church, and the last psych-o

Finals are over! This is my excited face.

I have four weeks before summer classes start and right now I'm thanking God that I didn't register for a Maymester class. This gives me time to do other things like work on the Psalty musical, wash my clothes, clean our bathroom, make bread, get ready for the mission trip, and of course sleep.

I am really excited about the church family mission trip. We're going to the Rio Grande Bible Institute and we're going as a church--grandparents,parents, teenagers, kids, babies, and all. Everyone goes, everyone works. This is cool because it will give the kids a chance to see beyond our church and have a frame of reference for the larger Body of Christ. The musical we're doing with all the church kids is actually centered around the Body of Christ and what it means to be a family with other believers. We've had great discussions about this during rehearsals and it's so much fun to watch these kids grow up in a community where being a part of the Body is a way of life, not just a Sunday School topic. Because our church is so close and we are truly a Family, the kids get to see every single day what it means to live as a community and what it means to serve and be served. This makes me more excited that we're all going on this mission trip together, so they can really see that it's not just COG that is the Body, it's all Believers around the world. It will be great for all of us to take what we've learned and practiced within our own church about loving and serving, and extend that to the people at the Institute.

Tomorrow night is the Agape Crisis Pregnancy Center Banquet. Our church has been supporting Agape for years and several people in our church are either counselors at the Center, board members, or other kinds of volunteers. The annual banquet has been a great way to raise awareness and support for the Center and they've usually had famous speakers such as George Grant and Alan Keyes. This is the third year in a row my sisters and I have done mass babysitting at our house for the banquet. We really want everyone in our church to be able to go and don't want childcare to be an issue. So tomorrow night, 25-30 COG kids will be dropped off at our house so their parents can get all dressed up and go to the nice banquet. We told the kids there'd be supper, snacks, capri suns (only for outside on the deck! : ), movies, and games. Should be fun! Wish us luck!

I'm sad that my psych class is over. I mean, I'm actually relieved because I really was mad by the end, but I'm sad that there will be no more stories. It was by far the most entertaining class I've ever been a part of, and I doubt any other class will come close to that level of insanity. So, here is your last story, as it happened the final week of class.

Several people told me to ask if I could do anything to change my grade in the class. So I asked. I explained what had happened about the volunteering assignments and assured him that I was not trying to blow it off. I reminded him that my entire body of work was nothing but straight As and that he had loved all of my papers. I also pointed out that I had not missed one single class period and had been an active participant (whether he liked it or not...) in lecture discussions. I told him I hoped he would see that I was a dedicated student and that I had done my best to take his class seriously.
He said he was sorry about the fallout with the volunteering but that there was nothing he could do about those missing points. While looking at his grade book, he made some quick calculations and said, "Cathryn, if you score an 80 on the exam today (the last one) and get a 100 on your paper (the last one), that will be enough points to bring your grade up to an 89, which I would bump up to an A for you. If you score a 60 on the exam and get at least an 85 on the paper, your grade can come up to a B."
That was enough for me to hear, as I knew that I would get 100s on both of the assignments. I had already turned in both the exam and the paper that morning (the exam was a take-home) so all I had to do was wait for the grades. The next day (last day of class), I came in and was very excited to see my new grades. I searched through the stack of papers and found mine. On the front of my exam, in red ink, "50". Seriously?? Then I looked at my paper, and in red ink it said, "80/B". That time I actually said, "Seriously??!!!" out loud.

Seriously, a take home exam, how could I get a 50? I compared my answers with the girl at my table who scored 100. Our answers were exactly the same! Below each of my answers he had written "citation needed" and had marked it wrong. Ok, y'all know me. I don't get mad easily. Even at times when I should be really angry, I'm usually just laughing and very amused. Yeah, you probably would have payed money to see me right then. I was mad and wasn't doing a great job of hiding it. I took my exam and the other girl's exam up to the professor and said, "I just want to know why I got these answers wrong and she didn't. They're the same answers." He looked at me and said, "You didn't provide citations." I said, "Seriously? My answers came from my notes, which came from your lectures in this class! Since when do we need references for class lectures?? Look, this girl didn't have any citation!" He looked very calm and said, "Hm, well, I guess I didn't catch that. I'll have to get with her and change that. I'm sorry about your grade though. I know you really wanted that B. You just really need to put in more effort next time and not try to rush through things, ok?"

Seriously. Oh, and my paper? He said it wasn't as meaty as the rest of mine had been. That's just great. So he purposefully graded me down just so my class grade would stay at a C.

And yes, I'm writing a letter to the Dean, even though it won't do anything. My professor is the chair of his department, so the Dean is the only place I can go. And I know...this won't affect my life in the long run. Worse things have happened to me. But it still makes me mad. The nursing board who looks at my application to begin clinicals will see my grades and I can't very well sit there and say, "Well, it wasn't my fault, I had a bad professor!"

So that's the end of the psycho stories. Hopefully next semester will be entertaining but not so aggravating. :)