Tag Archives: finals week

Adventure time in the middle of the night

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Ugh, sleep deprivation is truly the worst. School is killing me! Yesterday morning I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, but by the evening it was hard to see anymore. We were finalizing our Revit project last night. So I was in school in the morning, work in Kungsbacka in the afternoon and then back to school. I didn’t think we would stay too long, but we ended up staying until 00:30. Crazy!

I took the 6 tram home because nothing else relevant was running at that time. I noticed too late that it didn’t take its usual way so I ended up somehwere I wasn’t sure where. There was one tram left going back to downtown. But I wasn’t sure if it went that way or not. But at that time, my internet completely died. I couldn’t double check. I called mom and she said she would pick me up in downtown so I wouldn’t have to wait there for 30 min for the tram back home. I would not feel safe standing there all alone in the dark… My mom is the best! Getting out of bed at 1 in the morning to drive me home. She is the best!

I had to get up shortly after 6, after 4 hours of sleep and sit through 3h of presentations at work and then back to school for meetings with everyone I am working with right now. Crazy day! I feel awful, I feel physically ill. But I can’t go to bed just yet. I have to prepare for the two presentations I have tomorrow, both in the morning in different parts of town. Yay!

That will be the end of this year, though. But two individual assignments are due the second week of January based on these two courses, but that is it, when it comes to courses at Chalmers. Then it is only my master thesis left. Shit, am I ready for this?

 

Break time is over, back to studying and preparing for tomorrow. Here are some of the rendered pictures that took forever last night. Enjoy!

3d-view-2-alexandras-strak-ljusare 3d-view-7 3d-view-marias-kvarter idas 3d-view-overview

gatunamn Here are also the names we gave the streets and neighborhoods. Mine is Mjölkdisken (~Dairy Counter) with the skyscraper Gräddhyllan (~Cream Shelf) (which I now realized after looking at Wikipedia, means a neighborhood with fancy houses) as the eye magnet to the whole neighborhood. The other neighborhood we designed (we only designed 4 out of the 14) are Filbunken (~Bowl of fil – I think fil is a Swedish thing), Glassbägaren (~Ice Cream Bowl) and Ostkällarn (~Cheese Basement). Vällingby (~Formula Village) is the name of the pre-school in the area. The roads are named:
A-Filen (a type of Swedish fil)
Strössegränd (~Sprinkle Alley)
Lattestigen (~Latte Trail)
Cheddarbacken (~Cheddar Slope)
Mejeriallén (~Dairy Avenue) which is the main, walking only street.

I guess you can see a theme here? The old dairy factory of Arla used to be there, or is actually today, but it will be torn down to make housing. For those of you who are located in Gothenburg, or know the city, this is the area on the other side of Ica Maxi in Mölndal. This is right next to Smörgatan in Kallebäck.

It has been a fun project, and I am very satisfied with the result. And especially considering I have never even opened Revit before this class started. It would have been much more fun without the stress though. Too little time, too much to do. Tomorrow we are presenting it on a special screen (I think it was about 12 square meters big!) and with the help of VR glasses. I think I will make a short video walking around in the neighborhood and post it on my instagram (AlexBemm) if you want to see the 3D-environment. Maybe tomorrow, if I figure out how to make videos directly from what is happening on the screen.

Graduation

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Today is the day when I finally, after a very long time, finished school. For the past five years my occupation has been student, as of 2:15pm today, I am unemployed. Two years at Chalmers, two years break, and one year at Cal Poly. It’s crazy. I postponed my graduation day by moving to San Diego for a year to work as an au pair, I didn’t feel like I was ready to start being an adult with a full time job, and I still don’t honestly. But here I am, a supposed-to-be-adult. It feels great, even if I am not sure what I want to do, it feels so good to be free and have a whole new phase of my life ahead of me. It’s exciting and I look forward to see what my future brings me. If everything goes according to my dream plans, I will spend the next six months in Sweden, working at Liseberg and study German at Gothenburg University for a semester, celebrate Christmas back home with family for the first time since 2012, and then move to Australia for an undetermined amount of time and then travel around in Southeast Asia for a bit. If all of this happen, I won’t be too sad about leaving California. But I will. Today is my last day in San Luis Obispo. I would have liked to have a whole weekend here without anything to worry about, but at the same time, everyone is so stressed about finals and packing. And it wouldn’t be fun to miss the weekend in San Diego.

So today I had two finals. First Digital Cities, a very easy one. The second one, Land Use and Transportation Studies wasn’t as easy but I answered all the questions and will definitely pass, probably get a B even. Now I just finished laundry so I guess I will have to pack those “clean” clothes in my suitcases and be completely done with all of that tonight so I can just leave tomorrow morning.

