Mostly this grading period I have become less ardous about pursuing good grades. It's probably the fourth-quarter high that most students get when they know the year's about to end: they become spiritless about their studies, and they start thinking more and more about the upcoming summer break that brings so much promise of fun to their schoolwork-worn minds.

I am not an exception to the fourth-quarter high. As you can probably see at the date in the heading of this post, this is my first post for this quarter - I know it's not a good example, and yet I can't rewind the past. It is already March 15 today, and no magic word can bring me back to an earlier day to create a much earlier update.

If you will further inspect this entry you will see that there is nothing earlier. This is because I had, for the second time, forgotten both my user name and password in my former blog, and had to create a new one.

Anyway, enough stories. The main objective of this blog is to express my thoughts on the past quarter, and I will proceed with that.

I admit being a bit less in tune with my studies this fourth quarter, but my interest for Computer Science still existed. I still very much enjoyed the hands-on activities, especially now that Mary Anne and Miguel have joined our group. I find working with my groupmates a very entertaining experience, filled with laughter and success.

This quarter had passed by so quickly, actually quite faster than the last, and because of that, there had been only a few lessons, though I must admit that the ones this grading is much more challenging than the last:

Take the array function, for one. It's a simple idea, but a complicated function. One has to understand how it works completely in order to use it inerringly. I have found little trouble with this lesson, most fortunately, so I lived through that. Also, I found it incredibly useful when making programs. It's one thing that I had unconsciously searched for through my CS-learning ordeal.

Then there is the "nested" for. It may not sound so hard at first - after all, a nest in plain terms is simply a bird's incubating place, isn't it? But on a second glance, it is one of the most heartwreching CS lessons I have ever encountered (I may be overreacting a bit, but this topic's already difficult for me). When writing a nested for excerpt, it is vital to closely scrutinize the piece-by-piece execution of the program, and that I find incredibly appalling. All the same, I usually get the hang of it, and my groupmates are very cooperative: we usually get the gist of hands-on tasks quickly enough.

There were also some other lessons, like the string for char, and the putchar, puts, gets, and some terms that may seem vulgar in our language...which I also found a bit tricky, since they were discussed in a day (out of time shortage), thus followed by no hands-on activity. To tell you the truth, I can't remember some of them now, since there are too many.

Earlier this morning we had the periodic test for CS (now, how coincidental) and I was shocked to see how braincrushing it was (peace, mam! :D)! Well, I mean - it's a bit more difficult than what I'm used to. All the same, I liked answering it. I wouldn't expect a grade higher than 35, though.

Now I feel very much relieved to finally end this stressful but happy year level. It had been a very interesting experience to know something about the C Language: it's a very wonderful programming language. If one day I find myself taking a computer-related course, it would be because of my third year computer science, and Miss Gallardo. (However, that wouldn't happen before I give up on my more fervent ambition: to become an international commercial pilot)

To conclude my one blog entry, I would like to state what I had learnt in this year apart from C concepts:

Firstly, I began to form an idea in my head that Filipinos would make great programmers. My mom always told me how highly-priced and highly in-demand programmers are abroad: imagine $10 000 dollars every month (about P55 000)!

Secondly, I realized that no man is an island, and however you think you can stand on your two feet, in some time you'll realize that you need other people's help. Now, that lesson I got from hands-on exercises.

Lastly, I found out that a student would improve very greatly in studies if only he listens carefully to the teacher. I find that my test grades went higher when I listened more eagerly. This can also be related to the other idea in my head that says a person can understand anything if he puts his mind into it: I had started this year level with no knowledge at all of C, and ended up being a bit above average on the subject. For those who'd read this blog aside from Ma'am, take that as a good lesson. It really works.