all of my undergraduate course work. Now don't get too excited, come January I'll be picking up where I left off, carrying on into a Master's degree, but it is cause for some kind of celebration, I think. I guess a three week Christmas break ought to be satisfactory.