I have finally graduated (... and posted something my blog)!

Incidentally, I nearly won an award for academic excellence. We were all given procession cards which we hand to the announcer so they can call out our names as we reach the stage. As I was sitting bored waiting for my turn a thought struck me. If I write an award next to my name on the procession card, the announcer will read it without giving any thought to it. I was severely tempted to become the "Winner of the award for creative bookkeeping" but I decided that if I really want the Dean to hand me my diploma I had better be on by best behavior.

It was an awesome day of celebration and in the end I actually did feel a little emotional about leaving the classroom behind. I will still be learning though, I am becoming a CA over the next three years but that is done largely by correspondence.

After a long hard battle with the powers of academia they have finally come to realize my utter brilliance! Some professors were easier to convince than others and some bribes were larger than others, but I have succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of the University of Manitoba's accounting department.

You might ask yourself why I am writing this right now. The one thing I have realized over time, graduating and seeing some of my closest friends graduate, is that the best part of graduation isn't the diploma. They might try to convince you that there is honour in graduating but don't be fooled. The best part of graduating is gloating to all those who haven't quite made it yet.

There are people who will argue with me over this. In my defence I have worked five long years, written countless exams, and puzzled over poorly written multiple choice questions. I have had professors who couldn't speak English, some professors who couldn't form a coherent sentence but spoke English, and some professors who didn't teach but preferred to ridicule their students instead. Anyone who survives these tests of a person's character should be allowed just a week or two to celebrate.

Thursday was a special day, it was my last day of classes for the foreseeable future. After a long and hard battle with the dark forces of academia, they have finally decided that I deserve to graduate (or at the very least they just want to get rid of me).

Now all I have to do is write four exams and one take home exam, after which I'm done my degree. Yay!

My last exam happens to be one of the easiest - Introduction to Human Geography. I'll probably make something of a scene when I hand in my paper at the end of the two hours.

Today I address the age old question of "What happens when the professor for a class fails to show up".

Typically most students employ a fifteen minute rule where after fifteen minutes they run out of the door feeling justified and that they have waited long enough. In the administrative policy class this year we took a different approach.

When our professor who is normally a bit late failed to turn up we were polite and just kept sitting around waiting for something to happen. After another ten minutes I checked to see if he emailed the class foretelling his absence, but that was fruitless. A search of his phone numbers yielded no numbers that got a response. Some students started to get up to leave at this point and I took matters into my own hands.

I went to the white board and wrote down the names of the students that left and the time. I am normally the last to leave in a situation like this so I thought it would be interesting to see how quickly everyone left. This seemed to cheer up a few classmates who were staying behind in that this was no longer just a class, it was a competition.

This class we were supposed to be discussing a bio of Ted Turner and his management prowess (or lack thereof). Typically exercises like this tend not to excite students, but Steve really took to the article so he started to lead the class for a while. He tried to get a discussion going but he quickly found out that there was a reason why the professor often closely followed his pre-prepared notes - these discussions were slow to get going and often had a limited lifespan.

After a few short minutes of discussion and analysis with everyone randomly blurting out what came to mind, we decided to abandon the discussion of Ted Turner in favour of simply watching some educational videos of Ted, namely the Robot Chicken episode with Ted Turner as Captain Planet.

At this point there was no going back to the discussion and the remainder of the class was spent watching random youtube videos. We all hoped that any minute our professor would burst through the door forty five minutes late and assign us all some participation marks for patiently waiting for him. Sadly this ideal scenario never occurred.

We started to become a bit annoyed that our professor had not shown up and the prospect of his presence was becoming smaller every minute. We drafted a letter to the professor at this point explaining our feelings, but in the end decided to write a letter to the following class (which has the same professor) alerting them to our plight.

In the end I was impressed that we actually got a small discussion going and a good number of students stayed nearly the entire class. The one thing I learned is that even if the students are about to graduate, getting them to run a class is still a tall order.

Taking seven courses at once in one semester at university.

A full course load (represented by the red line) is five courses. The good news is that I am graduating after this semester and will get a well deserved break afterwards.

I haven't been feeling well as of late and it isn't just "Intermediate Accounting - Assets" which is causing the feeling of general malaise. Nay, it would seem I am getting the flu. It makes sense, I usually get sick once or twice a year and so far I haven't been sick yet. I was due for a bout of sickness.

I'm not in that bad of shape yet, so I am taking the "Spring Staff Elixir"; formerly sold as "Dr. Zethers Zip and Zing Elixir". The elixir is two cans of orange juice concentrate mixed with three cans of water. A nice, thick, strong juice. In my opinion the best orange juice is more of a thick syrup. Mmmm... I need to get another glass.

Also, I just got the easiest mark in a course ever. The previous easiest mark was one percent of the final grade which you got for simply visiting the professor during their office hours. I can thank my mother with inventing that one.

Today's one percent of my final grade was taking 6 pictures during class. To teach a new accounting system my professor got six classmates to dress up as Cher, a Cher fan, a loan shark, one of the village people, Johnny Depp, and I forget... some girls name that starts with an L. They acted out various accounting transactions involving loans, autographs and picture frames while I took pictures of each one for the class notes.

I would say today';s class was the most entertaining, and perhaps enjoyable university class I have experienced.

University is almost over for Christmas! I can't wait; however I have a pile of work I need to take care of before I can really enjoy myself. Here is the time line until Christmas:

December 5 - M.I.S. Presentation
December 6 - Marketing test
December 7 - Last day of class
December 9 - Management Science final exam
December 15 Business & Government Relations final paper due
December 20 - M.I.S. final exam

It seems like I am so close yet so far away from being done.

My plan is to study intensely tomorrow for the marketing test, then study for management science while pondering the business & government relations paper. During the weekend I will finish the paper and after the paper is handed in I will start to study M.I.S.

I should have already been studying for marketing and management science, however I simply couldn't bring myself to study until now.

Music to panic to: The Stranglers - Golden Brown