As I lay Dying

This "cold" thing really sucks. I mean, first it was strep, then the mono, now this. Bill and Mary Ann keep nagging me to come home, but I'd like to finish out my semester. Well, or so I thought.

I was on track for an A+ in my HCI design course, but my presentation yesterday did not go as planned. First, Tops wouldn't let us take any photos or video of their automated checkout scanners, which meant visually we were lack luster. Next, the projector wouldn't recognize my partner's computer, so we couldn't run our demo interface. Finally, the presentation sped up a bit.

It's partially my fault, becuase I handed it over to my partner a slide early, but then he glossed over our user testing, summing it up in a few sentences. Our professor (who most likely won't decide our grade, since she's been MIA and the TA has been running the course for the past two months) did ask us a redeeming question about our original interface, which allowed us to elaborate some on the design and testing process, but in the end I just got a weird vibe. Everyone in the class was just staring confusedly, which makes sense since we didn't get to demo our final interface. You really need to see it to understand the whole project and be able to ask questions.

We're supposed to show it off on Thursday, but I'm still hesitant. I know I lost my chance at an A+. Hopefully I can still get an A.

There has been some academic redemption for the week, however. I will be able to take my sociology exam on Friday instead of today, allowing me some more time to prepare as well as try to shake this cold. If I can ace the test, I'll get an A in the class. I also just e-mailed in my final Comm Law paper. I think I hit all the main points, so I can't imagine getting anything worse than an A-. But maybe that's just the cold medication talking ...