Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

~Charles Caleb Colton

This is my last week of school. I can’t wait to be done. I promise I won’t neglect you all after Wednesday. Until then, things may be a tad sporadic around here. Talk amongst yourself.

I have my second of four finals today. I scored a 96% on the first one that I took last Wednesday. That was my easiest class, though. The next three should be a tad tougher. International Financial Management will be the death of me. It is sad that I have scored a 72% and a 68% on my two respective tests in that class, and my score was well above the class average!!! Somebody needs to learn some people and teaching skills. I’m not going to point any fingers, but it rhymes with “my professor.”

The bus that carries people who are disabled is called the, “Handy Bus.”

That’s just wrong.

Blue Bird should really be ashamed of themselves. Seriously.

UWM had taken down a banner advertising a visit by former terrorist, Walid Shoebat. Amidst the controversy, the officials had said that the banner needed to come down because they didn’t have a signed contract (not because the Muslim Student Association wanted it taken down). Well, I forgot to post this on Wednesday, but the school administration did, in fact, allow the banner to be put back up.

And here’s the crappy cell-phone pic to prove it:

I’m impressed. From an e-mail:

Nov. 29, 2007

Statement from UW-Milwaukee Administration:

UWM Union Modifies Policy
on Speaker Security Charges

From the beginning of our planning for the Dec. 4 appearance of Walid Shoebat at the UW-Milwaukee Union, campus officials have been most concerned with the safety of students and the others who will be coming to our university to attend the event. A safety plan for the event was created by the Division of Student Affairs after reviewing the experiences of other universities where Mr. Shoebat appeared. The cost for the required additional security services was based on a fee-recovery program developed by UWM Union officials over the summer.

It has become clear, however, that the additional security expenses have been perceived by some as a means to discourage speakers from visiting the UWM campus. Simply stated, that is not the case. UWM is committed to its long-standing practice of welcoming and encouraging discussion and debate of all issues no matter how controversial.

To ensure that the UWM Union remains a place where ideas are freely exchanged, the Union will explore other methods to recover such expenses. As a result of this policy change, the Union is cancelling the additional security charges that were to have been applied to next Tuesday’s Shoebat speech sponsored by the Conservative Union and to a forum on the same day sponsored by the Muslim Student Association.

Throughout its history, UWM has kept its doors open to people expressing a myriad of perspectives. A particularly significant example was the Nov. 23, 1965, appearance of Martin Luther King, Jr. at UWM, which required extraordinary safety measures. In the following years, the university has welcomed numerous speakers who represented many perspectives. We will continue to do so in order to preserve and protect the right to free speech and, when necessary, we will take precautions to ensure the safety of all involved.

My school, UW-Milwaukee, is hosting former terrorist, Walid Shoebat, as he explains why terrorism is bad and why Muslims shouldn’t hate Jews. The Muslim Student Association is protesting the event stating, “if the UWM council doesn’t cancel the event, we will protest.” (source: 620 WTMJ) 

I’ll just say it… I actually feel threatened by the MSA’s remarks. It’s a sad state of affairs for an entire population when one hears “muslims” and “protests” and immediately thinks, “bombs.” The MSA isn’t doing anything to deminish those fears by protesting an event stating why people shouldn’t engage in terrorism.

Luckily for us, UWM will probably cave and not host the event.

…would that mean that the terrorists win?

I don’t know what eeeeediot decided that 5:30PM on Thanksgiving Eve would be a great time for an International Financial Management midterm, but somebody did… and that’s what my mind will be focused on today. Hopefully I’ll remember how to conduct a forward hedge, a money-market hedge, an options hedge, a cross hedge, and a hedge through invoice currency. That’s just one chapter of craptacular knowledge that I need to have committed to memory. I also get to measure economic/operating exposure, financially hedge operating exposure, measure liquidity and market concentration, cross list, discuss the concept of American Depository Receipts, gains from international diversification, and a whole bunch more of the most tedious, mind-numbing bits of education that I have ever endured.

I’d seriously rather be writing a research paper right now.

Congratulations. If you have made it to this point in the post, you have just read the most boring thing I’ve ever written. Ick.

This quote is in honor of the two papers that I have to write this weekend.

I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.

~Peter De Vries

Here it is, November 13th, and the fall semester is just about a month from being over! Only one month and one more semester to go before I finish my BBA (bachelor of business administration). This semester has flown by. Last semester had me going to class four nights a week, and this semester I only have to make the trip three times a week. I’m sure the extra day off of school each week has made the semester seem shorter, but I still can’t help but feel like the semester just started.

All of my classes are going pretty well. I’ve decided not to fully kill myself this semester, simply because the difference between a 3.8 GPA and a 3.5 GPA doesn’t really bother me as much anymore. Sure, they consider your GPA when you apply for grad school, but I’m pretty good at placement-style tests, so I’m sure the GMAT won’t be all that bad.

