"It's been...
Topic: School
four months since you looked at me
Cocked your head to the side
and said you're crazy
Yesterday since I laughed at you saying
Get that together come back and see me
Hold it now and watch the hoodwink
As I make you stop, think
Trying hard not to smile though I feel bad
Can't understand what I mean?"

This has been a presentation of:
If my senior project could talk
in association with
Mandy At Work

I'm not sure how I did it...
Mood:  surprised
Topic: School
...but I did.

Grades for Spring 2005:
Economics: A
Plastics: A
Number Theory: A-
Analysis III: C

Everything but Analysis surprised me. I thought it was impossible for me to get an A in Econ with out getting a 100% on the final but I guess maybe the curve in there got lowered. I thought similarily about Plastics but I also wasn't sure about my lab grade so maybe that brought it up. Number Theory there must have been a curve because I got 39/48 on the final and when I weighted my grade per the syllubus, I came out with an 86% for the class. I'm not complaining though =).

I was so happy to see those A's. Not only do I have above the 3.3 to graduate with honors, but my cumulative GPA went UP. My major GPA will probably suffer a bit with that C but that's okay. At least I didn't fail, which is good. Anyway, since I'm at work (yes, I'm being paid to write this) I'll sign off for now.

London :-D
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: "The Man Without Fear" by Drowning Pool W/ Rob Zombie on "Daredevil The Album"
Topic: School
Okay, it's officially official now. I'll be going to London. I got my letter of acceptance tonight.

I'm also glad that I decided to stick out Econ. It turns out that the two Cal Poly professors that were orginally going to be teaching in London are no longer able to do it. They found out today that one of them got hired by another university. So only one out of the four classes the two of them were going to teach is still being offered and it isn't the one I was trying to substitute for Econ. Anyway, I decided to take the music class instead. Fortunately, the two classes I do need to graduate are still being offered.

Number Theory
Now Playing: "Right Now" by Nappy Roots Feat. Marcos Curiel on "Daredevil The Album"
Topic: School
Two cool things about Number Theory happened today. The first one was that a bird flew into our classroom. The windows in our room don't have screens and when you have the little flaps out, it makes quite a wide opening. So the bird came in through the open window in the back of the room and flew a round for a little bit before Dr. Mendes, my professor, made a comment and we were all staring. The poor bird, it was trying to figure out how to get back out. It came to the front of the class room and went to closed window up there. It sat on the still and looked back at the professor basically saying "Open, please!" it was quite cute. So then my professor went over to the window and opened it, while the bird flew up to the overhead screen. Once the window was open, my professor moved back to the otherside of the room while the bird took a minute before getting back to the know open window. It stood on the flap before my professor gave a little run towards the window with a little yell and scared the bird away. The window in the front was then promptly closed. It's not often birds fly into classrooms.

The second cool-to-me thing happened after class. Since we got out early, I stopped by the Math Lounge before I went to get my weiner for being a senior (AWOL is also cool for giving free food) at 11. Nick was in there and he was going to get a hot dog too so we decided to go together but first he had to drop his timesheet off at the department office. While we were there, Dr. Mendes came in and said hi to me and then said that I was "a terrific student" but he thinks he's losing half the class and he was trying to think of something to make it more interesting. I didn't have any suggestions cause teaching is not my thing. But it felt really good to know that I can still understand some math and do well in a class (only have missed 7 points on the homework out of 166 and got 19/20 on the first midterm). Hopefully I'll keep up this nice record. But I am a little surprised that other fourth years like Ryan and Rebecca are struggling. Okay, I don't know about Rebecca too much but she asked for the homework to be pushed back from Monday to Tuesday because it's really hard but I did 9 of the 12 problems in 2-2.5 hours tonight. The two were tedious sure (page and half proof for the two of them (they were two parts to one question)) but not that difficult. Then again, tonight was the first time I looked at it and he gave a hint in class today. *shrug* I'm happy with my understanding and performance and that's all that matters. The fact that the professor likes it too is just icing on the cake.

Nightmare
Now Playing: "Unspeakable" by Ace Of Base on "Da Capo"
Topic: School
I had a nightmare last night about my oral presentation today. I dreamt that I forgot to put down our references and in trying to correct that, I ended up not showing up at all to the class. It was awful.

