The past week’s events have shown us that the final stretch of the semester is upon us. UNC men’s basketball punched their ticket to the Final Four of March Madness, the gray winter skies have started to clear up, and in ENGL 105i, the second unit projects have finished, indicating that we are close to two-thirds done with the spring semester. Recharged from spring break, most students seemed to have some extra energy to expend this week, which was very useful for completing the second unit project.
Most people, including myself, glossed over the expectations Paul gave the class the Thursday before spring break, which emphasized that we were “expected” to work on our projects during our week off. I don’t consider myself to be the most egregious procrastinator, but I avoided touching my project until my flight back to Chapel Hill from Portland on Sunday. I wished I could have worked on the project over the break, but with almost two straight months of nonstop classes, I tried to take a small pause to readjust myself
I was able to finish my explication of research just before the deadline for the workshop on Tuesday. During class, it seemed like a lot of people, including myself, were still adjusting to spring break being over. Nonetheless, Tuesday helped readjust most of the class back to scholarly life, while helping us prepare for the big presentation on Thursday
With my last unit project, I finished most of the work with a week to spare. However, this project was a grind from Sunday to Thursday. With the video, it was much easier to record a sufficient narration, then forget about that portion of the project once I deemed it sufficient. With presenting, it was a constant flow of memorizing the script, while also improving gestures and pauses to best convey the message to the audience. I rehearsed my script until it felt conversational, which happened to be at 1:30 AM on the presentation day of Thursday. I realized six hours of sleep was the best I could get, so I closed my eyes and hoped for the best.
I woke up energized and ready to present at 7:30. I was a little lucky, as my group went third, so I got to watch eight presentations and adapt my mannerisms to match the vibe of the class. My own presentation was a blur. I remember painstakingly trying to convey my message to the audience while not going over the allotted time of three minutes, hoping to answer any audience questions which popped up. Overall, it went quite smoothly, and I was happy to be roughly done with two-thirds of the coursework for this class.
With the start of UP3, I am happy to only deal with low-stakes feeders while preparing for my STEM midterms, and I’m sure most of the class feels similar. For a school that aggressively tries to “weed-out” pre med students as much as UNC, it is nice to have a few classes which do not stick to the exam schedule of the STEM courses, which often have biology, chemistry, and physics exams during the same week. I hope that in this down-time, I can reassess my priorities and finish the last round of midterms strong.
The most talked-about event for the week was likely the UNC men’s basketball team’s success in the March Madness bracket, defeating UCLA on Friday and Saint Peter’s on Sunday to earn a spot in the Final Four. Campus seems more jittery than usual with their impending showdown against Duke, and I assume this energy will translate back to the classroom. I’m sure everyone at this school is hoping to see UNC spoil Duke’s storybook run, while also getting a spot in the national championship. It is an exciting time to be a student at this school, and I hope everyone can take advantage of this energy, both inside and outside of the classroom.
Featured image source:
Chris Jones 2022, USA Today, accessed 28 Mar 2022, https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2022/03/19/march-madness-north-carolina-baylor-defining-moments/7105198001/