STRESS

Actually, that's past-tense. Friday was, overall, not a highly fun day. Mostly due to the 3 tests. Yea, that's right, 3 exams. As I said a couple of times, Physics was my best class on friday because there wasn't an exam. We also did some cool demonstrations in physics.
So Calc (my first exam) wasn't nearly as bad as I was worried about. I never sat and looked at a problem and had truly no clue how to approach it. Perhaps I had to spend a few seconds determining which test to use to check for con/divergence, but that's to be expected. Econ was actually the one that I think gave me the most trouble. The questions are just soo ambigious, it's incredibly frustrating. Talking about it afterwards, some of us realized that one of the multi-choice questions was basically the same as a question on the HW where the answer on the 'solutions' sheet didn't match what was accepted as the right answer (it was an electronic assesment, and the electronic one was correct, we think) but it means I can argue at least one question, if I feel like it.
MechE was, as I expected, quite dumb. I mean, over 1/3 of the test (35/100 pts) was basically a simple HW problem from last semester. Read Al's yield stress off a stress/strain curve, via the .2% rule, and then, given a force, and safety factor, find the minimum diameter. Literally, took me maybe 5 minutes, max to do it. Grr. And there was a gear problem who's questions were just as abigious as the (nearly identical) pulley problem last time! It really pisses me off.
Whatever...that class is basically over. What frustrates me is that CMU prides itself on having (nearly) all courses taught by the actual profs. Basically, Interp and CSW being the primary exceptions. However, Choset only teaches the class about 1/2 the time; and he does a relatively poor job when he's in there. He spends far too much time complaining that people are talking/kicking people out who've fallen asleep/'bouncing' people who come late. He also is obsessed with his robots. I mean, I like robots more than the next guy...but we've seen the same videos of his snake robots at least 6 times. Some of the examples are sorta sketchy, at least their application to whatever meche concept we're learning. I honestly wish Bobby or Gordon (two of the TA's) taught the class. They are just much more interesting and understandable people. Heck, Bobby shook his fist at friction. That makes him cool in my book.
Yea, so tests....
Right after my meche exam I had an hour off; I hung around 'schlag. At 5 I had The Wiz wrap-up meeting. I must say it's very satisfying when someone says something that I think is dumb, and I'm anxiously raising my hand to make a much better suggestion and someone else is called on and makes that suggestion, and a few other good ones too.
At 7 I had to leave (the meeting was still going strong...they hadnt gotten to strike yet) to go check out the AUO concert. However, while I was waiting for it to start, I got a phone call (from someone from the Boston area) and I talked to not one, but two people on the phone. They were loud and fairly incoherent. I'm sure I'm supposed to know who they were...but I got no clue at this point. Were they drunk? Possibly, but I would be surprised if that were the case by 7pm on a Friday.
The concert was awesome, however. Congrats to everyone involved!
It ran a bit longer than I expected and I was late to the build (~20 min late, actually) and unfortunately Rob and arrived at the Dungeon, waited and left in that period. By the time I got there, Miriam had just arrived and we ended up sorting wood, addting supports to the counter and cutting the counter-top.
If I were to sum-up the build in a single photo, it would be of Miriam flipping off the scrap 2x4 pile. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera.
Following that, I hit up the belated The Wiz cast party. I chose to not partake in any 'refreshments' and then basically I felt vaguely uncomfortable the rest of the party due to large amounts of drunk people, lots of them sketchy and unknown to me. Oh well, at least I went and didn't sit home feeling like a loser, I guess.
Today was board preview (went well, all the plays are great!) and board elections. It went well; I'm pleased with the board that got elected, even though I'm not one of the EBM's :(
Oh well.
I'm heading out to get coffee, meeting up with Yena and then heading off to a Fondue Party. This shall be interesting.

[EDIT (3:30 am 4/24/05):] I just noticed the 'double entendre', if you will of the title of this post. I was referring to psychological stress, but my meche test was largely on materials stress! Crazy things you realize at 3:30 after coming home from a fondue party.