Academics

Pre-College (High-School)

Fall 2023

My first real semester of college is one I will no doubt remember. The academic jump from a relatively lax classroom environment to the fast paced hustle of being a college freshman was quite the shock. Being in the Redwine Honors Program was also a part of my academic valor this semester. Despite being expected to do more than the average student, I find these extra stipulations quite invigorating. The challenge of doing extra and harder work stimulates my academic growth, and allows me to expand my own horizons with other like-minded individuals.

American History to 1865
Generally, the semester started out good with my grades, initially, my biggest challenge was my Honors History class. We had weekly essays, and the first two were shockingly low grades. Thankfully, I was able to coordinate with my professor and figure out what he was looking for in the essays and at the final stage of the semester, I finished strongly in that class.

Pre-Calculus
However, my pre-calculus class has been the largest workload I have ever taken on by far. The amount of weekly topics we have to cover is almost unfathomable to myself, but it was nothing I couldn't handle because of my previous dual-credit college algebra class. I took the first half of the semester in stride, relying heavily on my previous knowledge. I scored very highly on the first 2 exams, however, once we switched to the trigonometry section, the class became exponentially more difficult. Cramming a semester's worth of knowledge in 6 weeks would not be easy, but I had no choice. To my dismay, my lack of prerequisite knowledge shined through by the time of the 3rd exam, just barely failing it. This would be the first time I had ever failed on an assignment that would heavily impact my grade. Thankfully, my high scores on the previous exams allowed it so that I still had an overall grade of 90.5%. This was not a comfortable A, so I would have to study more than I ever had to ensure I pass the next 2 major grades with above a 90. With ~30 hours spread across 5 days spent studying and working in preparation, it would pay off for the first exam part, making 46/50. The other 50 points would be the following Thursday, and by now I was burnt out. I had spent noticeably less time studying, but still a substantial amount. However, everything worked out in the end. I seemingly scored 100% on the second part, as my posted combined grade for both exams was 96%. This was hugely relieving, but I just had the final exam standing between me and a 4.0 GPA. The night before the final, I underestimated how much studying the posted review would be. I unwisely stayed up till just before 1:00 am, and woke up around 6:30 am. I met with Ares, Blake, and Andrea to pre-game for the final. I reviewed past exams, and before I knew it, it was time to head to the final. I sat down, took it using the online tool, and my past hard work would ultimately carry me to a 100% score on the final. I was ecstatic to see this, and felt that everything would ultimately be ok.

Other Classes
As part of reformatting operation that I wanted to do for my Learning Portfolio, I am coming back to this section over a year later to just quickly elaborate on my other classes this semester as I realized I didn't cover them:
Intro to Creative Inquiry was the first level of honors classes that I had to take. It exposed us to all of the different disciplines on campus. This course improved my reflective writing and was also what introduced us to the concept of the Learning Portfolio in the first place. I am surprised I didn't think to mention it originally when first typing out this sections.
Intro to Computer Science was an invigorating class, and the first one where I got to taste what my major had in store for me. The professor, Mika Morgan, was extremely nice and pedagogical, and really reinforced learning for me. I would make my highest overall grade for this semester, and several of the following semesters in the class, which was a 99.5% as well as a perfect 100 on the final.
The final course that I took this semester was Physical Geology, which was a fairly easy class as long as I paid attention during lecture. The daily quizzes were attendance grades but helped improve retention of the material, so I enjoyed them. Ultimately, not a whole lot happened in this class except for the research paper I wrote, which I would later use in poster presentations.

Overall, this semester has been one with academic ups and downs, but I think I was able to make the most of this new and challenging environment. Most of the course work I have finished this semester isn't overly glamorous as it has all been foundational learning. There's no way I could sum up this whole semester with one academic project, especially since everything big only came together in the last week of classes. Instead, I made a short list which highlights major ones, and that can be found here.

Spring 2024

My second full semester of college was relatively much more calm than my first, academically speaking anyways. At this point, I at least had some idea of what to expect in terms of scale of the entire semester, and from what I've gathered, the spring term is usually much more calm in comparison anyways. I will say I had some negative firsts in terms of classes this semester. I was finally met with a professor who I just could not win against, and it got to the point where I thought he would give me my first B in college, you will have to read on to see how that turned out. I was also forced to miss several classes when last semester I was never absent once. I even overslept for the first time and missed the beginning portion of my class.

