Category: Uni

University life as a mature aged student.

Semester 1. Done!

Exam finished at 11 today, and my semester is over except for waiting for results. I’ll get the unofficial exam results in about three weeks, and from there I should be able to extrapolate (or even calculate) my final grade for PSYC101.

And my essay results for PEAC102 should be winging their way to me within a couple of weeks, so I should be mostly out of my misery by mid July.

I am also hoping to be well into the books again by then too – last semesters enrolment hiccups meant delays with access, delays with textbooks, and a horrible start to the year. This semester I am going to be at least 2 weeks ahead of my readings before the start of term.

Especially since the first cab off the rank in psych 102 is stats. Bleurgh.

Whatever else happens after I get my results, I fell proud of what I have achieved this year. I made a crazy life changing decision on a whim, and I pulled it off. I hope all my boys would be proud of their mama.

95%

But this time, it means more. I was less familiar with the materials, but scored slightly higher. And loads of people thought this test was harder, so the mean was a lot lower than the first test, and I got almost two standard deviations above the mean.

No, I don’t understand what that means, but I will after next semester!

With my marks so far, I need to get 85% on the exam for an HD, or 70% for a D. And if I don’t get a distinction, I’m going to drop one unit next semester so that I can concentrate on getting better marks in PSYC102. Between PSYC101 and PSYC102, I need one distinction and one credit in order to be able to transfer to psych with honours.

Correction – I don’t need good results until I get into second year subjects. At the end of second year, if I do well, I can transfer, so that at 3rd year I am doing preparation subjects for Hons. Bloody confusing this stuff, but it means I don’t need to panic if I don’t get 100% on the exam…

Assignment DONE

I just submitted my Environmental Peace assignment. It was worth 60% of my mark for the unit. No pressure.

My darling friend Dionne read it and gave some great feedback, and I submitted it 40 minutes shy of a whole week late. I did get an extension, so I hope that won’t matter, and whatever the outcome, I am so incredibly relieved to have it over and done with, that at this point I am a bit beyond caring about results.

Tomorrow my focus is going to be on my dear family friend who is having surgery to remove her brain tumour, and after that I need to jam in as much study as I can into the next week. I have an open book quiz to do in the next few days, and then my final psych exam on the 15th.

And after the 15th, I am free as a bird. Until next semester starts…

Can you look at a brain, and tell how a person thinks?

And do we choose our actions? Or are our actions determined by something other than our conscious mind?

This made my brain explode.

Then I watched this.

And then Mark sent me this.

So to sum up. Your brain can signal that you have made a decision (and which decision you made) up to SIX FULL SECONDS before you are conscious that you have made a decision.

And if you vote conservatively, you are likely to have an enlarged amygdala (the fear centre of the brain). If you are more socially progressive, your brain shows more growth in the area that seeks out new and novel experiences. So, correlation doesn’t show cause and effect, but it does go a long way towards explaining Alan Jones.

*For our overseas readers, swap Alan Jones for Rush Limbaugh. Or any other appalling aging white man with a microphone and an agenda to frighten and alienate.

I won a mars bar!

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So yeah. A mars bar. Big deal.

Except. I am thrilled. Crazy happy.

The lecturer asked a question about what “type” of research each of the studies we are looking at for our essay question, and the winner was going to get a mars bar.

I had a stab at the question, got it wrong, and then used the work of another student as “shoulders”, did some more reading, and I got it right!

So yes, I won the mars bar, but more, I have the glory of getting the answer right, and the other 900 odd students didn’t.

I am still a child 😉

Mid Semester Quiz

I did my exam last weekend, got the results this morning. 95/100, which sounds good until you know that it was an open book test – so I got 5 things wrong, EVEN WITH MY TEXTBOOK IN FRONT OF ME!!!!

I shall try to remain positive and good humoured, despite the large amounts of snot leaking from my face.

Count: 685
Average: 84.2
Median: 87.7
Maximum: 100.0
Minimum: 11.0
Standard Deviation: 13.22