Chan's Personal Blog

So Tuesday was my last exam, and I encountered quite a scary incident. I had been blitzing through the course textbook for the last few days, and I didn't sleep too well on the night before of the exam. In the morning, I quickly had breakfast and made my daily dash to the bus. My stomach started acting up a bit while I was on the bus, but I didn't think anything of it.

I arrived at UVIC and I went to the exam room to cram just a bit more. 9:00am, the professor came in and started checking our calculators to make sure the memory had been cleared. Once everyone had arrived, he said no one is allowed out of the room during the duration of the exam, if you have to go to the washroom, go now.

I flip through the exam quickly and identify all the easy questions first and blow through them all quickly. By 10:10am, I am done about 75% of the exam, I had three questions left that were still blank. All went well until my stomach started making noises and such, and I didn't feel too good. After resisting the urge of going to the washroom, I had to give up and went to the professor.

Chan: Sorry for disturbing you, may I go to the washroom.
Prof: I told everyone at the beginning that no one was allowed out of the room, you should have went at the before the exam.
Chan: Yes I know, but I have a stomach ache right now, and I really have to use the washroom.
Prof: ...... hhmmmm.... fine.

So I went to the washroom and did my unpleasent business and came back. As I was walking back to my seat, I noticed the prof was following me back to my seat.

Prof: Where were you!? You were gone for 6 minutes!!!! Where did you go?!?! I TOLD EVERYONE, NO ONE WAS ALLOWED TO LEAVE THE ROOM AFTER THE EXAM HAD STARTED
Chan: Umm... like I said before, I had to go to the washroom.
Prof: For 6 minutes!??!
Chan: I had a stomach ache.
Prof: This is not good, what is your student number?

At this point I'm thinking uh oh. Something is seriously wrong, he's really mad and almost yelling at me, he's madly pointing at his watch indicating 6 minutes had past, and everyone's starring because he's making a scene. He must think I snuck out of the room to cheat. He starts writing down my student number and what not and writes down "out of room for 6 minutes, unaccounted for", UNDERLINE UNDERLINE, CIRCLE. (With obligatory red pen obviously.)

Prof: We're going to have to investigate your paper very closely.
Chan: I didn't do anything though, I just went to the washroom because I had a stomach ache. Look at my paper, it's mostly done, see. Why would I go out so late in the exam to go out and cheat?

He left me to write the rest of my exam, but I'm freaking out because I'm thinking he's going to penalize me or worse, disqualify me and say I cheated on the final. What really scared me was if I failed this class, then that throws off all my graduate school plans and a lot of other things.

I recollect my thoughts and finish this exam. As I go up to hand in the paper, the prof starts talking.

Prof: Were you feeling sick earlier?
Chan: Ummm.... yeah, I had a stomach ache.
Prof: Had you been ill this week?
Chan: Umm, nope just this morning, must have been something I had for breakfast.
Prof: Maybe you were just nervous for the final ... (chuckle chuckle)
Chan: Yeah...hehe (nervous chuckle)
Prof: Anyways, if you had told me earlier that you were feeling ill, there wouldn't have been a problem. Everything's okay, you can go.
Chan: !!!! Umm..... okay, thank you very much professor. (leave stage left)

I leave the room dumbfounded. I think the word stomach ache did come a few times, but I guess he didn't hear me?!? So crisis and heart attack adverted. I don't know what softened his heart, or made him change his mind, but thank God he said everything was okay. As I left the exam room, some guy also exited. In the hallway he says:

Guy: Hey, are you the dude that went to the washroom during the exam?
Chan: Uhh... yeah, I was feeling a little sick.
Guy: Oh yeah, he was mad eh?
Chan: Heh, yeah he was.
Guy: What's the deal with no washroom breaks during the exam? There's a rule about being able to use the washroom during the exams. I'm going to complain to the department about this. I was holding it in for two hours! I couldn't concentrate.
Chan: Heh, yeah....

In either case, all is well.... but I was panicking there for a while. Everything I worked for could have went down the tubes in 6 minutes, literally and metaphorically.

Well, today I wrote my last exam, and that marks the end of the undergraduate journey at UVIC. I had a climatic ending at the end of my exam, and I'll write about that later. But for now, it is time to celebrate and feast. Words cannot express the relief that I am feeling right now. And since I can't express my feelings through interpretive dance over the Internet, I shall express myself through the next best thing, a Flash movie .

Enjoy friends... (clip contains audio, crank up those speakers).

Well, today was the last day of classes for my undergraduate degree. I say this was a fitting end to the degree because I had to submit my big CSC 450 project today. The project was to implement a multiplayer network game with a graphical user interface. The game I chose to do was San Juan which is a fun card game I played once at my boss' board games night.

In either case, I finished coding up the project at midnight, and then I had to start documenting the source code. Finally, it had to be printed off because they wanted a physical hard copy of the code. So, I was up until 4 a.m. finishing up the documentation. In the end I had about 4,000 lines of code printed off on 56 pages. I knew it was a big project... but boy, did it sink in when I was holding that stack of source code. My stapler wouldn't staple through it, so I was going to go to the office in the morning to use their industrial strength stapler.

Anyways, I got four hours of sleep and rushed off to morning classes. I was suprised I lasted through the day, but hey, I've had worse. If I recall correctly, it was Summer 2003, and my friend Loren and I were coding up a project for SENG 365. We were making a management information system for a fictional food catering business. We had a code-a-thon on the day before the project was due. We coded from the morning to the very next morning. I'll tell you, we watched the sun rise from the Engineering Lab Wing's computer lab, and it was the most awful sight in the world .... no one should have to endure coding through the night. Once we finished, Loren drove me home, and I took a shower, slept for 45 minutes, and got back up to head for school. I had two presentations to give in the morning. They all went suprisingly well considering I didn't get much sleep. Later that day, after school when I got home, I wasn't feeling very tired. Then Bevan calls me up saying one of his customers needed help setting up their computer system. I thought, ah heck, why not, this should be amusing. So I went out to service a computer at some random guy's house. Fun.

So yes, I've had worse. But, I think it was very fitting that I finished the degree coding late at night. When I was taking computer science classes in first year, I recall spending some very late nights rushing to get little assignments done. Here I am in fourth year finishing a few thousand line projects late at night. I guess I'm staying true to my hacker roots. There's a saying that hackers work from 9 to 5. That's 9pm to 5am .

Gah I need to sleep.... zzzzz