Aside from these negative things, I will say that this has also been a fantastic semester, I feel much more educated and knowledgeable about numerous aspects. Aside from my Calculus class, I held comfortable A's through and through, I have gone above and beyond every chance I was able to, doing a large amount of extra work for programming assignments to make them more flashy when it was not necessary at all. 

Bioterrorism Seminar
In contrast to last semester, I also had very few writing assignments, which was kind of a shock, and I think it contributed to me feeling better about my workload. The few writing assignments I had were for a very interesting and atypical class: Bioterrorism. This class was a seminar that changes each semester, and I took it because it interested me more than some of the other ideas being floated around. We were lectured on various diseases and their potential as bioweapons, which in itself is interesting, but we were also tasked with assignments that even had the potential of getting us arrested. Granted, that is if we were really bad at it. As a bonus, for the last month of the semester, we got to play a wargame which simulated a terrorist-caused outbreak. My initial role was the vice president, but the day that the game started, the president got assassinated by a fictional terrorist group, and I would take over the second day. I remember being extremely crowded by everyone surrounding me, and while it was a shock at first, I still really enjoyed the situation and think I played to the best of my abilities. As the game went on, it obviously got more calm. The people who had relatively lax positions figured that out, and they were much less interested in the game, and people who had relatively important positions were absent a lot, so it was far from a perfect game, but I still had a blast. In the end, we "won" with only about half of the potential total of deaths from the disease, which was the Black Plague.

Physics
I also had a blow-off class, which is one you wouldn't expect it to be: Physics. Believe it or not, my physics professor, Preet Sharma, was one of the most laid back people in existence. He let us choose deadlines for assignments, do corrections on tests, which were take-home, open resource tests to begin with, and even finished class more than a week early. The material was extremely difficult, so I imagine he was just being lenient because of this, but his teaching style made it so that very few of the things he taught stuck. 

Computer Science Courses
Additionally, my computer science classes were interesting and I had a really fun time learning in those. The CS 2 class just delved deeper into different aspects and tools within C++, so it was just building onto the foundational learning from last semester. My Intro to Computer Architecture class was extremely interesting. I have always wondered how exactly computers work with binary, and this class taught the basics of that. My professor, Dr. Passos, is an interesting individual in his own right, but I really enjoyed his teaching style, though his voice was dangerous and I believe it constantly put people to sleep in our class, and I even had to fight for my own conscious a couple of times. Overall, I believe my choice as a Computer Science major was a good one, as the topic keeps me interested and I excel at it.

Calculus I
Finally, the last class I would like to discuss: Calculus. As mentioned earlier, my professor was one that I just could not win with. Dr. Mitchell handed out a syllabus that scared me at first, it used the points system and I could only obtain 600 total points through the semester, meaning an A would be 540 points. His quizzes were easy, so I was not worried, but by the first exam, I found out it was only a façade. The algebra required to solve even the most basic of problems was far beyond my capability, and I did not start off strong, making only a 73 on the test. However, that was the highest grade in the class, so I had hope for a curve. A curve did come, but in the form of a "Bonus Points Quiz" where we basically had to earn our curve. Unfortunately, that would be the first and only curve this entire semester. Despite 10+ hours of studying for each exam, my following grades were not much  better. However, we still had one more exam, so I had hope. Unfortunately, one of those negative things I mentioned earlier about oversleeping, well it happened on the day of this third exam, so I showed up 20 minutes late to take it. By some chance, I still managed to get every question answered. I ended up getting my highest grade on this exam after minimally studying and showing up late, which is kind of ironic, but I scored an 88. With this exam score, Dr. Mitchell put our total current grade on the exam as well when he handed it back. That indicated I would have to make a 111 on the final to get that A... On the bright side, he did actually give me a 100/100 on quiz grades despite that not being the case at all, and I would have to make below a 50 to get a C, so at least I had a safe B. Unfortunately for me, I am a perfectionist, and I considered retaking this class next semester with a different professor. While it may be unwise, I am already taking a decreased load out of anticipation for Calculus 2, so retaking a class that's only difficult the first time around would not be that bad, but things might change.

