Take off

The guy who works in the same room as me (but only for this week) always says "I'm going to take off" when he leaves. Naturally, only one thing comes to mind:

Weekend in Irvine, Spring finals week

Last Thursday was a bit hectic because I had my French oral final and my AUD 10b final. My last assignment of the quarter was the 9th homework for PIC10b. My printer had run out of ink the previous night, so I wanted to finish the written part of the homework during discussion (It was held in the PIC lab on Thursdays, so I could use a printer there.) It didn't take much time at all to finish so I printed it and left early to go "study" for AUD which I had immediately afterwards.

The next day was the last day of class. (As a side note, the only one of my teachers who received applause this quarter was my French teacher, who ironically won't be allowed to return to UCLA next year.) I turned in the written part of the PIC 10b homework and then realized that in my haste on Thursday I had neglected to place the homework's programming part (C++ files) into the submit folder by the Thursday, 6 PM deadline. Needless to say I couldn't pay attention in class. At 10:50 I hurried to the PIC lab and submitted my homework - I was going to talk to the professor but then I saw on the syllabus: No late homework will be accepted for any reason.

I pretty much gave up hope until I woke up this morning and checked MyUCLA to see that I have received normal credit on the assignment. I guess they didn't collect the files until the reader graded the homework. This pleased me.

Later I went back to Irvine so I could watch the Northwood Philharmonic play some of my favorite pieces:

• Maurice Ravel's Tzigane - Ian did an absolutely fantastic job with this. The orchestra did quite well too, considering it was Ravel.
• Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings - I think a lot of us were spiteful about this one because we all wanted to play it after sightreading it last year. I thought it was amusing that the high parts (including uncomfortably high treble clef passages for the cellos) were much more in tune than the low one. But this allowed them to pull off the climax very successfully - quite good overall.
• George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue - A pretty difficult piece and the orchestra did alright. Ellen played the solo piano part well too, although there were balance problems between the orchestra and the piano (I'm not sure if it's her fault or the piano's - I had previously only been on the opposite side of the piano)

And now for two lovely food-related photographs- first, the most glorious Sun Chip yet discovered (Phillip's countenance depicts our awe):
My brother likes to eat entire cans of pineapple at a time:

I had to return to UCLA Sunday morning so that I could take the PIC 10b final exam at 3 PM, which was relatively easy. They handed us a sheet with the solutions on it immediately after the exam. My algorithms for many of the programs we had to write on the exam varied from those on the solution sheet, but I'm confident they work just as well. Except for one, which I later realized would be an infinite loop (oops).

My next final was French, on Tuesday night - at least that's what I thought. I ate dinner and walked over to Rolfe Hall and became a little uneasy at the lack of anyone I knew there. However, all the French 3 finals are held in the same room at the same time, so this was only somewhat unusual. Then a girl a few rows in front of me asked another girl "You're in French 2? Oh, the French 1 and 2 finals are at the same time?" So I concluded that the French 3 final was at the same time as well. Then a bunch of French teachers entered, including mine - except it was mine from last quarter. So I left the room and took out the syllabus: Final Exam: Wednesday, June 11. Oops.

The actual final was easy as expected - except it seemed to neglect over half of what we learned this quarter. I guess that benefited the majority of people in the room.

Last night I went to bed around 2 AM and was having a wonderful dream until someone in my dream started hacking at my guts with a giant ax. Then I woke up and realized it was just the fire alarm going off, though these have basically the same effect (my ears are still ringing). I put on a sweatshirt, grabbed my key, put on my shoes and trudged down the stairs half-asleep. As usual the Hedrick Summit staff was whining at us to cross the street, and then to get out of the street. This time there was a cranky police officer telling us the same thing ("What part of get out of the street do you not understand?") We were slowly herded into Parking Lot 15 as usual until 30 minutes passed and they told us we could go back into the building. Unfortunately for Summit 4, someone had set off a fire extinguisher and they weren't allowed to return there yet.

Everyone was pretty pissed off and pretty asleep throughout the whole incident but I couldn't help but feel a sense of unity. We were completely screwed over the night before our last finals, but we were all in this together. One of the more memorable experiences of this year, to be sure.

Today was the Linear Algebra final, much easier than expected. It basically mirrored the practice Final which we got last week, except with slightly more irritating problems. Even checking my work, I finished in under 2 hours. I may actually get an A in math this quarter.

Now I've entered that awful limbo between the end of finals and actually receiving grades for them.

First final

Reasons why the AUD 10b final was the easiest ever:

• On Tuesday the professor reviewed every single project we needed to know. She also told us everything we needed to know about them, worded just as they were on the final.
  
• The other questions were about the vocabulary lists which were online, also worded just like the questions on the final.
• The remainder of the questions were about primary source readings. The majority of these questions were the exact same questions which were on a quiz we took and reviewed with during discussion last Friday.
• We could bring a page of notes with anything on it, including what she told us on Tuesday, the vocabulary online, and the facts from the readings quiz.
• We had 75 minutes to do 100 questions.
• The questions weren't even very hard to begin with.

Fun things that happened during the exam:

• 11:13 AM: The TA says "It's 11:13. Not even 15 minutes have passed. You should all stop and take a deep breath, you're all going to do fine! Just relax," as if there were someone in the room who was not relaxed.
• 11:15 AM: The TA says "Okay, it's 11:15 now!"
• The room was silent and all of a sudden the professor exclaimed "Oh shit! I think the answer key's in there. Does anyone have a test with blue highlighting on it?"