The Last Post

sadly folks, this is going to be my final blog post. its that time of year. the first semester is winding down, and today i finished up with my english 101 class. its gonna be weird not having to blog anymore. to be honest, i really don't get that much satisfaction out of it. to me it seemed more like a diary, because i never new what to write about so i just wrote about what was going on in my life. it wasn't that i didn't like it, i just don't really care for it. im just gonna stick to facebook. its a better way to get responses from people. with this blog, i didn't get any responses unless it was assigned. looking forward, im really excited for christmas break and this year its not so much about the presents. i don't really know what i want. i thought about it really hard and i came up with a list of things that i need, mostly for college, such as a new cell phone or some new flip flops. ive gotten over the whole video game stage of my life i think. i used to be able to sit in front of the tv and play all day non-stop. now, i get bored quickly, and never play more than an hour or an hour and a half at most. im more into going to the gym and working out and playing basketball. video games won't take me anywhere, but basketball might. im really looking forward to having the opportunity to work out with the varsity assistant coach next semester with my friend. we are trying to improve our skills and athletic ability in hopes that we can make the varsity basketball team. so rest assured, i will be working out all thru the winter in preparation for my spring semester workouts. aside from that the most important thing to me this christmas is seeing all my friends again from highschool. i have not had the chance to see my best friends for a long time. it'll be a flashback to my highschool days for sure. ill even get a chance to visit some of my new friends from college that live close to me. hopefully exams go as planned so that i may fully enjoy my christmas vacation. i hope that i stay in touch with as many of you as possible, and im sure ill see you around from time to time in the dining halls, the turtle, and what not. take it easy over christmas break. i look forward to seeing you again in the spring!

merry christmas

ersin

registration for classes

im so disappointed about how my registration for my spring classes went. i only got three of the classes that i wished to take out of six. for one class i did not get the correct schedule which messes with the schedule that i planned on having. because the discussion session is at a different time, i have to shift the other class that i wanted to get but didn't. i didn't get into CLAS170 in which i was put on holdfile. this makes no sense because i met the requirements for the class and a holdfile means that i didn't meet these requirements. something is fishy. i could get into comm107 either although im 3rd on the waitlist right now which is not bad at all. ill probable get that. and as i mentioned earlier i was put into the wrong section for GEOL123. so the only class that seems to be a problem class is my last elective CLAS170. it conflicts with other class times in my schedule. so what i did was sign up for a section that didn't conflict. however, since the system is a peace of crap i got put onto the stupid holdfile. its a mistake, simply that. the system screwed up and now i have to pay for it. everytime i check up on my classes, i notice that there are no people on the waitlist for any of the sections. thats a bit odd considering that there are 21 people on holdfile. im gonna be real pissed if i can't get on this class. my roommate did and he has less credits that i do. now granted, the requirement is that i have 60 credits or LESS to take this class. i only have 29 so it makes no sense why im put on the stupid holdfile. why would i ever try to sign up for a class that im not qualified to take. im working on getting a 4.0 gpa this semester, probably a 3.85, i think i can work out my prerequisites. 

till next time

ersin

game time baby

its almost 11:30 today. do you know what that means? it means im about to register for my classes next semester. im so nervous right now. last night i checked up on a couple of them and i realized that there was only one seat left. that has got to be my seat. i made a perfect schedule a couple days ago with all of my classes including the exact sections that i needed to sign up for in order to optimize my schedule for next semester. there is no way that im am going to allow myself to not have the schedule that i desire. i register in exactly 11 minutes now. im almost at the point of perspiration. if i get all the classes i want next semester could be so much fun. never having to get up at 7 any more like i did this semester. getting enough sleep is really important to me. its not like i have to sleep till noon like some people. i just need 8 hours of sleep. that is supposed to be all the sleep a person needs to get on a nightly basis. since i always go to be around or usually past midnight, i simply can't afford to wake up at 7 any more. i lose sleep, and its the coldest time of the day. leaving elkton at seven is so much colder than leaving it at say 830. okay 9 minutes to go and im even more jumpy than before. i can hardly continue typing this post because i keep having to rewrite what i typed because i miss-typed it because my mind and my fingers are racing, causing me to make a lot of errors. its like having a rush of adrenaline. okay 7 minutes now. time is flying. i gotta go get on testudo and get ready to fly through this registration process

