Sigh…  Well, I was hoping to end the semester with a triumphant performance on my last final exam, but after Saturday evening’s Intermediate Accounting nightmare, I’m going to have to settle for the mild satisfaction of making it through the semester (half of the program) in once piece.

Exam week has been a real trial. For ten straight days, I and a crack team of five other MPA students put ourselves through daily 14-hour study marathons, lasting from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.  The days began blurry-eyed at sunrise, the six of us stumbling half-awake into the Reliant Productivity Center to take over one of the five large group study rooms.  During final week, you have to grab these rooms early.   There are so few of them, and demand is high.  It was common for us to find students asleep on the ground underneath the tables when we arrived.

Once you take over a study room in Reliant, you really cannot leave. Other students sit and watch these rooms all day, and if you leave one empty for a second, another study group will pounce and take your room over. Therefore, we didn’t leave. We ate meals, took bathroom breaks and ran errands on shifts so that we could hold onto our room.

Why was it important for us to get a study room?  They are the best places to carry out group study. My team of friends decided early on that the best way to prepare for finals was to study together.  We worked problems for different classes together and tested each other on our understanding of the material. We did this by explaining to each other the key accounting concepts and problems we encountered during the semester.  Integrated-MPA superstar, Amanda, introduced the concept of “racing” to our study sessions, and accounting races became a key component of Cost Accounting and Intermediate Accounting exam preparation.  What we would do is select out the hardest homework problems of the semester and race each other to see who could finish the problems correctly the fastest.  The races came pretty close to simulating exam-style intensity and time pressure, and also helped us stay interested and focused in when our daily study hours passed into the double digits.

While the study rooms were key to allowing us to work effectively in a group, they weren’t exactly nice places to be.  The Reliant  rooms  are cramped little hermetically sealed boxes with no windows and oppressive florescent lights.  It was easy to feel on edge with so many people crammed into one room for an extended period of time, but the privacy and sound insulation made the rooms worth using.

Now, exams are over and I will not have to worry about the classes, the Reliant Center, or study rooms for five whole weeks.

What have I been doing with my new-found free time?  Why, tonight I was able to catch up with some new friends and benefit from the diversity of  the traditional MPA student body when my classmate Daniel, a professional chef,  stopped by my apartment and treated me and some fellow students to a beautiful homemade ganache. Yum!  Over the next few days, I have a lot of catching up to do.  Though I have been at UT for almost seven months, I feel like I have yet to really explore Austin.  Over the next few days, I hope to step out and take a look at Lake Travis and Barton Springs.  I have been dying to try out the food trucks downtown, and I finally have a chance do so.

Next Thursday, I’m going to travel north to frozen Pittsburgh to meet my wife, who is finishing up her own academic program, and help her pack up and move on down with me to Texas.  The holidays will be in full swing by then.  The spring semester creeps in a little after mid-January.  You’ll be hearing more from me then.

Happy Holidays!