Craziness

I haven't posted in a while, because I haven't really done anything worth writing about. Last night was the first time I have left the "compound" in two weeks unless you count when I walked to Sam's Club for milk and bagels. I have been studying my butt off. I'm drained, exhausted and already starting to study for finals. I am so ready to be home.

Yesterday we had an exam in Optics, which is my favorite class. I won't bore you with a ton of details, but part of what we were tested on was labeling optical systems. Our optics tutor does a great job of going over every type of question Dr. Morales could ask us, so I usually go to his reviews before an exam. Our tutor told us a "short cut" for labeling optical systems, and it seemed to make sense. One of my friends asked Dr. Morales about it in class and he said that he wasn't sure if it worked in all cases, but when we used it for all of the examples in our book, they all worked. Our exam was only 25 questions long and questions 7-18 were on this optical system. I did the problem the long way (not using the "shortcut" our tutor gave us) and didn't have any problems. Unfortunately, about 35 of my classmates used the short cut and it didn't work on this optical system. Every single on of those questions were related. If you got the first question wrong, you got them all wrong. It has turned into a fiasco because our tutor (who is a second year student) took the blame for it and now our professor doesn't know what to do. There is going to be a big meeting about it with the Dean of Students, our prof, our class president and the tutor. Basically, if the grades were to stand, 35-40 people in my class would have failed that exam. I'm glad I did it the long way so no matter what happens, it doesn't really effect me.

So this is officially my first holiday without my family. I thought that we were going to do a big Thanksgiving dinner here, but Dr. Cabello who was going to set it up has been gone due to some family issues. My friends and I were so wrapped up in exams and studying that we never had time to get stuff together for it. Last night we decided that we were going to put something together, but our dinner will be on Saturday. Most of my Canadian friends weren't able to go home for Thanksgiving either. Canadian Thanksgiving is in October so this really isn't a holiday for them anyway. It will be nice to have a dinner with all of them, but I would really like to be with my family. A semester is a really long time to be away. Most of the time I am too busy to be homesick, but today is a little harder than most. I really wish I was in Kathy's kitchen right now helping get everything ready while my uncles watch football and my cousins chase each other around the house...and I really want some of Wendy's sweet potatoes and Donna's homemade noodles. Maybe I'll ask for both when I go home. At least it is 78degrees outside and doesn't feel like Thanksgiving, that will make it easier to spend the day studying anatomy.