6 minutes and counting

ersin

champions

this weekend ended up being one of the most exciting weekends all semester. we had our third and final club basketball tournament, in the school of public health. i woke up and nine, and didn't get home from the tournament until 5:30pm. this was the biggest tournament of the year thus far. the teams were as follows:maryland, george washington, lehigh, howard, villanova, towson, and georgetown. the favorite in this tournament was howard. they had won the club basketball national championships two years ago, and they looked really good. they had a real coach who wasn't a junior in college. every player was six feet tall or taller, they could all shoot the ball, and they were all very athletic. i recognized one player on howard that i believe played at the bullis school, which was one of my rival schools in highschool. anyway our first game was against towson. towson looked very good but looks can be deceiving. we exploded on towson, and ended up beating them 60-23. after a brief lunch break, we were back at it against a team that did play the way that they looked. villanova was an all white team, with a lot of big burly players. they were a very slow and diliberate team. we played down to our competition in this game, and only won by 20 after a relatively close game. villanova played really dirty. they fouled hard and complained to the refs about everything despite the fact that is was they who were playing unfairly. so being 2 and 0 with a large point differential we were due to play in the finals against howard who had an even greater point differential than we had. they blew teams out of the water by 50 points. this was it; the last game of our season. i hadn't performed up to my ability in the first two games, and made sure i gave 100% in this final game. this was what we had worked so hard for. this was the first time that we played a team that was better than us. howard had better talent and were much more athletic overall. we should not have won the game but there were some variable factors that we did have more of which were heart, determination, and effort. we simply worked harder than howard did. this is not to say that they didn't play hard either. they gave a good effort, and had we not given it our all we would have gotten slaughtered, like the teams that previously played howard. they were winning for much of the first half which ended up being a two point game in their favor. in the second half all of our hard work began to show. howard seemed to get a little tired, but that made all the difference. the shots that they hit in the first half didn't fall in the second half. in their place some of our shots started falling, and our cardio fitness level began to shine through. at the end of the game we ended up winning by 10 points. we dethroned a team that was the national champs just two years earlier. im not trying to brag but im pretty proud of how we played. hopefully to those who watched we proved that club basketball is no joke. we work hard and sprint, and lift just like the varsity team. if i had to make a guess, i would estimate that our club team has the talent of a division 3 or division 2 varsity college basektball team. beating howard clearly shows that we are among the better group of club teams in the country. hopefully we can continue to improve and play well next semester as the national tournament draws closer. 

ballin!!!

ersin

exams easier than expected

initially i was really worried about my exams this semester. it is my first semester in college, so everything is brand new to me. im still getting used to taking college mid-terms, and getting my time management and study habits down pat. im doing well for now but until i finish a whole year of college, i can't say that i not a lot about how testing happens at the university of maryland. one thing that has eased my stress is the fact that in a couple of classes i am doing so well that i will receive an A in the class regardless of how i score on the final exam. now when i say "regardless of how i score" i don't literally mean i could get a zero and still get an A. i mean that there isn't any pressure to get an A. since i already have an A+ in two classes, getting another A won't help me. I just need to make sure i get something around the 75 range. not that im intentionally trying to do poorly; all im trying to say is that i have some wiggle room when it comes to these exams. i don't have to go out and get an A in order to improve my GPA. i just need to be relatively familiar with the material and i should be fine. the only things that are worrying me are the final english paper. i always worry that i won't meet the required page length, and the rough draft is due soon. once i do a rough draft, im much more relaxed when in comes to editing, peer-editing, and correcting. im also a little concerned about my intro to business class BMGT110. right now i have an 85. the class average is an 82 and the teacher said that he likes the average to be around an 87-88. so he said he will curve the grades. but that puts me right on the line between getting a B or an A, and im not sure where i stand at the moment. this puts a little more pressure on me for the final. i have to get an A to ensure that i get an A on the semester. im also trying to bump up my english grade. i have a C- and a B+ on the first two papers and that puts me between a C and a B. i would be thrilled with a B but it all depends on how my 3rd paper went which i will get back this friday(tomorrow). depending on that ill know where i stand. otherwise im simply going to have to step it up on paper 4. hopefully all goes well, i can smell the christmas season right around the corner. just one final push to get to the finish line.

