Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Scary Finals

I have finals in a week for the two classes I'm taking - May 4 and May 5. I'm scared of what's going to be on them, don't know what to study for, and starting to panic. The thing about Master's classes is that they don't give you nice little study sheets for the finals. Is there going to be a study sheet someone asked? The syllabus would be a good place to start the Professor said. Fortunately the syllabi for both classes listed very clear objectives for each week.

My formal methods class which I only semi understand has a 40 question multiple choice final worth 40% of the grade in our class. This class has been challenging. The first half of the class was spent covering first order logic, and fomal methods in the Z specification language which is based on set theory and first order logic. The second half of the class was spent reading very academic papers on Information Security which used these formal methods to develop formal proofs about the security models they were presenting.

My operating systems class was much easier since I also took an operating systems class at Biola. But this final is going to be 7 questions also worth 40% of my grade. I'm really not sure what to expect here.

I wouldn't stress so much except that I have to get at least a "B" in the class in order for Northrop to reimburse me through our tuition reimbursement program. Having to pay for the class out of my pocket if I don't do well enough is a good motivating factor, but stressful as well.

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