Finals Week
It's safe to say this finals week was a lot less stressful than the last, however that doesn't mean I excelled. I mostly focused on my Calculus final for reasons you probably could infer from the previous paragraph. My Computer Science finals were both a breeze, but I didn't quite achieve perfection, getting a 99 in CS 2, and an 88 in Computer Architecture. My Physics and Bioterrorism finals were take-home, so they were a relative breeze, scoring 100s on both. My Calculus final was the big one though. Compared to some of the previous exams, I spent relatively little time studying for it, but it was still several hours cumulatively. The morning came, I woke up earlier than I had in several weeks, and got ready for it. Surprisingly, it was easier than the majority of the other exams, and I believe I excelled on this test. I was unable to find out the grade until a few days into summer, but once I did, I was beyond elated to discover that I made a perfect 100, but would it be enough?

The following Monday after finals week, grades were released. I had been anxiously anticipating this moment since the day I took my Calculus final. I was sure of the other classes being an A, it was solely the Calculus grade I was awaiting. With nervousness, I checked my records, and even though an A should have been impossible, I had hope for lenience. To my surprise, he fortunately was lenient, and gave me an A. I was elated, and just beyond excited that I was able to keep my 4.0 despite nearly losing hope. But that's a wrap, Academics wise. 

Overall, a whole lot of firsts, and definitely not all positive. However, this semester was a learning experience, and one I will not soon forget. Even with a similar load to last semester, I still had relatively few academic projects, but I will still compile a list highlighting major ones from each class, which can be found here.

Summer 2024

American History
Summer classes were honestly one of the last things I expected to take during my college career. I enjoyed my summer breaks a lot throughout high school so I figured that mentality would just continue throughout college, but I was most definitely incorrect. Summer I was occupied by a study abroad experience, which admittedly is more of a cultural growth than academic growth, and I don't have too much to touch on academics wise. I took American History since 1865, and I read the assigned book and did all of the coursework prior to leaving. Once I arrived, we had daily class for several hours, and then an excursion later in the day. The lectures were interesting because they were not over American History at all, and instead it was a Western Civilization since 1499 class, all of our course was in the form of online lectures. That was cool because I got to get the knowledge from 2 classes for the price of one.
The excursions often only pertained to class in little and abstract ways, but they were still valuable learning experiences. Regardless, the main story of my study abroad can be found here: Experiences, Berlin Paper. Upon my return to the States, I typed up my Final assignment, which was a research project pertaining to US-Germany relations. I emailed a draft to my professor, and he got back to me within a day. Unfortunately, that would be the last punctual email exchange I would have with him. I emailed my second submission and never heard back, the due date came, so I emailed a 3rd submission just in case there was some technical difficulty and he didn't receive it, but still nothing. I actually get several weeks into my Summer II class before he finally responds and talks to me about it, and he skyrockets my nerves because he says there's a potential plagiarism issue. It was just a citation error that I didn't know how to go about, and I emailed him asking about this issue early on, but he never responded. Ultimately, he finally got my Final Grade in, and thankfully gave me an A, but I didn't see this update until days after I found out my Summer II grade for timeline reference. 

Calculus II
Summer II was the embodiment of struggle. In order to avoid a professor that I have heard some pretty negative things about, I decided to take Calculus II over summer with a much friendlier professor. Calc II often has the reputation of being the most infamous, regularly-took math class of them all, so it would be an understatement to say I was a little nervous. Fortunately, I think taking it over the summer benefited me greatly because I was able to focus on only that class without any other classes serving as "distractions", as well as very minimal extracurricular items.