Speaking of great things...
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: Library lab noises still
Topic: School
Speaking of great things, I got both of my midterms back today.

Number Theory was 19/20. My point off was for the proof I figured out towards the end and rushed through and left some details out. I looked up the average on Blackboard and it was 14 point something. So I feel really good about Number Theory.

Analysis was a surprising 70/100. Not really sure how that happened but I'll take it. That's higher than both of the first midterms for the past two quarters. Really I was just hoping for a 56 or higher to get above the first midterm last quarter but I will most certainly take a 70. Now I just need to make sure that I get higher than that on the next midterm and the final. It'd be awesome if that was my lowest and it got dropped. I can dream, can't I? But yes, was very happy to see that. Things just keep looking up today =).

Now to the sitting room part to work on my part of my presentation for Plastics. Group meeting in 50 minutes. Perhaps I was a bit rushed in that whole looking up comment...

"Poly students say no to fee hikes"-The Tribune
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: "First Time" by Finger Eleven on "The Greyest Of Blue Skies"
Topic: School
It's official now: Both the facilities fee increase and the ASI fee increase failed in the fee referendum Wednesday and Thrusday. The Tribune reported that the ASI one failed by just 76 votes. Which apparently "suprised ASI leaders" because "two thirds of students surveyed last fall supported the fee hike for the renovation projects." What ASI leaders are forgetting about that survey is that in the end, students were basically asked "would you rather have a really nice renovation that will cost a lot of money or a normal renovation that will be less expensive than the other one?" There was no option to not have the renovation, i.e. to not have a fee increase. Someone's letter to the editor of the Mustang Daily reminded me of this fact. The Tribune also said that this was the first time that the students have voted against a fee increase for ASI since 1984. And I would just like to point out that without voter intimidation (read: last year's athletic sholarship fee referendum), the students actually really don't approve of unnecessary fee hikes. I said it last year and I'll say it again: if they want more money for renovations or jocks, start charging the students who actually gave a damn. Yeah, that would include me with the gym and the bus but I'm okay with that. The only fee increase that I will continue to support is any dealing with Health Services because no one chooses to get sick or break a bone.

Long Day
Now Playing: "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks on "NoAlbum"
Topic: School
And my recent problems sleeping haven't been helping. Anyway, I started today off with my Plastics lab. Our instructor is an Industrial Technology grad student. The lab seems like it might be fun. We'll eventually be making picture frames, name tags and figurines. Thankfully, we didn't actually start this week so we got out about an hour and a half early.

During that time I went to work to just sit and write some thoughts down for the Math 202 presentation I was doing at 11 and do some Math Club stuff. During which I realized that we were charged for an extra sweatshirt by Left Coast. However, I don't quite want to draw their attention to it because they also miscalculated the price of our M*A*T*H shirts to be almost $2 cheaper per a shirt and I'm okay with that mistake. I mean if they discovered that error while fixing the other one, we'd have to pay them an additional $66. Since I had some time, I decided to go to the Epicenter and get our club's statement. At the moment we're sitting financially pretty. Until you factor in the fact that the club owes me $1330.5 officially and unofficially about $1410.5 ( I don't have receipts for the after softball pizza and don't remember how much they cost except for being about $40 something each). And then we factor in the cost of the jerseys which had not been subtracted yet, the amount of money we need to save to pay for the banquet and the money we need for Yosemite and we get debt. That's not even including the regular events. In other words, we need some major success at the car wash, book sale and Open House and need to sell every sweatshirt and every shirt we've ordered this year. We haven't even broken even on the MAthletics ones yet. *sigh*

Anyway, after grabbing a snack at the Avenue, I went to 202. Rebecca actually came prepared with a list of events with the prices of the shirts on their too. She also did almost all of the talking. I bet the class was wondering why the vice president was doing all the talking and the president said practically nothing except for an introduction. I hate doing that presentation. I've only done it twice (or rather stood by while Rebecca did it) but I hate. That finished by 11:30 so I went back to work to send out a car wash help e-mail before I started work.