Speaking of grad school and the GMAT, I have decided that I am going to go to UW-Whitewater, instead of Milwaukee, for my MBA. Whitewater offers an entirely online, two-year curriculum, whereas UW-Milwaukee only offers on-campus classes.  The only caveat may be my grades from my former school. When I went to UWW right after high school, I was more interested in my social life than I was in getting a good education. So, I wound up with a cumulative GPA somewhere between a 2.5  and a 2.8. Embarrassing? Yes. My cumulative GPA at Milwaukee now is right around a 3.5, but I’m not sure if Whitewater will take into account any of my Whitewater grades when choosing whether or not to accept me into the school.

The quantity of posts may slow down here over the next few weeks as I get into preparing for finals… but I assure you… I’m still here.

Seriously, if I ever get shot at or near school, I sincerely hope that my family sues the state on my behalf for denying my right to bear arms. Stories like this really make me wish that I could carry my Glock 27 (at least in my car).

This is an absolutely hilarious, and unfortunately accurate representation of a typical night at a college bar/club! I loves me some Rachel Lucas. She’s friggin’ hilarious, and dead on.

Sitting in Consumer Behavior class… minding my own business… when “POP,” the power goes out in all of Lubar Hall, the Union, and I believe Bolton Hall as well. I haven’t traveled to the rest of campus to see if the power is out elsewhere.

Sad part: my first thought was, “I hope this isn’t some sort of sick UVA thing. If so, I am totally throwing down.”

Second sad part: my second thought was, “Crap, I really like this class. If I had the choice I’d trade a power outage in CB for a power outage in International Financial Management.”

Well, back to the books…

Hee hee!

After I flunked the first two tests, I grabbed the professor by the throat and I said, “why are you teaching shit at this ungodly hour? Are you trying to keep this stuff a secret?”

~Lewis Black

If you really want to stray from the norm and show off your individuality at school this year, don’t show up to your university in one of those homogeneous, “vote democrat,” t-shirts. Instead, throw on a “vote republican” ensemble. You’re certain to get more looks and engage in more conversations than the occasional “yeah man, high five!” you’ll get in a donkey number.

I’d do it, but I already have more friends than I can keep up with.

Side note: I seriously love the congruency of individualists.

As I sit here, outside at school, enjoying the sun and the breeze, I have decided that I want to find the person who declared that miniskirts were back in style, walk up to said person, slap him or her in the face, and say, “thank you.” They are such a double-edged sword. Some women look foine in them. The other 70%, however, make me wish I had eaten a lighter lunch. Eek!

For those of you who don’t know me, during my first (and, well, second) stint(s) in college, I was in a fraternity. Lambda Chi Alpha, to be exact. I met some of my best friends that I have ever and will ever know during that time. We could go on about that, but that’s not why I’m writing this. I am sitting here in the Union at UWM right now, and I just walked over a barrage of sidewalk chalkings that say, “Rush _insert_fraternity_name_here.” I just totally realized that there is nothing gheyer than, as a 20-something year old man, writing “Rush” and then your fraternity’s initials in colored chalk on a sidewalk. There is one fraternity here, it rhymes with “weak,” that has “Rush” written in 20-foot long letters! That’s a lot of chalk! You would think that the enviro-kids would worry about run-off with that kind of chalk on the ground. I mean, it’s cool to promote the whole Greek system, and schools don’t give kids many other options for marketing and promotions, but I’m just saying that I’M glad I don’t have to sacrifice my pride like that anymore.

Tuesday marks the start of my second-to-last semester of undergraduate studies at UWM. I am pretty excited to get this semester underway. The classes I have to take don’t sound extremely interesting, but I’m sure that once I get rolling in them I’ll find a way to keep myself interested. Here’s the rundown of the awesome classes that I have:

1. International Financial Managment
2. International Business
3. Marketing Research
4. Consumer Behavior

I am actually kinda-sorta looking forward to the last two, but I’m not sure on the International Business classes. Initially, I was going to take the entrepreneurial classes  instead of the international classes, but they offer the entrepreneurial classes early in the day, and the International classes in the evening… so it was really the only thing that fit into my schedule.  I don’t really have to take either, but I figure if I can get a “certificate” out of it as well, it definitely won’t harm my resume.

My plan is to finish my BBA, stay in school and get my MBA, and then I may start my own advertising/marketing firm. That’s three years off, though, so we’ll see how life changes between now and my MBA graduation.

Recently, I met a woman who is going to art school at UWM. Upon learning that, I told her that I, too, am going to UWM as a business student. She quipped, “oh, business school.” I asked, “what’s wrong with that?” She replied, “you don’t know? The art students don’t get along with the business students.” I asked her why they don’t get along, her response: “because you business students go to bed at 10… which is just about the time that our creativity starts working.” To which I replied, “so you’re saying that ‘we business types’ aren’t that creative, so ‘you artsy types’ don’t like us.” And she said, basically, “yup.”

I honestly thought high school was over.

Jocks rule!