The class definitely had its drawbacks though. We were taking the class in Bolin, which had it's remodel in full swing since it was summer time, and even worse, our room was right next to the construction zone. This posed a problem more on some days than others, but it was still unfortunate to experience, especially during the test days. Speaking of tests, I was making high B's on the first 2 tests and quiz average, and that was nerve-wracking for me. Right up until the final, I was on the boundary of an A, but thanks to countless hours of studying, improved understanding from diversifying my knowledge sources, and keeping a cool-head, I was able to finish the Final with only minor and minimal issues. The coming 24 or so hours that I had to wait until I found out my grade were met with a weird combination of relief from not having to worry about going to class anymore, but stressed that my grade and GPA could be entirely determined by one question. Ultimately, I managed to pull off an A, which I was super grateful for and just excited that my 4.0 lives to see another semester.

Ultimately, the study-abroad was more of an experience than an academic story, but I feel obliged to include it in here anyways. Calc II was definitely an academic experience for the books, and one that I hope I don't have to relive anytime soon, but only time will tell. Overall, the summer term was actually exhilarating, and aside from some bouts of intense stress, I would say I had tons of fun. 

Fall 2024

Academically speaking, my 3rd fully fledged semester would have quite a few firsts. I would be exposed to two new professors that I had not seen yet in the CS department, one of them being the chair, whom was notorious for her difficult classes, so I had that to look forward to. This semester, I would also be taking my first online class from MSU, so that would be a neat first experience, and interestingly enough, one that I had to fight for. Ultimately, the classes would not end up being scary/difficult until Finals Week approached and I realized how much material we had covered this semester.

Additionally, I think it is worth mentioning that I have committed to a choice that has been in the back of my mind since potentially as early as my first semester, but only a serious thought since summer. I completely worked out my degree plan to do a double-degree in Mathematics. While I never got the chance to officially sign the Change of Major form this semester, it is definitely imminent, and I believe it will still work out for me to graduate within the 4 year time frame unless there is a single conflict. While this is exciting now, time will only tell if I come to embrace this decision or regret it later.  

American Government
The first class I had worked into my schedule to satisfy my remaining honors credit for core classes would be American and Texas Government I. This would be an 8am class, which I thought I would have gotten away with not having those this semester, but unfortunately not. While I knew the professor well, Dr. Steve Garrison, I had not had him in an actual class up to this point, only a seminar class, so it remained to be seen how that would turn out. Ultimately, it was a nice experience, the material was well organized, and I felt like doing well in that class could be easily accomplished by simply paying attention. I also formed a couple of new friendships by studying for the quizzes and exams from this test, so that was nice. This would also be my first class where I would not have a comprehensive final, and that was extremely interesting, and definitely took a weight off of my shoulders once Finals Week approached. I thought I was going to make a perfect score of a 100 on this class because that's what I made on every quiz and exam up to the final ones. I confused two concepts on the final quiz and ultimately made an 85, but there was still hope as the lowest quiz grade would be dropped. Though, the idea that "if something is too good to be true, it usually is", holds here, as I would ultimately make a high 90 on the final paper project, and that likely diminished any chances at a perfect score. While that definitely sounds like a first-world problem, I am agreeing that it is, but I just thought it would've been a neat experience to say that I made a perfect 100 for an entire course.

Discrete Structures
My two CS courses this semester, as mentioned earlier, were by two new professors that I had not seen before, so it would be a learning experience from the get-go. First, Discrete Structures, would ultimately end up being a math class disguised as a computer science class. This was the class that was taught by the chair of the department: Dr. Catherine Stringfellow. It would bounce back and forth between being a hard class and a simple class throughout the entire semester, but it was definitely never a blow-off class at any point. I achieved high grades on the quizzes and first exam, though the second exam lined up with my trip to NCHC 24, an experience that I had this semester, and while she allowed me to take it as a makeup exam, the lack of studying yielded a low grade on, just barely passing with a 71. Ultimately, and very fortunately, she would give a small curve and heavy extra credit on this exam grade, boosting me up to an 82, so it did not harm my grade that bad. I tried to coast out the remainder of the semester following this exam, but the quizzes got more difficult and I became very nervous for the last remaining regular exam. I studied with my study group for hours in preparation, and took the exam. I didn't feel great, but I didn't feel bad either. The following class day, we got our grades back and I was shocked to see an 84. Something didn't feel right, and I only missed a handful of points upon reviewing the graded exam. I asked about how the score added up, and she realized she made a 20 point mistake, first the exam didn't even add up to 100 points, it added up to 109, and I scored 104, meaning my true percentage was a 94%, but presumably as a way of rectifying her mistake, she gave me 104/100, which really helped keep my grade a comfortable A. 

