Flashes of Panic

As of this evening, I have finished two of my three classes, and I’ve completed my TA duties. I have one more exam, tomorrow afternoon, and then I’m done with the first year.

I have plenty of work to do, of course; for one thing, I’m behind on my GA work, and it lasts through the summer.

I think I’ve saved at least one of the two courses I was concerned about. The other one is still an open question. We had four programming assignments, including seven distinct executables. Before this weekend, I had one good assignment and two executables working to spec; on Monday, I had three good assignments and six executables. The seventh one works, in the sense that it compiles and sometimes runs without crashing, but at some point I figured out that my problem wasn’t the programming. It was that I didn’t understand the problem.

I don’t know how much grade I’ve saved; in fact, I’m not really sure how much I might have been behind. Talking with other students today, it’s beginning to look like we’re not really clear on what material is even going to be on the exam; the professor said, “The second half of the course,” but most of the concepts came in the first half; the second half was application.

As I always tell myself, by this time tomorrow, it will be over, no matter how it happens.