End of Semester Wrap Up: Numero Uno

Now, I have no idea if there will indeed be a sequel to this post come spring, but I figure, Why not? Anywho, The Fall Semester at the Good Ole University of Massachusetts has come to an end. And what a semester it was. Filled with break ups, new relationships, new friends and new classes. Nice and corny right? Well with that out of the way, let me just say this; It was bitchin'.

One of the things I am most proud of is the success of my master plan to get through this semester without books. (Read here.) I haven't gotten all my grades yet, but for the most part I'm thinking I did pretty well. I'll update with that later. Breakdown!

• Food Science: Plan of just getting info from the slides in class worked pretty well. Anything I didn't learn in there was covered in my discussion section. Nothing in the packet would have helped that much, plus not having the packet was a great way to make sure I went to class, which was definitely a bonus. Besides being a bit dull, and sometimes a little gross at times, not too bad of a class.
  
• Greek Myth: That class was awesome. Hands down, best class I've ever taken. Dr. Tuck was a boss, and knew everything I could ever think to ask. I don't know what else to say, I mean I wanted to go to that class every day, and when I couldn't I made sure that I got notes, or worked hard to catch up. Didn't need the book once. I love Greek Mythology, I loved that class, and after I finished the final, I shook Doc Tuck's hand and said a hearty Thank You. Guy said thanks for taking the class, and I took off into the sunset. Okay, not really, but still. Fairytale ending.
• Anthro: Class still straight up sucked. Ended up getting an 86 on the final though which, I can assure you, nearly made me fall off of my chair. The lecture was hardly worth going to, seeing as most of the time I read a book, or did a crossword puzzle in the newspaper, and all the slides containing the minimal information presented ended up online. Only way I ended up doing well was going through the study guide (which was almost as long as the notes I had for the test) and filling in all the information from my words, and from the 20 some odd pages I photocopied out of the book. Seeing as I only needed the words out of the end of the chapters, I copied all of those, along with the review of the chapters, then copied the glossary out of the back of the book. Problem solved. 75 dollar book, meet 3 dollars worth of photocopies. Take that.
• Legal Studies + Honors Seminar: The rules ended up being: Honors Students take 1 of the 2 tests, write 1 of the 2 essays regular length, the other 2 pages longer, skip the final test all together and add 2 pages to the final essay as well. Got a 96 on the 1 test, wrote 1 3 page paper, 2 5 page papers, and showed up. That's it. As class was right before the seminar, I could just pay attention on what I was supposed to read that class, and talk about what we talked about in class after. Easy enough. Don't get me wrong, really interesting class with some cool insights on the Law, but for the most part, the readings were pretty long, we talked about it in class anyway, he gives you the questions for the quizes before the actual quizes, and I didn't want to buy the book. Whenever I needed the book for an essay, I just borrowed it from a friend, or if I had to, the library. (I didn't have to.)
• Astronomy: Not much to say. We just kinda sat there all semester. He talked. Other older kids asked really stupid questions, and every once and a while we went outside. Then we had a quiz on the entire semester at the end which acted as a final. It was 5 fill in the blanks, 8 multiple choice, 2 label the pictures, and 5 short answer.... Yeah. Not bad, but arguably not worth the effort to walk across campus every Tuesday night.

So that's the breakdown. 5 classes, 0 books. Go me right? I'll update this later with grades and stuff so you can weigh how I really did, but for the most part, I'm chalking this one up as a win here team. I urge you to follow in my footsteps, put the money you would spend on textbooks for something more useful, like food and video games. Send schools a message to lower their prices. Study hard, Party harder. Wait. Scratch that, reverse it. Thank you.

I'll update one of these days with my thoughts on some of those sweet, sweet trailers that came out at the VGA's right before finals kicked off, but until then, Merry Christmahanakwanzika and to all a good night.

Update: Got my grades (well most of them) so here's the breakdown for you to decide whether buying books or not is worth it.

Food Science: A-
Legal Studies + Honors Seminar: A
Greek Mythology: A
Anthro: B-
Astronomy: Still Unknown

Looks pretty damn good to me, but hey, you be the judge.

Don't Worry, I'm Still Here or Jim's Master Plan to try and get through this semester without buying a single book.

WHOOOOOOOOO BABY. Sorry bout the delay there folks, but I kinda sorta got swept up in that whole "Hey I'm back at college where I don't have to wake up till 11 every day and can eat and do pretty much whatever I want whenever I want," thing. My bad. But what's important is that I'm still here. For people who care you can find what classes I'm taking right here! Pretty chill right? Anyway, class is awesome for the most part. My Greek Myth teacher has said penis 3 classes running, I get candy for answering questions then stand in a field for an hour in Astro, I don't have to take tests because I'm in the Honors section for my Legal class, I could probably nap through Food Science and Ace it, and Anthro straight up sucks. Other than that everything's good in the hood.

"Now Jim, whats that second title for your blog today all about?" Well, I'm glad you asked. Cause you definitely did. Anywho, so one of the main lessons I've learned from my first year of college was that you don't really need to buy the books that the Professor says that you need. Some classes will put the readings online anyway, others will just review the material in class. There are the occasional few classes where you actually need the book. I might be in two of those classes this semester, but I am gonna do everything I can to get out of that. A few classes last year, I thought I was gonna need the book so I bit the bullet and bought 'em, only to find out that after the first test, where I didn't use the book to study, I could easily not have the book and've been just fine. So I'm going to do everything I can to get out of buying a single book this semester.

Aside from the main, and most pertinent reason, that textbooks are way too overpriced and after you've shelled out your 150 bucks for your one book for one semester, you can return it at the end of the semester for a solid 15 bucks, if that, I've also decided to do this in an attempt to test my theory that you don't actually need a book to do well. That and too see how resourceful I can be. See, I'm pretty sure that they have copies of all the books at the library. The only classes that I think I'm gonna need it for are Anthro and Legal.

• Food Science's book is a packet containing all the slides, I can subvert that by going to class.
• Astronomy, our quiz is on the constellations. And we get candy. Nuff said.
• Greek Myth, I think that I know enough already, and if I take notes and do the readings online I think I'll be fine.

The problem is Anthro. Mainly. Anthro I've got to do a Word list from the end of every chapter due Monday of every week. They're not online, and for the first two weeks, when they were because the professor wanted to be sure everyone got the book, I looked up the words online, and ended up guessing for a solid 25% of 'em. But I'll check the Library and if they've got it in there I'll see if I can't check it out, do all the word lists, or at least a solid few for a while. Besides that, there's Legal. I think I can get away with not getting the book, as most of the questions he asks us are more on our thoughts on the subject than the details of the subject itself. The Honors section is going to be hard though. I think most of those readings are going to be online, and the few that aren't I think I can borrow a friends book. (I've got 3 friends in another section of the class.) So. I think I can do it. I know that Zero of you few out there care, but this is a pertinent subject in my life right now so I thought I'd share. Anyway it was a good way for me to break back into this whole blogging thing. Ight. I'll hit you guys all up on the flipside.
Later hombres!