Object-Oriented Programming
My other CS course, Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), which is heavily concept based with an equal amount of coding involved. This was taught by a professor that my old co-worker knew through rugby of all things. The first day of class, I asked the professor, Dr. Terry Griffin, if he knew my co-worker, and he said he did, so I reveled over the fact that we live in a small world. Throughout the semester, I think Dr. Griffin took a liking to me as I was one of the few that actually participated in class, and his lectures are heavily reliant on class participation. I will admit that it was not all sunshine and rainbows though, as he was rather disorganized and jumped around a lot, so I didn't always know what to ask or how to participate. We ended up taking two regular exams throughout the semester, the first one was semi-concept based and mostly coding based. We covered several abstract things so I wasn't quite sure how to write the code he wanted, and had a rough start to this class, scoring an 83 on the first exam. Though, the second one was almost entirely concept based, and I think I might've gotten the class high-score with a 98. Our 3rd exam ended up getting canceled, and that was scary because I really wanted the reinforcement of what we had been learning, or at least an idea of what it was supposed to be. We were working on our second program, a dice-themed minigame called Knucklebones. The first coding library we used ended up being harder than anyone, even the professor, could handle. We switched to a different one, and spent the remainder of the semester trying to cover concepts of that library and get it running for everybody. Ultimately, our second program would be up to us to finish as we ran out of time in the semester, and he treated it more like extra-credit. Although I have a dedicated paragraph for finals week, I do want to mention that taking this final was the scariest as we had very little idea of what would be on it, and everything we didn't study was indeed the majority of the final.

Linear Algebra
I took the last math course that I had to take for my CS degree this semester, which was Linear Algebra, taught by Dr. Jeff Hood, my Calculus II professor from summer, although, I had already decided on obtaining the double-degree, so I didn't treat it like my last math class thankfully. Compared to Calc II, Linear Algebra was much more straight forward and less abstract. I did well throughout the entire semester, and was never overly worried about my grade. The daily quizzes that Dr. Hood gives really improves retention of the material and encourages good studying, while also helping buffer and protect grades from a potentially bad exam. Though, I never struggled on any of the regular exams, making A's, and evening making over a 100% on the last regular exam. While the class definitely was not a blow-off, I would say that it was one of my less worry-inducing classes. Towards the middle of the semester, I would start walking with Dr. Hood out of class and back to his office, and we would talk about some school-related things, but also extracurriculars. I ended up asking him if I could do any EURECA research under him, and there was potential, but we will have to wait till next semester to see how that turns out. 

Elementary Spanish
My final class was my online class. I took Elementary Spanish I with Dr. Claudia Montoya. Throughout summer, I would have several email exchanges with this professor trying to get into the class because it was full. She gave me a snarky email, to which I responded in a snarky fashion as well. I recognize that it probably was not the most professional thing for me to do, but to my surprise, she placed an override request for me after this snarky email, and I ultimately got into the class. Throughout the semester, it was a fairly easy class, though the workload definitely was hefty. I had numerous Spanish-speaking friends willing to help me understand concepts and correct my grammar, so that definitely assisted in my ability to ace the exam. I only made a single B on any significantly weighted grade in the entire course, and that was an 89.5% on the final, which no doubt could've been higher, but sometimes that's just how things turn out. Safe to say that I'm not worried about this course affecting my GPA though.

