Half way there

So, cute guy has a girlfriend.  Oh well :)  Also found out he's from South Africa, which may be part of the "sending me weird vibes" thing.

It's midterms now.  I have a test in every class next week, one Tuesday and two Wednesday.  I'm taking Wednesday off, not to study necessarily but just to make sure I'm relaxed and will have slept well.

Business Law should be easy; there haven't been many ideas or terms that I haven't encountered before, even if only in a vague way.  Statics will be "easy" in the difficulty sense, but I need to be sure to double-check my work whenever possible and be very careful not to make calculation mistakes.

Differential Equations is still the big issue.  I earned a 91% on the last test (but got a 98% due to curve), so I'm not at all doing badly.  However, there are a lot of complicated details for the class that don't necessarily mesh well with my kind of thinking: less about how to apply and execute, more about names and memorizing theorems.  I'm not worried, per se, and I plan to spend the weekend reviewing material.  But I'd like to get as high a grade on the test as possible, preferably over a 95%, just so that I'm better buffered for later tests and the final.

I've also got to get finished on my personal statements for my applications.  My UCI "tag" is still in review (I wouldn't expect anything about that until Monday at the earliest, but it might not be until next month), but the UC apps in general are due by the end of November.  The essays are short and the two I've written already are, I feel really good at getting across what I want to say.  I just need to hammer out the other two and then have someone review them.

The applications for CalTech and Harvey Mudd aren't due until next year, which is good for a variety of reasons.  One, I have more time to work on them (and they require a lot more than UC does).  Two, my GPA should be a lot better by then.  Right now, I have 54 units of As and 12 units of Fs (from 20 years ago) still on my transcripts; 3 of those F units don't count for UCs at all, which is what gives me the 3.42 for that application.  However, 2 of my classes this semester are "replacing" two of those Fs, so by December I should (hopefully) have 68 units of As and only 6 units of Fs left.  I can't really re-take those last two classes, but I'll still be at 3.67 at that point (and, the real hope, a 4.0 if the schools decide to ignore those way-older grades, none of which are at all relevant for my transfer).

... Ironically, I'm applying for those two just for fun.  It'll be fiscally irresponsible for me to attend either of them unless I get significant financial assistance from somewhere, and so far none of the (granted, tiny) scholarships I've applied for have panned out.  But I have to apply, nonetheless.

I've been playing the heck out of XCOM 2, though.  It seems to be a decent blend of 10- to 15-minute pieces but enough coherence that I enjoy playing longer.  Also, the random nature of the missions and some of the character aspects (especially with the expansion) keeps it interesting.  I find I have far more fun going from the beginning to just before the final missions than I do playing the final missions; by that point, I've got everything running so smoothly that it's almost no longer a challenge.