Pre-panic

I'm really worried about my quantum mechanics final. It's not until Thursday morning, so I have a few days to study for it, but still... I don't think my understanding of this material is as deep as it really should be, and I think my understanding of the material in the book is actually better than what he's taught in class, and a lot of the stuff he's gone over since the last exam was this really hard-core operator theory that is just barely even discussed at all in the textbook. I've printed out the notes, so I need to go over those, and work through the examples.

Here's my rough schedule for the next few days: tonight, finish re-reading through chapter 3 in the book, and do a quick read-through of the notes. Hopefully I will read through the stuff and mostly think to myself, aha, right, I get this stuff... So that gives me Monday to work through all of the example problems he discussed in the notes since the first exam, and on Tuesday I'm going to review the homeworks since the last test, and try to focus on anything I didn't really understand. I'm going to try to get in touch with some other people in my class for Wednesday, and hopefully a group of us can get together that day and try to tackle whatever's left.

I am really looking forward to the end of the semester. Colin and I went out to Rusan's for lunch today (yum!), and stopped by Best Buy while we were out, and I picked up a copy of Neverwinter Nights 2. I'm definitely not even installing it until finals are over, but I can't wait to try it out! I'm going to get back into my research some more after finals, but I think I'll give myself a few days to a week just to unwind, post-semester, before I get back in touch with my advisor and let him know that I'm back to the grind.

As for next semester...3 hours? Or 12? Bleh. My indecision is killing me. I think what I might end up doing is taking the two physics courses, math biology, and dropping the bioinformatics/modeling lab, which I've heard is a pretty tedious experience...this wouldn't be that surprising, since it's normally a major requirement for genetics majors (who are not involved in undergrad research), so, like most major required courses, it's likely to be pretty standardized and un-fun. I think I might be better served by taking 9 hours instead, and just spending more time doing volunteer theory work with Jake. Also, since I only need one of the physics courses (although I'd really like to take both), I can always see if Nakayama's teaching style really doesn't appeal to me, and if it doesn't, I can drop it within the first week, and get the tuition money back. I would like to take E&M to its conclusion, though, if at all possible. Someone with a degree in physics really should have studied Maxwell's equations, after all.