Finals Week
I had tried hard throughout the semester to obtain high grades, and was very thankful for that, as I believe these would end up carrying me throughout my most worrisome finals. First was Elementary Spanish, which I got the aforementioned high B of 89.5% on. I didn't feel the need to immensely study for this one, and I guess my grade reflected that despite the fact that it could've easily been a high A. Next was Discrete Structures which involved a lot of studying, and that final didn't end badly, but I knew it was a long shot to have aced it. I discovered that I could practically fail the final and pass with A, but I would hope that wasn't needed. Indeed, by the end of the week, I found out my grade, and was beyond elated to discover I had made a perfect 100. I had a full day break before my next final which was Government, and I felt like that one was fairly easy given its non-comprehensive nature, and sure enough, I was able to make a perfect 100 on this final as well. That same day, I had my final for OOP which was the scariest one, and left me the most distraught. Mostly due to stuff that we figured wouldn't be on the final making up over half of the points. This is the most worrisome one, but in the end, I would make an A in the course, but I never found out my exact final grade. My final final would be for Linear Algebra. Other than some intimidating rules, I believe it went well, and was thankful to have studied what I did, as about half of it was definition based. I felt rather good about this final, and similarly, I would never find the grade until I asked later down the line, but I ended the course with an A, so I was happy to keep my 4.0 

I would like to note how the air felt and smelt different after walking out of the building. I had to take it all in with that strange mix of worry and relief that has become a signature experience of finishing finals. While I felt fairly confident on all except for OOP, only time would tell how my grades faired for this semester.

Once grades were released, my fears were alleviated. I kept my perfect GPA for yet another semester, and thus, my academic journey continues on.

Spring 2025

Academics wise, my fourth fully fledged semester would be almost "normal". I would have only one new professor that I would have to get accustomed to, but this would hardly be a challenge as she was extremely pedagogical. I would also be taking another online class, but with the same professor as last semester, so I didn't foresee any surprises. Most of all of my classes were completely fine until the end of the semester when I had to start missing a fair amount of classes due to extracurriculars. 

Introduction to Modern Math
The first class I would start this semester off with would be an atypical one. Intro to Modern Math was taught by the aforementioned new professor, Dr. Sarah Cobb, the chair of the Math department. Again, this adaptation would be anything but difficult, as she taught her classes in a "fuzzy" manner, where she was light-hearted about quite a few things. The coursework itself was also atypical, as it was an introduction into writing mathematical proofs. Thanks to my Discrete Math class last semester, I breezed through the first half of the semester as a large portion of it was stuff I had already covered. The semester got slightly difficult towards the end as the homework ramped up, but the class was not difficult, just time consuming. Paying attention and taking notes in that class was definitely helpful, but I also feel like a good portion of it could have just been derived from the book. I even had a classmate who sat next to me and did extremely well, all without taking any notes the entire semester. I did well on all of the exams, pending the score on the final one, but this was hardly a struggle class.

Algorithms & Advanced Structures

My first of the two CS courses that I would be taking this semester. It was atypical in schedule, as it was a Monday/Wednesday class, and thus it took the 80 minute schedule. Regardless, it was fairly normal otherwise, though there was far too much material to cover at the rate we were going.  Dr. Griffin would go super in-depth and made sure we knew intricacies of all of the algorithms we covered. About halfway through the semester, he realized we were going far too slow, so he compiled a list of different types of algorithms, and made groups of students do presentations over these. That is how we primarily spent the last 3 or so weeks of the semester. We did have one exam that was completely awful, but above all, Dr. Griffin is fair. He rectified his mistake by giving a better version of the exam, and took that score instead. Overall, it was much better than OOP was last semester as he was more organized, but the final would still be a good punch to the stomach so to speak.

Logical Design
My other CS course, Logical Design, focused more on the hardware level of how computers operated. From the beginning of the semester, this is a class I was extremely excited for as I always had a fascination for exactly that. The homework was challenging, but helped really deepen my understanding of the math and the binary instructions of computers. Around Spring Break, we were assigned the large project where we had to design a computer that could operate on 4-bit numbers (0-15) and display them in a seven-segment display. I partnered with a good friend on this project, and was unfortunately unable to work on it until the week or so before it was due thanks to extracurriculars. We spent hours upon hours working on it, and I would be remiss if it didn't take the spot in my academics projects page for this class due to the amount of time it took and how nice it ended up looking. The second exam went well, and yet again, this class was hardly a worrisome one, but the information I learned was really cool, so I am happy to have taken it. By the time of the last exam, I made a good grade, and Dr. Passos had mentioned that if you were making a good grade in the course, the final exam was optional, so I managed to get out of taking the final for this course.

