Week 4, blog #7 - Semester's end

For many college students, the last couple weeks of the semester are the hardest. This is the time when all your final projects and papers are due, not to mention all the final exams that you have to study for. Fortunately, as a journalism student, I don't have to take that many final exams. But that does mean that I do have to write A LOT.

This semester was particularly difficult for me. I only had three classes: ENG 303, JRN 410, and of course this class. Everyone reading this knows about the multimedia marathon, but that was only a fraction of my workload for this week. For ENG 303, I had to read an entire novel and write an 8-10 page paper on Ernest Hemingway. To prepare for that paper, I also had to read several Hemingway short stories. For JRN 410, I had to gather some data and write yet another 10+ page paper. And to do this, I had to use a program called Stata, which was unnecessarily difficult and confusing. I think there are two or three students from this class in that one as well, and I'm sure that they would all agree with me on that one.

Somehow, I managed to do most of this work on time. I did only make it through 2/3 of the novel and my JRN 410 paper isn't finished yet, though I still have another week until that's due. Finishing all of this stuff took up almost all of my free time this week. I was on campus for seven hours on Wednesday working on the multimedia marathon, and Thursday night I stayed up until 5 a.m. putting the finishing touches on my Hemingway paper.

I definitely not alone when I say that I feel overwhelmed by all of this work. Oakland University freshman Chris Debay feels the same way. Debay is taking four classes, two of which have final exams within the next week. Debay is particularly concerned about his upcoming chemistry final, which could make or break his grade. He said that most students have been averaging 50-60% on this professor's previous exams, so he will be needing to study a lot in order to get a good grade. Judging by his professor's reviews on RateMyProfessors.com, I think he may be right.