What's All This Brouhaha? » American Government

American Government term paper

Eric — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 23:06:52 +0000

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I received an A (97%) for my term paper for the American Government class. The subject of the paper was wiretapping, with a brief historical review, descriptions of recent developments and my own arguments and opinions regarding the legality of Bush’s warrantless wiretap program and its expected efficacy in prosecuting the “War on Terror”.

Due to having too high a course load and work load because I was taking two accelerated classes at the same time, I didn’t have nearly enough time to work on the term paper. I only finished writing it one hour before it was due, and didn’t have time to carefully proofread it. After I turned it in, I discovered that I’d omitted a few citations and made a few errors of spelling, punctuation, and grammar. But I really felt like I didn’t cover the subject in nearly the depth it deserved.

I also got 98% on the fourth exam in the class. Since Professor Braun drops the lowest exam score, my final grade for the class will be at least 98.5% (A). Not counting classes I took before 1985, I have a 4.0 GPA (on seven courses, 21.33 semester hours). This raises my cumulative GPA to 3.12 (on 17 courses, 54.33 semester hours). Once the grades are available on official transcripts (within the next two weeks), I’ll send in my application for transfer admission for the Spring 2007 term. I expect to be awarded an Associate of Arts in Mathematics degree upon completion of four more classes (14 semester hours) at Mission College this fall.

American Government professor was AWOL

Eric — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 03:49:59 +0000

Professor Braun didn’t show for this evening’s American Government class. We were expecting to have some lecture followed by our second exam. About 27 minutes into the scheduled class time, many of the students started leaving. Professor Braun did contact one of the students and let us know that the exam will be tomorrow. There was also an exam scheduled for Thursday, which will still be on Thursday. Many students (myself included) are concerned that this doesn’t leave enough time for lecture on the material to be covered on Thursday’s exam. However, Professor Braun seems to be a very reasonable person, so I expect that he will handle this in a reasonable way.

Update: it turns out that the professor had a tire blowout on the freeway. Fortunately it didn’t cause any collision or injury. We had our exam on Tuesday night, and the next exam is rescheduled from Thursday to Monday.

First exams in Linear Algebra and American Government

Eric — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:19:11 +0000

On the first Linear Algebra exam, I lost two points for an arithmetic error on one problem, and five points for completely misreading another problem. I read the problem as involving the sum of two matrices being equal to a third matrix, while it was actually about the determinants of the matrices. The notation is similar enough to be easily mistaken, with square brackets used around matrices, and vertical bars around the matrix elements (with no brackets) representing the determinant. My score was 93%.

In American Government, I missed four questions out of fifty, but got four of the five bonus questions right, for a score of 50 out of 50. However, the instructor decided that one question didn’t have a correct answer anong the choices, and is dropping that question. I convinced him that there were two valid answers on another question, so he is giving credit for that one. As a result, my actual percentage is over 100%, though I’m not sure that it will count as such in the averaging.

I really need to find time to work on written papers for American Government.