Operations Research
Yet again, I was able to take a class with Dr. Hood, which I was more than happy to do so. This class would help satisfy my math double major, but it was also something I remember wanting to work into my degree plan from as far back as my first semester. The class itself was neat, and it covered a mathematical way to optimize almost any basic problem. It was also interesting in the sense that we started doing a lot of stuff with Excel, and even took our second exam almost solely on Excel. Early on in the semester, Dr. Hood asked if one or two of his students from this class would like to present an linear programming problem (LP) to his business math class at the end of the semester since they cover what we start out covering. I volunteered, and would end up giving one of the presentations, which was cool. I was a little nervous because I was trying to present something that I should've definitely practiced a little more for, but it's okay. By the time of the last exam, I was extremely lucky to have presented that LP, as I got a bonus 3 points on the exam and I desperately needed it. That last exam was 2 questions long, and the first one was answered in under a minute, all of the remaining time was spent on the second question. Unfortunately for me, I made a mistake at the very beginning, but he didn't count off for it since even though it was wrong in the sense of how the method should have been, the step still was viable. However, I did make a secondary mistake later down the line that cost me about 14 points. At the end, there was another bonus question that I was able to get right though, so that was nice, and ultimately, I would finish grade-wise with a 99. We also did have a presentation over a real life LP that we had to find and solve, and I did it over my previous place of employment, Comcell, which was fun and definitely a unique experience. In the end, since this class was not a prerequisite for anything, Dr. Hood would say that if we were happy with our grade in the class, we did not have to take the final, so I was able to opt out of this one as well. 

Elementary Spanish II
My final class was my online class. I took Elementary Spanish II with Dr. Claudia Montoya. After Spanish I, I roughly knew what to expect. However, what I didn't expect to have to deal with was forgetfulness. Numerous times throughout the semester, I would end up forgetting to do an assignment. This obviously negatively impacted me, but even more so in the sense that there was no way to make these up. After I missed the 3rd assignment that I had to take a 0 for, I was genuinely scared of getting a B in this online class, which would've just been plain embarrassing, especially since it's not even major-related. Regardless, she was very lenient, and said from the beginning that she would drop some of our lowest grades, and sure enough, I was able to finish this class with a low-A, but I do find it funny that this is likely my lowest grade for the semester, especially when I was taking high level computer science and math classes. I will say I probably worried the most about this one, which is ironic considering the aforementioned reason, but that's just how this semester played out.

Finals Week

My diligent work throughout the semester would end up saving me in more ways than one. I would almost undoubtedly consider this my easiest finals week ever as I only had to take 3 finals. This is due to the fact that both Logical Design and Operations Research were not prerequisites for anything, and both professors were lenient in the sense that they said the final could be skipped if we were happy with our grade. 

The first final I took was for Spanish, and I ended up making a 90.91% on it. I was happy with this as it meant my low-A was solidified, even if it was low. The other two finals were held on the same day, Wednesday. However, for whatever reason, I would pull the rather unwise move of doing an all-nighter the night before these exams. I was conversing with a graduating senior at the ACS Study Night, and time just flew by. The next thing I knew, the sun was out, and my 8:00am exam was rapidly approaching.

I would go on to do well on this exam, which was for Modern Math, despite no sleep, but the Algorithms exam wasn't until that evening at 5:45. I studied, but I figured that his final would be similar to how OOP was last semester. Sure enough, I was right, and a good chunk of the questions were not on the study guide, and it was a punch to the stomach as I said earlier. I mean, you could argue that my brain fog was no-help, and I would agree, but even if I had a good night's rest, it didn't change the fact that these questions were seemingly pulled out of thin air, definitely not from the study guide. I know he is fair above all, but his exams just frustrate me. While I have hope, there is a sinking feeling in the back of my mind that despite doing well on the other exams, I may be risking my 4.0 because of this one bad exam.

Grade-wise, this semester turned out well. I was halfway worried for Spanish, but since that was the first final that I took and I did well, I ended up getting an A. Following the algorithms final, I did feel some worry, but my grade ended up being a 70%, which wasn't bad considering how I felt about it. I would end up securing the A for this class and all others, so in the end, my 4.0 lives on.