A Quick Update

I feel like I owe everyone an explanation for the light posting over the last couple of days. If you're a regular reader, you've read the five or six posts I've made about my grandfather's death, the funeral, et cetera. What I hadn't mentioned is that this term (which started less than two weeks ago), I have only one hour of lecture on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but five and a half hours of class (three lectures of an hour and a half each, plus a one hour recitation) on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

When was the funeral scheduled? A Tuesday. What was yesterday? A Thursday.

Yesterday I had extensive readings due in classes 4 and 5, and ten minutes worth of presentation due in class 3 (in addition to this for class 1 that I'll worry about this weekend, as there was no impending discussion or quiz to worry about). I'd managed to do a bit of reading for class 4 over the past week in spite of the funeral preparation and proceedings, but I honestly don't care about class 5, so I left it for the last minute; turns out that there were fifty pages of assigned reading, ten of which I didn't even find out about until I got to class, assigned to be read between Tuesday and Thursday.

Basically, here's how my Thursday played out:

08:30-09:15 - Briefly checked E-Mail and news, then worked on Power Point presentation on EFV and XM777; finished section on EFV
09:30-10:50 - Listened to a lecture about the Ottoman Empire in class 1
11:00-11:50 - Class 2 lab; learned a few tricks with Excel that I will likely never use beyond finals week
11:50 - Left computer lab, not realizing I still had to finish the aforementioned presentation; decided to get food anyway and finish presentation in small lab in building where class 3 is held
12:00 - Stood in line, reading assignment for class 5 while I waited for my lunch
12:30 - Having eaten lunch, go to the computer lab and login, only to find out that this particular lab was not connected to the right network to allow me to access the aforementioned presentation files; after thinking for several minutes, proceeded to completely recreate the entire presentation from scratch
12:59 - Finished and saved presentation onto memory stick, took to class
13:15 - Following five minute presentations from two other students, gave my presentation with flying colors in spite of knowing almost nothing about the Lightweight 155mm Howitzer on which I was presenting
13:25 - Get lectured on something by the substitute instructor, still not quite sure as to the actual point
13:45 - Tactical Decision Game
14:15 - Dismissal from class; proceed to next building, review readings
14:30 - Discuss readings for class 4, a reading and conference/independent study course, with prof
15:00 - Walk to building where class 5 is held, continue reading forty pages of material, primarily skimming
15:33 - Take reading quiz; in spite of knowing nothing about the readings we were actually quizzed on, I score 3/5
16:50 - Return to computer lab, work for an hour
18:00 - Leave campus for Grandma's house, have dinner and sit with her for a while
20:30 - Leave Grandma's house, return home

By that time, I was pretty well beat. To be honest, I'm not sure how I made it through Thursday without A) having a nervous breakdown or B) failing horribly on half or all of my required school tasks. At any rate, now that the funeral's over, barring any major catastrophe, I should be able to manage my time a bit better and thus blog a bit more consistently.

I've probably wasted a lot of time writing this, but whatever. I'm stoked that I was so successful yesterday in spite of overwhelming odds. Deal with it.