Ethan and Gemma

Ethan and Gemma

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks. . .

In the words of Alice Cooper, school's out forever!!! For me at least. I finished everything for my Master's Degree at approximately 9:15 pm last night. At that point, all that was standing in my way was the pesky final exam scheduled from 7:30-10:30 last night.

I must say that my very last day of grad school was quite interesting. It started with me receiving my first B (of grad school - I may have gotten like 1 somewhere in my 160 credit hours of undergrad). And not just a B, but an 89 - 1 point shy of an A. I stewed about it pretty much all day long and tried to convince myself that I didn't care. It also inspired me to study less for my exam, since my GPA was already ruined. Then around 3:00 yesterday afternoon, I couldn't take it anymore and decided to dispute the grade. I was all set to beg my professor to find me an extra point somewhere when I decided to calculate the grade myself just to be sure. I discovered that for one of my grades, she had given me just a letter grade and not a number. I looked at her grading scale figured out that the missing grade was at least a 94, so I calculated using the 94 and my grade came out to 89.65, which clearly should round up to a 90. So I sent her a polite email suggesting that she may have calculated my grade wrong. As it turns out, the missing grade was actually a 95, putting me solidly on the A side of the fence. She had entered it as only a 92. Needless to say, I'm glad I decided to go ahead and check, since I had in fact, earned the A, and since her mistake made the difference between an A and a B. Yikes.

After I got that sorted out, it was off to take my final exam. Oh yes, the one for James Joyce class. I decided that I would enjoy my 4.0 for a few more hours, because I was pretty convinced there was no way it would survive James Joyce class intact. When I went into the exam, about 70% of my grade was still unaccounted for - 50% of it was the really crappy paper I wrote one day last week on Ulysses. I just went ahead and assumed that there was no hope of getting an A on a paper on Ulysses (due to me not understanding a word of Ulysses). I went and faked my way through the exam (didn't really know what was going on there either) and finished up around 9:15, accepting my B and just being glad to be finished. Imagine my surprise when he gave me my paper and I had gotten an A! That gave me a solid A in the class, so I think that even if my performance on the exam was less than stellar, I should make it out with my 4.0!!!

Anyway. . . the important part of this whole story is that I am finally finally done with graduate school. FOREVER! (Unless I lose my mind at some point in the future and decide to pursue a PhD.) I may have shrieked a lot and danced around when I got in the car last night after the exam. I AM DONE!!!! Now I can move on to bigger and better things - like reading books all day and never leaving my house!

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