Want to know how to get a nasty event like last week's attack out of your head? I personally recommend little to no television and four tests in as many days. At least, that recipe worked for me.

Monday, I had a fairly easy test in Criminal Investigations (my minor is criminal justice). I made a 98 and considered it as a warm-up to what lay ahead of me later in the week. My investigations professor is a retired treasury agent and he knows his stuff. As an added bonus, he's funny as hell to listen to. As if that wasn't enough to love this man... He gives a thorough review a class or two before the test. If you fail one of this man's classes... You are a moron.

Tuesday, I found out that I had a paper due in my Broadcast Regulations class that I didn't know about. Ooops. Getting a zero on an assignment is a poor way to start the semester in any class -- let alone Regs. You see, Regs is the devil of all Mass Communications classes at my university. I'm willing to bet that people have changed their majors to avoid this required class. And there have probably been one or two folks not graduate on time because of their performance in it. I'm trying to avoid being part of the latter group. I also found out that our test in that class was scheduled for two days later.

Wednesday brought tests in my Corrections and Sociology classes. I was quite concerned about both of these. While this is the first semester I've ever dealt with my Corrections professor, her reputation proceeds her. And the things I hear aren't always good. I had worries about how hard the test was going to be, what sort of material she would be covering and whether I was studying the right stuff. Fortunately, the test went very smoothly. I missed only three questions and made an 88.

The sociology test may be another story entirely. My instructor in the class is teaching it only because they couldn't find anyone else. I'm serious folks. They didn't have a professor on the first day of classes. They had to go find her and she showed up on day two. She seems to be fairly new at this teaching thing and her specialty isn't even sociology. She doesn't seem to have a grasp on the material and bounces back between the book and her notes -- using both as a crutch. For reasons unknown to me, the test was 12 pages and 100 questions. Maybe that works for an upper level class, but this is Intro. to Sociology we're talking about here. I spent a two or three hours the night before going over the material pretty good and I think I did well. But many of the 100 questions were simply the same question phrased differently... and I started to doubt myself on some things as I went along. Hopefully, I'll have a grade on that sometime next week.

Wednesday night, I spent a little time at the newspaper helping them with layout. They were way ahead of schedule and I really needed to be in the library studying, so I ducked out early. Before I went into the library, I decided to call and check my machine. I had a message from Mary. She's a girl that popped in and out of my life in a very strange way... until I made it stranger by asking her out last semester. She said yes, I think, but we never went out. However, that's another story for another time. The reason she called was that she's in a couple of my classes and I had asked her to give me the head's up if some classmates were going to get together to study.

Instead of studying in solitude in the library, I joined a whole gang of folks from my Broadcast Regs class at Mary's place. We strayed from the desired topic many times... but it was extremely beneficial because we each had the chance to discuss the cases that would be on the test. Discussing something is always better than just reading it to yourself over and over. After Wednesday night, I felt wonderful because I really thought I had a clue about the material we were going to be tested on. I hope I was right.

Thursday morning, I was the last person to begin the exam in Regs but I was the first person to finish. This is never, ever a good thing in my book. Okay, so maybe it's good... but it always makes me wonder. Many times, the professor in this class wants unrealistically thorough answers. I hope the stuff I threw at him flies. If it does, I'm thinking B in the grade department. (Cross your fingers.)

Thursday afternoon and evening was filled with meetings for the newspaper and two other organizations I'm a part of. Jonathan and Nate wanted to go out and have a few drinks. I planned to go out with them, but I got back to my dorm, logged on and ended up chatting with Alison for three hours. This is especially notable because I didn't really know Alison before last night.

Today was spent being a slacker. I bummed around the paper office all afternoon rewiring some phones that needed to be moved and doing some paperwork. Tonight, instead of being out drinking with Nate and Jonathan... I'm here rambling on about my week with you folks. For the most part, this is because my roommate is off somewhere. Times like these seem to be few and far between. It would be foolish of me not to capitalize on the moment.

copyright © 2001, Thomas Fletcher. all rights reserved.