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Today is the last day of classes for me. After my physics lecture tomorrow, all I have left to do is take my physics final exam on the 7th. This is the first December in about 4 or 5 years where I haven’t been completely stressed out. I’m excited too because I actually feel like I can relax a bit and enjoy the Christmas spirit.

I really don’t like going to wedding receptions. All the old people keep poking me and saying “You’re next,” as if that meant anything. Maybe I should start going to funerals and poking the old people saying, “You’re next.” I swore that the next wedding reception I would go to would be my own (I thought that would get me out of having to go to them for a long time). But tomorrow (which is actually later today) I’m going against my previously stated convictions and I’m going to one. The main reason is because I want to see friends who will be there that I otherwise would be unable to see.

Are people with freckles at higher risk for skin cancer?

Am I really ready to subject myself to extreme mental and social pressures again? Am I ready to go back to Provo? Maybe the question I should be asking inquires if Provo is ready for me.

Do any of my friends need a color ink jet printer? I have a brand new in box printer (Epson C86) that I have little use for and I’m wondering what I should do with it.

I made crepes last night for dinner. I made my usual recipe and a recipe out of my mom’s weight loss recipe book, and I could hardly tell the difference. Living at home has caused me to eat healthier, mainly because I have more time to cook, and more foods available.

I don’t know that I’ve ever told this story on my blog, but at the beginning of the term there was new student convocation where the Portland State president and some other people wanted to give some general pep talks and a few other things like that. But unlike BYU, Portland State’s convocation isn’t a part of their orientation program, so it wasn’t very well attended. To help motivate people to come, they advertised a bunch of door prizes and such. Well, the morning of convocation, my alarm went off and I was debating with myself about whether or not it was actually worth getting out of bed to go, and I decided that all I would get done is some extra sleep if I stayed home, so I went, and I sat through their boring speeches and stuff, and then they did the drawings for the door prizes and I won! I got a $250 gift card to the book store. The problem is that I’m only at PSU for a semester, so it isn’t like I needed a lot of books from the bookstore, so in addition to the one book I had to buy, I bought myself an iPod. Now I still have a little bit left over, and I’m trying to decide what I should buy. I’m thinking about a sweatshirt that says Portland State or something like that. Maybe I’ll also buy some general school supplies since those are always good.

It is already the last week of class for me here at Portland State. I just got my second mid-term back in my physics class, and I got a C on it, which compared to how well I felt that I did, isn’t that bad of a grade. It sends me into the final exam with a B in the class.

I feel that if I were to take this same class at BYU, the test would be more difficult and the grading also would not be so generous; so instead of sitting at a B, I would be struggling to find a passing grade.

I’m suspicious that perhaps classes at Portland State are easier, but because I’m only taking two, the sample size is not large enough to determine such.

I’m taking a solid-state physics class at PSU, and I just got the results back for the first mid-term exam today. I got 83% right before “the curve” and 93% after the curve, which means that I got an A. This is really good news because I could really enjoy an A grade in the class.

The thing though is, the exam wasn’t that hard. At BYU professors had the attitude of “Why should I test you on anything you’ve seen before?” This exam was fairly straight forward and mostly stuff that was familiar from the lectures or the homework. I really liked the straight forwardness of the exam and I wish my classes at BYU could do that.