Hi!  Welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron! It’s been a while since my last post hasn’t it? The last few weeks have been busy with midterms.

I can’t believe we are already halfway through the semester, it has been so fast. Maybe I was so busy I couldn’t really keep track of how fast the semester was going. But that’s a good thing because I feel like I have been productive every single day. It’s always good to have some free time every once in a while, everybody needs a break. But if I had too much time I would feel like I was procrastinating. Anyway, this semester is going so fast that anytime soon it will be finals week.

Speaking of which, this semester I’m going to have the most finals I’ve had in a semester since I started studying at the University of Iowa. My first two semesters I had three finals, then, on my third semester, four. Now I’m going to have five finals. However, I feel it won’t be as much of a tough finals week. That’s because my finals are well distributed throughout the week. I have the first two on Tuesday, one before noon and the other towards the end of the day. Then one for each remaining day of the week, so I won’t have any day filled with exams. In addition, I won’t have any exams that are very early nor will I have exams very late at night. I feel like the time of an exam can cause a meaningful change in a grade, because if you don’t prepare your body to be at its 100% early in the morning or at night, you may make some mistakes or forget some things (I know I do). My only concern about finals week is that my last final, physics, on Friday, ends at 2:30 p.m. and I have a flight back home at 5:30 p.m. on the same day. So, I will have to rush a little after this last exam. Apart from that, all I really have to worry is how I’m going to study for finals.

So far the tutoring center in the College of Engineering has been of great help, every weekend they can help you with questions and homework. Still, they also hold reviews the Sunday before the week of exams for that class. I just came back from a statics review and it really helped me understand the course better. The tutor for the class went over everything and walked us through some questions. I don’t know how confident about my classes I will be by the time of the final, but I for sure will be going to the tutoring center.

In another note, this semester I fell into a trap that I set for myself and so I write so you won’t make the same mistake. It all began with my Intro to Engineering Computing course. I was very worried about this class, as I’ve never done any kind of programming before. So I gave all my focus and studying almost entirely for this class, but this just made other courses more hard than they would be. That being said, my advice is that, if you can, try to avoid putting all the studying and attention you have into one class only. To fix this I now study equivalent amounts for all my classes, sort of like an equilibrium, and then I use the extra time I have to study whatever subject is being more difficult for me at that time.

I think that’s all I had for today. Have a great week!