finals are done! (-:

It's over. All three, done. And like Sharon loved to say, "Two out of three ain't bad."

What makes me think of this? Out of three exams, two went well, one went very poorly. Here are the fun (boring) details.

Exam #1: Economics
From my earlier post:

So in the interests of keeping my brain fresh and ready for finals this week, I decided to go on another bike excursion. This time, solo, to Sleeping Giant State Park.

So did it hurt me at all? I made an argument about the marginal utility of additional studying, arguing that it made no sense to do it, seeing that there is a very good chance that we'll get the same grade either way. In other words, lots of effort, no additional benefit. So I went on a bike ride the day before the exam. It was fun. I enjoyed it. Plus, I still managed to do well on the final. Bonus.

Exam 2: Accounting
This one was a bit crazy. We were initially told that we would be able to use all of our notes and also our laptops for the exam. We were also given the impression that we would be able to submit portions of the exam electronically. I thought this was great since I used Excel to do almost all the homeworks anyway. Easy, right?

Wrong. The morning of the exam we got an e-mail telling us that although we would be able to use our laptops, we wouldn't be able to use the printer or submit answers electronically. We would have to copy everything over by hand. Annoying, but OK, I figured.

Going through the exam, I had completed most of the content within the first hour and a half. I felt pretty good. I would have all day to complete the last part (indirect cash flow statement). At this point, I started copying my answers over. I took my time. After all, how long could it possibly take?

About an hour. This left the indirect cash flow. Not only that, but I also realized at this point that I would need to do it using the weird spreadsheet that Garstka likes to use, but that I never use. Hrm... For whatever reason, I decided to try it using the spreadsheet. Long story short, things didn't really work out. Oh well. As long as I pass the course...

Exam 3: Data and Decision Analysis
After my rant in my previous post about studying too much, I went ahead and worked through a whole stack of practice problems. Probably 20 or so in total. No bike ride. No solace for the brain.

I also decided the night before that since I've been having some problems sleeping recently that I'd just go to bed later. After all, I probably wasn't falling asleep till 2 or 3 in the morning anyway. So I start playing with my bike at around midnight, and stop at around 1:45 or so. I try falling asleep, and fail. I probably didn't sleep that night till 3:30 or so. End result - I slept through my alarm clock, but had enough sense to get up on time. Good thing I know myself well enough to try to wake up a full two hours before the exam starts.

The exam went well. Nothing too crazy, aside from insane rounding errors. With any luck, I'll do as well as I did on the econ exam (which we got back today). If not, then fine. I'll get a "proficient" and be on my way to our next set of classes. I think we already have several hundred pages of reading for the first week. Fun!