friday the 13th and my academic woes

IM status: . it's the 13th and it's a friday .  
lss: . josh wilson - 3 minute song . 

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Wow, the last post was on the 13th of May... That's a whole 3 months ago, and I didn't even realize it till now.  [UPDATE (11/01/2010): correction - apparently there was a draft written on Jul 3 that I failed to publish, anyways, the explanation is in that post.]

Oh, I so remember that day, May 13, 2010. :)

That's the day I finally saw my CRS account and realized that there is hope that I will be finally graduating this semester. Because after 3 semesters (that's 1.5 years!) of hard work and frustrations, I finally got a grade for my 'Special Project', which is the last course in my master's curriculum. At that time, I was really getting a little down because as per school rules, we only have 1 year to acquire a grade for each course (after the actual semester we enrolled it in), so I was really running out of time.

That's why it's probably one of the happiest days of my academic life. Because it's something I really had to work super duper hard on, and something that I almost thought I wouldn't be able to achieve. Not that I didn't work as hard in my undergrad years, but graduate school is indeed very, very different, especially if you're not a full time student, and you have this super demanding work load. Working for a Jap company ba naman, tsk tsk... I even reached the point where I was thinking to quit grad school altogether and just forget the past 4 years ever happened. *sigh* That day validated my resolve and made me pretty proud that I am not a quitter. ;)

Balancing work and school and my duties at home/family and trying to have a normal social life has really been a big challenge for me. And it still is! Very much so! As it is, my Grad School adventures is far from over.


It's now August 13, I only have 39 days left until September 21. That is the first day of my comprehensive exams. Yups, even if I was 'jumping-up-for-joy' happy that wonderful day in May, that was not the end of my graduate school worries. Since I am under the Non-Thesis option, in lieu of the thesis and defense, I have to take the comprehensive exams. Heck, with the time it took me to complete my 'Special Project' course, I should have just taken the thesis option. =)) But I digress..


As I was saying, the 4 most important days of my graduate school life is about to arrive, with the first one occurring in 39 days! I am already freaking out... 

I was assigned here in Cebu since last April 25, which means I am missing out on classes I could have sat-in that would have helped me review for my exams this September. And since the project I am in right now is in super duper CRITICAL state, we always do overtime even on weekends. 

By the time I get home on weekdays, it's already past 12, so no time to study. On weekends, we often need to do OT, if we can skip OT (which rarely happens), my brain is already too fried to even let it function and feed LOADS of information into it. SO I wasn't really able to fit too much study time these past 3 months. Which explains my current state of mind - freaking out, that is. 


I have 39 days to cram 4 subjects, each worth 5 months of 3unit class hours per week into this fuzzy brain of mine, which is also already working in overdrive with work stuff for a crazily DELAYED and demanding project which is requiring me to think and write and worst of all, speak/explain in NIHONGO! *sigh* What have I gotten myself into?

I'll be reporting back to Makati office on Sept 2 (I think), hopefully I could breathe a little more by then.


Anyways, here's my exam schedule:
Sept 21: Theory of Computation [that's Automata (DFA, NFA, PDA), Languages and Grammars, Turing Machine, Undecidability, Computability, etc.] - I took that subject on the 1st sem of AY 2008-09
Sept 24: Advanced Database Systems - which I took on the 2nd sem of AY 2008-09 - heck, that's my most recent subject, and that's 2 years ago!
Sept 27: Advanced Operating Systems - this was actually the first subject I enrolled in grad school, when? 1st sem of AY 2006-07! tsk tsk... yups, I am now in my 5th year in MSCS, :D
Sept 30: Distributed Systems - I took this subject on the 2nd sem of AY 2006-07


So there you go, I know the next 38 days will just pass by crazy fast without me noticing it... Let this blog post be my commitment to myself and to whoever may be reading this, that I will really, really, really, really be doing my best to study but before that, make time to study. 

Sorry, work, you'll just have to take the back seat for now, don't worry, I'll honor my commitments, but you have to share the time with the academe first. Look at it this way, after this, you won't have to share my time with school anymore (at least in the next few years, tsk tsk).


next post will probably be after the compre already..
i know, i know, i haven't really talked about what i have been doing in Cebu while on 'business trip'. maybe some other time. ... :) maybe if i feel the need for a breather while studying in the coming days. (like this one.)

and now, back to regular programming, este, studying... ;)

P.S.
RE: IM Status (above) -> so what? :D
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