Have yourself a merry little stress week....

                Welcome to week one of the most stressful time of the semester. Finals are approaching, projects are wrapping up, and essays are being written. Even writing this blog entry is stressful because the rest of my day is going to consist of two more essays. That’s okay though. This is more fun to write.

                I’m working on four essays for my management class. Yes, four of them. One is an extra credit assignment. In small groups, we held conversation cafés about a topic of our choosing.  A conversation café is basically an open discussion in which, ideally, no one is judged or criticized which allows each person to openly express and understand their own experiences as well as those of others. I paired up with a girl from my class and had a conversation café about the many challenges of living on campus, whether that be roommates, drugs and alcohol, parties, etc. It was really interesting and now I’m going to attempt to write four to five pages about it. The next essay incorporates key concepts from our textbook with articles from the Wall Street Journal. This allows us to see how what we’re learning applies to day-to-day life. The third essay is a rewrite of an earlier essay which is much like the previous one I described. Hopefully, I will be able to improve the grade and as a result, increase my average for the class. Last is the management project I’ve told you about. My group and I will be working on an eight-page paper which describes all of our decisions. I will be writing about our first decision, so I’m hoping it will be manageable enough.

                In biology, we’re taking test after test after test. Our fourth exam is covering material that we’re learning about right now in addition to the lectures coming up this week and next week. In lab, we’re having a test called the practical exam which will cover material from all of the labs of the semester. Finally, our written final will cover all of the lectures of the semester. There are three lectures each week, so the studying has already begun.

                In environmental science, I’m working with my friend on our final problem set – math problems which are applications of the material learned in class. Right now, we’re working with risk assessment. Some of the problems we solve are finding the lifetime cancer risk of someone who smokes twenty cigarettes each day for about thirty years. The numbers are astounding and it’s curious that we can solve for something as complex as smoking with a rather simple equation. We’ll also be receiving a take-home final exam. I’m not sure what to expect, but our professor mentioned that the movie we’ll be watching in class next week will help extensively.

                In calculus, I have the great privilege of preparing for a cumulative final. This covers four chapters of material, which may not seem like a lot, but the math is rather complex. This final will be online, but the answers are multiple choice. I think there’s someone out there who purposely makes tiny mistakes to come up with the three wrong answers. They’re so convincing. I should get hired for that kind of job. Wrong Math Answers Assistant should be the title of that position.

                As you can well imagine, the week’s stress level is accumulating minute by minute. I have developed fairly good time-management skills which will certainly pay off. When this is all done, my fellow classmates and I will be rewarded with a month of vacation before the cycle starts up all over again for Spring Semester. I’m really looking forward to a change of classes though, so I’ll be happy once these projects, papers, and tests are all over.