Despite Bridget being on before me, I managed to stay busy the entire 4 hours I was there. That might be partly due to Ben being on for 2 of those hours, one of which we were alone. *shakes head and sighs* It's like putting a kid on a tricycle for 20 minutes and then on a regular bike without any supervision. But we just don't have the time and the people to train them more thouroughly (I know I spelt that wrong but I think the drug is starting to take effect). Anyway, I cut out of there early to get a good seat for econ...

...only to discover that the previous class got out early and there were already people in there for my class. I thought they were there for the previous class. I ended up sitting one over from where I was on Monday (which was an aisle) which the guy who was sitting there must have resented at first. I mean, wouldn't you resent some stranger for sitting next to you when there are empty seats in the lecture hall? I guess he got over it or really didn't care because he did introduce himself after a few minutes. I was also suprised to find another familiar face in the class. He happened to sit down next to me and then said "Hey Mandy." It took me a few seconds to place him. It was Carl from the dorms. Honestly I'm surprised he recognized me, or I him since I rarely saw him since he was on the third floor. He ended up taking off half way through the lecture though. I guess he decided it wasn't worth his time since the majority of the lecture notes were in the Greenbook. I stayed after to talk to the teacher about DRC stuff. He said he preferred to arrange a quite area with the extended time with me rather than go through the DRC. I said it was fine as long as I didn't have to take the test in that room (*shudder* I really don't like the silo).

Since I didn't have Analysis homework yet and didn't have the book for Number Theory (*grumble*) to start my homework there, I headed home. And of course by the time I got home, the person in the Rec center was missing so I couldn't get my Number Theory book tonight. Fortunately no school tomorrow so I can just pick it up normally then. I ended up going out again to get more Diet Pepsi for my mediciene, drop off film and also get a callous remover thingy to try tomorrow morning. I took a pain killer with sleep aid about half an hour to help me sleep and help with the overall extreme soreness from yesterday's workouts and it's starting to take effect so off I go.

First Day of Spring Quarter
Mood:  rushed
Now Playing: "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" by Bonnie Tyler on "NoAlbum"
Topic: School
8am-9:30am: Work
It was definitely nice to be beaten in (by Kim). I did get kicked out of my seat though (by Ronak who decided to work for an hour because I was threatening to kick him out). Also working during that time period were the two newest guys Ben and Surren. Those guys definitely did not have enough training. I found out from Bridget that they had about a day of training with her before answering phones themselves. Yes, apparently we are that short handed. But yeah, they're call handling skills could use some work. I was going to do the two new accounts with Kim but she was busy helping people or helping those guys help people. And since Bridget wasn't coming in later, I decided to grab Leigh at 9:30 and quickly do the two new accounts with him. The problem there was that for whatever, the push at 9:47 did go through fast enough for the impatient me and I couldn't do the OM accounts before I had to leave for class. Yeah, I stayed until 10. This is why I scheduled myself to 9:30....so I would actually leave by 10.

10:10am-11am: MATH 341-Number Theory
I know from people who took Dr. Mendes for Combinatorics last quarter that he's a very tough homework grader. And homework is worth a lot. 40% for our class. Each midterm is worth only 15% and the final 30%. Hopefully my textbook gets here soon so I can start on the homework. The class should be a bit interesting since I'm taking it out of order (along with a few other seniors). For example, after class today, Rebecca went up to Dr. Mendes and basically asked why couldn't we just use analysis to prove what he just proved. Silly girl, trying to use 400 level material in a 300 level class. As for Dr. Mendes himself, he seems like a nice guy but then again he's not much older than us (graduated grad school in 2004). But I do love his handwriting. He writes at a normal pace and neatly (do you have any idea how rare that is for a math professor?) which I find improves my own notes. And if you've tried to read my notes, you'd realize that that is a very good thing. Anyway, first homework assignment due next Tuesday. Final is Friday June 10 at 10am.

11am-1pm: Math Lounge
I have a class at the gym put in for 12:10-12:55 but had to skip due to working on Math Club stuff. I sent out e-mails for our meeting tomorrow, yosemite update, sweatshirt payments, shirt payments, made sign up sheets for the car wash Saturday and the book sale next week. It doesn't seem like that should take 3 hours but somehow it did.

