Tuesday 10 June 2008

Half way there...

I have now finished two out of my four exams.

Today was Quantitative Methods in Biology- known to everyone in the school of zoology simply as QM and it has quite a reputation as it is the hardest zoology unit and has the highest failure rate. I ran into one of my 2nd year lecturers this morning and she asked me if I had an exam today. When I replied that I had my QM exam she simply said, "Oh, I'm sorry. My condolences."

I was very worried that I would turn up at the exam, open the question paper, and not know anything about any of the questions. When I got there, however, the first question (30 mins long) boosted my confidence huge amounts because I knew everything about that. It was downhill from there, but I still did much, much better than I expected.

Although I'm afraid I haven't really learnt as much about statistics as I should have in this course, I have learned two important things about statisticians:

1). They all have a very warped sense of humour.
2). They are exceptionally fond of acronyms. For example ANOVA, ANCOVA, ANOSIM, MANOVA, PERMANOVA, PCA, MDS, SIMPER...


Anyway, after my exam Megan and I went out for Hot Chocolate to condole with each other for a while and recover from the brain mush (for anyone who has never experienced brain mush after an exam imagine your brain melting and dripping out your ears and then being replaced with porridge and you will begin to understand the feeling of brain mush). Then I made my way home and Ayden came over and cooked me tea (isn't he useful ) and gave me FAR too much sugar : ) so I'm rather wide awake.

Well, my next exam is on Saturday so I have three days to study for Marine Ecology (far harder than it sounds- its not just about how cute dolphins and whales are despite what some people assume it must be like- it is the second hardest course in Zoology). I have a tutorial tomorrow afternoon and I am meant to have figured out some questions to ask my lecturers so I guess I'm going to have a busy morning tomorrow.

I suppose I'd better try to unwind and go to bed soon.
Congratulations, Mum, on now being on holidays- I hope to join you in just over a week : )

2 comments:

Joolz said...

I'm glad that you were cooked a nice meal. With porridge for brains, it would be hard to come up with a healthy meal. Miserable weather up here. Hope the study and tutorial go well.

Robert Kingston said...

Congrats Loop.

Did you submit you "And that was one-handed!" note from the doctor? Pity we'll probably never know how much it helped and how you would have gone anyway.

Looking forward to seeing you during your holidays.

*One-handed refers to the fact that Em was only about to study for 50% of the semester according to her doctor. Or something like that.