Nose, meet Grindstone.

Midterms
Originally uploaded by Waldie's World.

Well, with the exception of the two posts from last night, I haven’t posted much since last week, so here is the week in review. Most of this week has been spent buried in the books, as I had two midterms this week that took lot of preparation. One was in Swahili, the other was in (Honors) Urban Sociology. For the sociology course, we’d covered a LOT of info in this class. The midterm was our first test, so everything up to now was testable. She gave us a review, I studied for a good 9 – 10 hours over the course of the week, and in the end it was the hardest test I had ever taken. Seriously. I felt pretty well prepared, and the test was still scary, but I felt that I should have done decently overall.

This week has been one of those times where I feel I was really a good student. Now those of you who know me well are now rolling your eyes and thinking of course he’s a good student- and yes, I make good grades- but this week I made an effort to really buckle down and study. Long hours, study groups, the library- It just feels like I did a really good job of learning and reinforcing all that I have been doing these last few weeks. That may sound funny, but it’s true. I have high standards for what makes a “good student”, and sometimes I don’t feel I personally make the cut. But this week, I can pat myself on the back a bit. And ultimately all the studying DID pay off. My group did well on the Swahili exam / performance (Mr. Maganda even applauded- though I think he was just being nice), and I saw my sociology teacher’s graduate assistant at the end of the day and she told me I made an A on the exam (which HAS to mean the teacher wasn’t grading so hard!)

Other things of note:
• I am a terrible bowler. Saturday night Katie and I went bowling with a bunch of my friends from school. It was fun. I suck at bowling (but I’m evidently pretty good at video bowling).
• Wednesdays in the lab evidently are cursed. Yet again, a SNAFU resulted in a screw-up on the day Rachel and I run the lab experiments for Willer. Luckily, this one solved itself pretty easily, and the post-experiment debriefing of the subjects that I led was actually fun.
• YACtoberfest at the Cendrowski’s Monday night was a success. I managed to make a rare appearance at the event. Food and company enjoyable.
• My sister was in the hospital last night with another kidney stone (poor thing- it’s supposed to be agonizing), my dad had a check-up today to see the status of his cancer (results Monday), and my mom thinks she might have had a heart attack. The Reids- strong in spirit, weak in flesh.
• I am now ALSO working for Professer Brent Simpson, coding data from his experiments.