Alice Cooper Said It Best

One year down.

I am officially done with my first year at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Finals week wasn't too bad, other than the fact that my Biology final more or less worked me. The test turned out to be almost entirely focused on the biodiversity unit of the class, with the majority of the questions requiring nothing more than memorization of large amounts of information about nearly every group of organisms on the planet. Never mind that the professor had stated two days earlier that the test was largely "big-picture" oriented, or that the test summary indicated a large portion would come from the previous units of the course. Whatever. I suppose I should have known that memorization would play a big role. Still, despite this mild disaster, the week was relatively painless. Really I'm just glad that it is done. That is, I'm glad finals are done. Thats not the case for the school year in general. It was without a doubt one of, if not the, most fun years of my entire life. For the first time ever, I can honestly say that I can't wait for summer to be over.

So now I have to find ways to entertain myself back here in good old A-Town. Of course the first thing I did was go out and buy a wireless router for our house so I can get on the internet all the time, rather than having to hope I can pick up a signal from down the street that isn't protected. I also rented a couple movies that I had been wanting to see. Cloverfield and I Am Legend. Cloverfield was actually pretty sweet. I didn't really know what to expect out of it, but I figured it would be entertaining, at the very least, seeing as J.J. Abrams produced it. I never actually expected it to be a plain-and-simple monster movie. As it turns out, that is exactly what it was made to be, kind of an homage to the classic Godzilla movies in Japan. As for I Am Legend, it was alright, but 28 Days Later was superior in most ways. Will Smith was undeniably bad-ass, though, and I actually liked the plot being comprised mostly of just his daily routine.

Work starts Tuesday, back at the golf course. Awesome. At least it sounds like one of my co-workers from last year is coming back too, so I won't have to teach the noobs how to do everything myself. Which is good, seeing as I don't actually know how to do everything.

I'm tired. Peace.

The Best Jam Sessions Happen At Midnight

Quiet Hours in the dorms have officially begun. Starting at midnight, the dorms are under full time quiet hours, save for a couple courtesy hours around lunch and dinner. To commemorate the occasion, there was a jam session in the hallway, which pretty much consisted of Tim shredding some mad licks on his ax. Before it finished, though (since it was about 20 minutes long), I joined in to provide the rhythm guitar part of Free Bird, over which Tim rocked the solo. The people on my floor have really put me to shame, as far as guitar skills are concerned. I'm no slouch on a guitar, but these kids legitimately rock. At least a couple of people were upset about the jam session, of course. I suppose that's kind of understandable, but there are plenty of times when those same people are extremely loud early in the morning, usually singing themselves praise over last night's drunken escapades.

So today was officially the last day of classes for the semester, and year for that matter. All that is left of my freshman year of college is finals, which I am admittedly a little nervous about. They fall fairly early in the week (Sunday and Tuesday), and so I don't exactly have a ton of time to prepare. Despite the fact that college is naturally far beyond anything I did in High School, I don't feel overly freaked out about these tests. I think that just goes to show how completely inept the High School system is at preparing kids for college. There is such a huge gap, it's like training an astronaut by having him jump on a trampoline. Even most of the AP classes I took in high school didn't make any sort of noticeable difference, other than require more work of the same level.

The whole thing makes me think of one story I heard about my old school district. Apparently there were too many students with 4.0 grade point averages, and the district felt that it needed to do something to bring this number down (a thought that is not as evil as it sounds). The problem is, instead of enriching the curriculum of existing classes, or offering more advanced classes (which the students in question would take if given the opportunity), they nerfed the grading scheme. Previously, an A of any kind, from A+ to A-, had been a 4.0. The change dropped the GPA of an A- down to 3.67. Here are the issues I take with this:

• A grade of A- carries a penalty in GPA, but a grade of A+ carries no benefit.
• An A- implies a proficiency of between 90 and 93 percent in a given subject, and this is reflected in the 3.67 GPA, roughly 91.5% of the highest possible 4.0 GPA. HOWEVER, the large down-scaling from class percentage to GPA (something that always occurs when applying percentages to vastly different totals) is not compensated for in the policies of most higher education institutions. I'm not sure about every university in the world, but I know almost all of the most respected institutions don't even consider applicants with GPAs below 3.7.

The whole situation seems rather contrived, as if the policy was put in place without any actual consideration of how it fits into the educational system as a whole. When a student with an A- average (mind you, this means that if you give him 100 questions, he will typically answer at least 90 of them correctly) is compared to a kid with a 4.0, the difference appears much larger than it actually is (I don't mean to discredit those students who do actually achieve 4.0 GPAs, as this is a great accomplishment that should be rewarded.). Factoring in any system that uses weighted grades (that is, a system that rewards AP or honors classes with a 5.0 grading scale) further decreases the value of a 3.67 GPA.

All this being said, I must admit that I am writing in my blog right now, when I should probably be studying for my chemistry and biology exams. I suppose I should get to that.

More like Master Gay...

The past couple of weeks have been - to put it simply - crazy awesome. Hatters had our last couple gigs of the semester, which actually kind of sucks. I will miss the other guys over the summer, though I hope I will be able to make it to at least a couple of the summer gigs. Still, it's nice to have a lot more time. Frankly, I can use it, seeing as I am actually doing some amount of studying for my finals next week. We had our end of the year dinner at Prime Quarter tonight, which was, of course, delicious. Nothing like a giant Top Sirloin steak, a bunch of garlic butter toast, and a baked potato to fill a man up right.

Its finally starting to resemble summer with some consistency. It has been warm the past couple of days, there have been thunderstorms occasionally, and the sun is finally shining for the majority of the day. As a result, there has been a large increase in Frisbee playing, which is always a good thing. We also played a couple of games of volleyball, which should happen much more often. I had forgotten how much I love playing volleyball, especially on a nice sand court with line markers. When we finished we went and jumped into Lake Mendota. It was quite cold, but afterwards felt awesome.

While I'm thinking about it, Moldy sent the Hatters one of the most kick-ass pictures I have ever seen. Here it is. If you can read Spanish (I think?), then maybe you can actually figure out what the story behind the picture is. I have no idea.