The rest of this week has been crazy. I had the German final on Monday which was very hard, but it was only a small portion of our grade, so it wasn’t too bad and I still got an A, so that’s good. I found out that I was on the Dean’s List last quarter. You are on the Dean’s List when you have a GPA of 3.5 (max is 4) or higher. I feel proud of myself honestly! I went to TRX Monday and Tuesday as usual, and just because it was the last week, the instructor Sophie tried to kill us. Monday was Filthy Fifty. Ten different exercises, 50 repetitions of each. We ended with 50 burpees and I thought I was gonna die. I have been so sore and it just got worse after Wednesday. I walk like an old lady right now, haha. On Wednesday we did something similar, but we rotated more. Six different pairs of exercises and switched between the two until you were done with the 30 repetitions (first five, then ten, then fifteen). Then you moved on to the next pair and did that for the whole workout session. Kinda a little bit like Dirty Thirty. I didn’t have time for the last 15 back lunges with a medicine ball. But I wasn’t too sad about that. Sophie was so funny with the medicine balls, we had to run around with them to the different stations, she called the balls our babies, we could never leave them behind, never. And if we did we had to do five burpees, we could also not switch babies. Haha. She’s funny!

I think I need to get back to packing before people start coming over to say goodbye.

It feels kinda unreal, am I really done with college?

Last final of spring quarter

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I am done done with all of the work this quarter. Last final done today and I was a bit worried to be honest. We were watching a movie in German (Annie Scholl: Die Letzte Tage) and then discussed it in class afterwards. I am so bad at analyzing movies, but I had one input afterwards and I hope that means I will get an A. I don’t know how this type of final will be graded. The movie was a very sad one and a lot of people were crying, including the teacher. It was intense. After the final was done, I went home and watched the new episode of The Flash. It’s been on a break for the past three weeks and this episode was so full of things happening all the time! The Flash can travel in time? And lots of other stuff, but I am not gonna spoil anything. For dinner we went to Firestone and I was so stoked about that. But they were out of pulled pork so now I feel like I filled up on unnecessary calories and wasted money. Good thing I will maybe walk it off tomorrow morning when we are hiking up the highest peak here in SLO to watch the sunrise. I can’t believe it took me six months to actually do that hike, haha. Since I have to get up at 5am I should probably go to bed now. Or at least try, it’s never quiet here with so many people over.

St. Patrick’s Day

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This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

I don’t really get the hype with this St. Patrick. Someone told me today that St Patrick was part of getting Christianity to Ireland. Why is that something to celebrate? And get shitfaced over? At 6 in the morning? I don’t get it. So I slept until 11 am today, had a final at 1pm, worked on a project after that, Target, and then a beach bonfire. It was a nice day. I was done with the final after 40 minutes and it went pretty well. Not as well as the last one. But this time it felt like the multiple choice questions were easier, but the short answer ones were not. I definitely passed it though and will get a good grade in the class. The project in Public Transportation is not quite done yet, we are gonna put together the last parts tomorrow after my German final. Tomorrow evening is gonna be so awesome when I am done with all of this horrible quarter. I guess it hasn’t been too bad, just a lot of work, and a lot of stuff going on outside of school. I correct myself, it will be nice to put the last ten weeks behind me and start over new for my last quarter ever in school (until I decide to get my master of science degree). The thought hit me today, that if I go back to Sweden, I could get my master, spend two years in school in Sweden and wait out the 2-year rule and then try to move to San Diego and earn A LOT LOT LOT of money! And also live close to the beach and have a year-long tan.

Kelsey and her friends decided to have a bonfire at the beach today, but Rachel, Lauren, Ciara, Cody, and I only stayed for an hour. I’m glad, because now I don’t smell as bad as I would have if I stayed the whole time. And I had time to watch some episodes of Welcome to Sweden and then work on the project. That TV show is by the way very funny. It is about a guy who moves to Sweden from New York to live there with his girlfriend (who is Swedish), and it is so stereotypical Swedish it’s hilarious. I love that show.

At Target I did something bad, I bought a bag of white chocolate M&M’s (it’s Easter soon). As long as this doesn’t turn into a habit, I am good. I never promised myself to not eat any candy at all. But every now and then I feel like I need it. Like now. I needed it.

Now it is past 2 am and I should probably go to bed. Last day of the finals week for me tomorrow, whoop whoop!

Oceano dunesWe went to Oceano Dunes which is just south of Pismo.

First day of finals week

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This quarter’s finals week started off good. I got some stuff done, like finished my part of the group project about the bus routes here in SLO. That felt good. I sent some emails, finished writing the definitions of some concepts for my Urban Planning final tomorrow. And that is it. I missed the beautiful day, but I was in a weird mood today anyway.

So, tomorrow I have the final in Introduction to Urban Planning, but it is not exactly a final since it is not cumulative. It’s gonna be 50 questions, mostly multiple choice. I already have an A in that class so I am not too worried about this. And on Wednesday I have the German final, but I can’t study for that one. We are gonna watch a movie and then have group discussions about it afterward. I am so thankful for these past two weeks that was very relaxed and with not too much work. Even if it’s been super chill, I can’t wait for spring break. Traveling again will be so much fun.

I made an appointment to cut my hair on Thursday after a sunrise hike up Bishops Peak, we are having dinner at Firestone, and will go to Slodoco. This week Kelsey, our former roommate from Iowa is visiting for her spring break with three of her friends. The place is packed. I am just glad I don’t have too much to do. It is so nice to have Kelsey back, I really missed her! But it is a weird situation to have her here with her friends from back home and “sharing” her. I am still very glad to have her here, today we went to dinner downtown and last night we hung out in our living room for ever with some of our neighbors. That was fun.

I think I will hang out in my room tonight, watch a movie or read and then go to bed early.