1:10pm-2pm: MATH 414: Real Analysis III
Well only three main differences from last quarter. 1) Dave either missed the first day or decided to drop the track. Hopefully I'll see him soon to see how he's doing. 2) The time of the class is an hour later than last quarter but the same as Fall. 3) The room is back in the math building rather than the spider building. Homework hasn't been assigned yet. Final is Friday June 10 at 1:10pm

2pm-4pm: Running around
Hopefully, I will normally be in the library for this time but today I had to run around to see about my graduation. I went to the Stat department first to see if I could talk to someone about picking up the minor. I managed to catch one guy in his office but need to go back Wednesday at 3 to actually talk to him about it. Then I went up to the Math department to have Dr. Morrison sign my petition to subsitute a D5 GE for a D2 GE in London. Then I went to the Evaluations office to see if I could get my evaluation earlier to make sure I was on track. My evaluator basically said he won't be getting to Fall people for a couple more weeks, to talk to Cindy in COSAM Advising and that he would route my petition off to the right people. So then I went to the COSAM Advising center to see if I could make an appointment for tomorrow. Unfortunately, this week is walk-in only. (Never thought I'd say that). Fortunately, the lady at the front desk was able to give me the most current version of my unofficial evaluation and said from what she can see, I was just missing a few GE's and the elective in my major. I said I hoped Math 304 would count for that since it wasn't going to be a track. She said I should talk to my department advisor. So I went back to the department and was pointed to Dr. Greenwald who explained that basically I need 28 units in the advanced course work area and that I had 24 units from the 3 tracks and just needed the extra units from another track, elective in major or elective in support. So I actually have 32 units in advanced course work but recommended that I talk to Cindy to be absolutely sure. I decided to put that off until tomorrow. I went over to the bookstore to get the "Greenbook" for my Econ class but they didn't have it. Since I had class from 4 to 6 I decided to get some food and went to Backstage. I got to bug Rebecca while she worked, that was fun ;-). I also called my mom back about trying to get some program to work on her virtual PC that she thinks I someone broke. All I did was run Norton's on her comptuer, didn't fix any of the 20+ problems because we couldn't boot from the disk. I didn't touch the program or virtual PC. Whatever.

4:10pm-6pm: ECON 201-Survey of Economics
The good news is that of the 230 people in the class, I do know one. Nick is there with me which we actually found out during Analysis. I did get a good seat though but I still hate the desks in the silo. My spiral notebook barely fits on there. Anyway, big lecture hall of 230 elbow to elbow. Ugh, I hate that enviornment. The only good thing about it is 3 multiple guess midterms of 38 questions each and a multiple guess final of 50 questions. Although the lack of questions for a 2 hour class kind of scares me. Homework is to start reading chapter 1 and get the textbook and the Greenbook. Final is Friday June 10 at 4pm.


Notice a pattern with the finals yet? That's right, 3 of my 4 classes have their finals on Friday (10am, 1pm, 4pm). If I wasn't a DRC student those would non-stop. I was saying when I got out of econ saying that if my last class had it's final Friday at 7am I would laugh/scream. Anyway, after class I came home and checked the scedule just so I wouldn't embarass myself tomorrow if it came true. Fortunately a 4-5:30 class is considered evening (and 4-6 isn't, go figure) so the final is 7pm on Thursday. So eventually I'll have to move one away from Friday and move the IT one up. Eh, I'll concern myself with the details that later. I'm just glad my birthday isn't during finals week like it was the first two years.

Thanks to having Thursday off, there's a Math Club meeting tomorrow which makes it very busy since I really really want to go to this class at the gym. Although it is right before my IT class so we'll have to see how that works. In general, Tuesdays and Thursdays will not be fun.

*sigh* I hate Spring quarter.

*Dies of shock*
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: School
I just checked my grades and Oh. My. God.
B+ in Analysis!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That just made me SO happy! I thought it would have been impossible but apparently it wasn't. What amazes me more is that I only got a B in Analysis last quarter and had done better on the midterms last quarter. I must have somehow racked up a lot of partial credit on the final cause...wow. I like it when all my studying pays off.

Oh, and as for my other grades. B in Anthropology and A's in both courses of Senior Project. Term GPA 3.433, cumulative 3.333. Consider me an extremely happy camper.