Week 27- Brace yourselves, exams are coming

From google images

Monday 23rd February-
Had my usual Monday, going from two morning classes to two work shifts. I got my Recreation Behaviour paper read on my break between shifts. It was about how values lead to the formation of an attitude which leads to how you behave. Who knew psychology could be so interesting? :) That night to prepare for an upcoming bird exam Shannen and I watched an episode of BBC's Life of Birds narrated by Sir. David Attenborough. I find watching documentaries very useful to help me study.

Tuesday 24th February-
I got up early to do some studying before my Rangeland class at 11am. Met up with Kate on the hour and a half off before Recreation Behaviour. We discussed the attitude paper I read yesterday in class. After class we asked the teacher if it's ok to miss the Thursday class on the 12th march because we're taking a trip to Seattle. They take attendance pretty seriously here, no dossing class because you're not in the mood :P . She was fine with us missing the class as long as we catch up with our notes. After that I met up with my friend Boston to study for the exam we have in that class on Thursday. It was great to go through the definitions we would need to know from the seven papers we've covered in class. Wildlife society wasn't on that night due to most of the members being in Helena for the State Wildlife Conference. It would have been great to go but unfortunately I just had too much on this week. I spent the rest of the evening going over stuff for my ornithology exam tomorrow morning.

Wednesday 25th February-
After my 8am genetics class I spent an hour of last minute cramming for the bird exam at 10. The exam was a bit odd, more about the mechanics and physics of birds than actual morphology. Not sure how it went but didn't have time to think on it too much because I had to switch modes back to recreation study. I met up with Boston in my break between shifts and went over some more definitions and examples of how to actually apply the theories and models to real world situations. I'm definitely feeling more confident for this exam now.  That night after my second shift at the Zoo, I quickly learned my Montana bird species for my morning lab quiz. This week we were learning the owls, swifts and hummingbirds, which were easy enough to identify.

Thursday 26th February-
The lab quiz went fine and I also got some earlier quizzes back. Seems I'm doing grand so far :) . This lab was focused on learning some of the songbirds and getting familiar with sonographs. This involved listening to bird calls at regular speeds and slowing them down so you could hear individual tones. We then made recordings of our own voices and played with them. Jamie, Shannen and I would all say the same sentence and compare the pitches of our voices. Shannen's and mine were scarily alike with Jamie's much more universally toned. I tried saying the same sentence in English, Irish and German which was very cool. Irish had higher pitches than German or English. I spent the time before and after my rangeland class in a last ditch effort cramming session for the recreation exam. The exam was tough enough with 8 half a page to a page answer questions in an hour and a half. I think I managed to do ok, but like ornithology it was difficult to tell. We should get the results back in two weeks, which is impressive considering our lecturer is heavily pregnant and will grade exams for 40 students! As much as I was looking forward to a break that evening, I had to start studying for my genetics exam. No rest for a college student during hell week. Lewis and Clark were having their monthly gathering which this evening was Breakfast for Dinner. Nice to get free food when you literally don't have the time to cook for yourself. We met Siobhan, Dervla, Barry, Dave and Savannah and had a quick catch up before heading back to study.

Friday 27th February-
I had the genetics exam at 8am and was glad to get it out of the way. I found it a lot more difficult than I was expecting and hardly had time to finish it. Here's hoping I did enough to pass. After that I went home, wrote up last week's blog post and started the take home exam for genetics. Take home exams are basically like assignments that you cannot discuss with classmates. I headed in to work at 2 and got home around 6pm. That evening I caught up on the one t.v show I'm actually following at the moment, The 100. I'd missed three weeks so just watched them. I think it's the season finale next week, exciting stuff. Sarah and Austin called over and showed me Austin's rifle.

As you do on a Friday night!

Saturday 28th February-
You'd think I could at least have a sleep in after that week... NOPE! I'd signed up to help out the Mule Deer Foundation to set up for their annual banquet in Missoula. They'd asked the Wildlife Society to help out so Shannen and I said we'd help in the morning. We were at the hotel where it was on at 8am and were put straight to work unloading vans and trailers full of raffle goodies, wooden frames and stuffed deer heads. Once everything was unloaded we started working on assembling some of the raffle prizes including a wine case and book shelf which came with shite instructions. I've put a few things together before so had some idea of what went where luckily. After that we set up raffle prizes into bundles we thought went well together for people to bid on. Next was putting raffle tickets into hats, several boxes worth of hats! Our friend Joe was working on matching raffle tickets to coins and sticking them together, so we helped with that. 200 coins later and we were pretty much finished with the set. We headed home at around 2 o'clock and I worked on assignments for a while. That evening we finally started watching Game of Thrones season 4 because Shannen had recovered from the trauma of the Red Wedding. I've only seen season 4 once so it'll be great to watch it again and see things I missed. That night The Theory of Everything was on at the UC theater so Kate, Bridget, Brittanny, Aoife, Shannen and I headed to it. It's very clear why Eddie Redmayne won all the awards he did. I would definitely recommend this movie because it shows what a positive attitude Steven Hawking has and such a great sense of humour.

The wine cabinet we made

One of the auction prizes :P

An ox skull with a mule deer painted on it.

Sunday 1st March-
Holy crap it's March already! :/ This semester is going by so fast. Kate, Shannen and I headed to the mall for some shopping and to the World Market to pick up some home comforts. It was nice to have a bit of a break before getting back into assignments. I finished off my genetics take home exam and did a six page bibliography for my recreation behaviour paper.I had a three way Skype chat too with my friends from home Sharon and Paudie. It was great to get the news from home and hear about Sharon's travels in France where she's studying.

Eh.. think I'll pass :/

Bacon Maple flavoured ale

Just wanted to thank everyone who reads my blog every week even though it may not be the most exciting post. I'm going to Seattle from the 12th - 15th March so I should have plenty of nice photos and stories.
- Fiona :)