Thursday, May 17, 2007

Sweet dreams are not made of these

This is another one of those school posts, so you can skip it if you don't read those...

I had another one of those dreams last night. It's the last week of school; I'm almost ready for finals. Then somebody asks me how I did on my homework in another class, and I realize this is
a class that I was originally taking at the beginning of the semester, but I have forgotten to attend for the last month or two. There are two such classes -- I thought I was taking just two classes for the semester, but I suddenly remember that it used to be four. There has already been a homework that I have missed in each class, and I'm woefully unprepared for both finals.

The really funny part is that in my dream, I'm thinking: "Oh no, this is just like one of those dreams I'm always having! Only this time it's real!" And then I woke up, and it still took me a few more minutes to realize it wasn't.

Also at another point in my dream, I was using my laptop on a stove because there were no other convenient surfaces to work on. I just had a shallow frying pan sitting on the stove, and the laptop was resting inside it, and I had a chair pulled up to the counter. So I'm working for a while when suddenly I realize that (of course!) the burner's been on. I think "Well, maybe I caught it in time." But when I turn the computer over and look, the bottom is all melted off and there's a big mess of singed wires and stuff underneath.

By the way, as for my ACTUAL finals, they went just fine. One of them was fairly easy and straightforward, and I feel pretty sure of an A in the class. The other one was hard, almost unfairly so. But the entire class, out in the hall afterwards, ALL looked miserable and we all had a good bitch session about how unfairly hard it was. That's good news for the curve, and this professor has been generous with some grading in the past, so I feel reasonably optimistic on the whole.

I mostly have these nightmares after school is over and I don't have as many real things to worry about. Although I did have another dream during finals week, where my high school teacher Mr. Laeser showed up and told me that I was going to have to work on another large project for HIM during the last six months while I try to get my thesis ready.

UPDATE:

This just in: I got an A in Real-Time Systems, the class with the brutal final. I got a 54 out of 70 on the final; the class average was 44. Yes, I AM that guy who ruins the curve for everyone. :)

Party time!

One thing I have to say about Dr. Mok, he gives really bad assignments and tests, but he makes up for it by being ridiculously generous with the grading. I had no clue what I was doing on half those questions, and there is no way I really deserved a 54. But hey, I'm not complaining. Seriously.


3 comments:

  1. I had these dreams until about 5 years after i finished study. In particular the ones where you realise you haven't attended the class for the whole semester and now have to sit the exam.

    Funny thing was I only ever skipped about 2 classes.

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  2. I am quite proud of your doing so well in school! Most mother-in-laws, I presume, really don't feel their daughter married someone "good enough". But *this* mother-in-law isn't "most". Congrats on your grades this semester and enjoy your time off for yourself and the family:-)

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  3. Has anyone ever done a psychological study on why this oddly specific dream is so oddly common? I even had a comp sci teacher who once said, "In about 3 years, you're going to have a dream that you have a final in a class that you forgot you'd signed up for... and it's going to be this class." Still hasn't come true, by the way.

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