The Gorn-Dee-Kerd Chronicles

Ok, so I've been putting this off for a while now, since I've been busy. With what? Why, nothing other than a SUPER STARGATE MARATHON!! Yes, I am going to watch every Stargate movie and episode out there. There will be about 300 of them by the time I'm done, which is currently scheduled as being the end of July. So, for the next 2+ months, I will be watching a minimum of 3 Stargate episodes everyday. I've already started it a few days ago, and it's been great catching up on early SG1. It's definitely better than I remembered it.

Let's see how long I can keep this up.

Meanwhile, my marks for my 3rd year at the University of British Columbia (spelling it out for those who don't know me personally) are out, and for the 2nd term, here are the scores:

1. Near Eastern Studies 312 - 90%

90% is pretty damn good for me in this case, since it's an arts course. On the other hand, I had help, since the subject of this course is, get this: Ancient Egyptian Religion. I actually moved into this course thanks to my friend telling me that they refered to Stargate during the first class. It was hilarious and facinating listening to the lectures, as the various Goa'uld names were mentioned over and over. Though Stargate did get things wrong: Ra is actually "Re", proncounced like Ray (so Kawalsky's joke about Ra's brother "Ray" in Children of the Gods hilaritized me to no end); Apophis was the demon serpent and NOT a God in Ancient Egypt; he was never portrayed as a man, but just a snake, and he wasn't the God of the underworld - that title goes to Osiris, thank you very much.

But anyway, it was fun hearing Horus, Anubis, Ba'al, Bastet, Montu, Thoth, Seth, and various other Gods'/Goa'ulds' names mentioned, even though the lectures were often long and without-breaks.

The best thing about this class though, was the fact that it only had 2 things on which marks were based on: the Midterm, and the Final, each worth 50%. Normally, people may hate this since, if you screw up one of them, you're basically screwed, period. Well, I don't buy into that, since I usually don't screw up at all. Haha. But anyway, I got 90% on my midterm, and after a few days, the prof decided to make things that much more simple: instead of counting both the Midterm's and the Final's marks and then averaging them, he'll only count the highest-marked one, with that mark being your overall course mark! That meant that, if you're happy with your midterm mark as being your overall course mark, YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO TAKE THE FINAL!! Well, it was a no-brainer for me in this case, and so I took my 90% and stopped showing up to class or caring about it, and I still ended up with 90% at the end. Switching to this class was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

2. Statistics 302 - 95%

Out of all the math subjects, Statistics was my worst in highschool. All that Combinatorics crap screwed me up something fierce. So I thought I should try my hand at bettering that part of my academia nut; that, and I needed some statitics for my Quantum Mechanics courses. This course covered Combinatorics and Probabilities in general. Anyway, the course was difficult at times, but overall it was handle-able.

3. Math 317 - 97%

This course was fun. It was dedicated to Vector Calculus. You had line integrals, work integrals, flux integrals, and various theorems that made working with real life stuff much much easier (i.e. wind currents, electric field lines, etc.). It was amazing to see how the work done around a path can be calculated just like *that* with the Fundamental Theorem of Line Integrals, for instance. Then there was Stoke's Theorem and Divergence Theorem and...am I boring you?

This course was pretty easy, to be honest. I ended up getting the highest in the class on both of our 2 midterms. Still, I was hoping to get a higher final grade (I have high standards), like...100% or something. I guess I either screwed up on the final, or they lowered everyone's marks with scaling. Oh well.

4. Physics 313 - 98%

This was a HUGE surprise. The course was dedicated to Thermodynamics, which I SUCK at. My sucking at it in Highschool didn't change, and I continued to suck at it in this course. There are just too many conditions to keep tracks of. Is it reversible? Is it isolated? Is it an ideal gas? Can you perform this approximation or not? Etc. etc. I hated the course...but I guess they REALLY scaled the marks up, lest half of the class fail it. Ha.

Combined with my marks from the previous term, my overall average for Year 3 is: 94.1%, which is 0.1% higher than my Year 2 average. Ok, so it's not the 99% I predicted based on linear extrapolation, but still...at least I didn't go down.

And that, as they say, is that. Next on my Stargate marathon schedule: There But for the Grace of God.