cya at the finish line

ersin

transfered at last

i had a little dilemma recently. i was checking my academics page on testudo and i noticed that there didn't appear to be any ap scores. i thought that this was odd because i took six ap tests and received plenty of transferable credits. i assumed that there must have been some technical difficulties, and that the grades simply didn't show up on the page, but had still transfered. the reason i even cared to think about this was because all my freshman friends were able to register for classes on earlier days than i could, and i had more ap credits. so it didn't make sense. i should have had more credits yet i was registering on a later date. thats when i knew that it wasn't a technical problem or a type-o on testudo; those credits that i earned actually didn't transfer. my thoughts were confirmed when i did a walk in at the undergraduate office at the business school. it just didn't make sense because before i came to maryland, i was told to bring my official ap grades to my orientation. i did so and my advisor saw them and i took classes accordingly. but if they didn't transfer, how was i allowed to register for courses that i didn't have enough credit for, and how did i place out of classes that i didn't earn credits for? it was almost like my advisor bi-passed the rules a little and allowed me to take the courses. but since the registration process is all done electronically by a computer, the computer should have seen that i didn't have the proper credits, and not allowed me to register. as you can tell im very confused right now. all i can say is that i took the official copy of my ap grades to the office of the registrar in the mitchell building, handed them to the first person i saw, and just like that i was going to have my ap grades transfered in two days or less. now why wasn't i told to do this earlier? i know that technically i was supposed to write on my ap tests the school code of the school i want the grades to transfer to, but when i was taking some of the tests i was a junior in high school and didn't yet know where i was even going to apply to college, and for the ones i took my senior year, i still had some time to decide between three schools. so i finally got the grades transferred, and received the credit that i deserve. now im back on track so that i can register for the courses that i want to register for in the spring semester.

ersin

marathon day

yesterday i was playing basketball at the rec center, which is a rarity for me. since i play club basketball the only thing i ever to in the rec center is practice shooting, lifting weights, and occasionally playing ping pong. i don't really find it necessary to play basketball against inferior opponents when i could just play with better players at club practice. im a pretty good player and the majority of the competition at the rec center is below my skill level. anyway it all started when i saw a couple of my friends playing one on one. we started shooting around with them when they suggested that we challenge the five people on the other end of the court. i thought we would play a game, and then i would go lift with my buddy jamil. however once we defeated that team, more people had arrived, and they were looking to play also. since we were the winners of the last game, we stayed on the court and kept playing. thats the way it works at the rec center. if you win a game you stay on the court (kind of like the king of the court). since jamil is a good basketball player, and my other three friends can hold their own, no one could be us. soon i noticed that we had played 3 games, then it was 4. i looked up at the clock from time to time and realized that it was nearing six o'clock; we had arrived at 4. eventually i started to get really tired and hungry. despite my fatigue my teammates and i pushed ourselves to the limit and continued to beat teams filled with fully rested players. at the end of the day we had won at least 8 games, and it was just past 7pm. words cannot describe how tired my legs felt. i immediately got a smoothy to refresh me. then i went and ate a huge meal at the diner. i was so tire that i didn't even have the energy to raise the fork to my mouth. i managed to eat everything and after my shower i felt much better, but still really tired. we didn't end up lifting at all like we had planned on doing but we sure got a great workout.

push it to the limit

ersin