No Sweat!

Today was the day of our Freedom and Justice Preliminary Exam. As I said last night, we all knew how the test would be structured, and so we all attempted, as best we could, to study accordingly. However, a crucial part of a proper "pre-test ritual" is to get yourself a good night's sleep. I went to bed at 12:00PM last night, which is much earlier than the norm here at summer college, and had my alarm set for 7:30AM (class doesn't start until 9:00AM, but I thought I would try to get a good meal in beforehand).

Now, my plan may have worked perfectly, had I not slept through my alarm. At 7:56AM, my roommate yelled at me from across the room, telling me that it was going to be awfully difficult to make an 8:00AM breakfast at my pace. I shot up out of bed and rushed into the shower, which brought me to phase two of operation "Sabotage Joe's Morning". Just as I had undressed (sorry if that seems graphic), the fire alarm went off. The administration had decided to place the fire-drill on the morning of my pre-lim. While I was naked. Great.

This little event took off about another ten to fifteen minutes of my preparation time, and so I was left to rush back to my room, grab a shower, and get ready as quickly as humanly possible.

My "good meal" quickly transformed into a cereal bar that my roommate was nice enough to give me, and we made it to the lecture hall with about ten minutes to spare (just enough time to look over my notes). I studied hard, got the main ideas of each philosopher in my head, and then simply followed Professor Kramnick's instructions as he handed out the test.

I could explain a bit about my thought process during the test, but I don't think you're really interested in that. The real point is that I think I did EXTREMELY WELL! The essay question I chose was perfect for me, and I was solid on four out of the five short answer questions, although I'm sure that I at least got partial credit for the fifth. I hate to sound over-confident before I get the results of a quiz, but I really felt good about this. I am really, really, hoping that I can represent the WCCUSD with an "A" on the Freedom and Justice Mid-Term.

The rest of the day was pretty mild after that. We had a lecture, and then a writing workshop, but after that everything was just kind of bland. We Freedom and Justice'ers had planned to celebrate our mid-terms by either ordering pizza and watching a movie, or going out to college-town for a nice dinner. However, the kid who owns the movies has a project for his class tomorrow, and we didn't want to watch his movies while he was up in his room studying. It also began storming outside, without any warning really, so that took college-town out of the equation as well.

We ended up watching a different movie than the one we had planned on and just ate dinner in the cafeteria as usual. Over-all though, I would say that it was a great day because a good pre-lim trumps any bad thing that could possibly happen to me! I am happy with my test and now all I have to do is finish the second half of the course....

No sweat!