Good times in Hill

Only a few days until Thanksgiving break and and it couldn't come fast enough. The last three weeks have been filled with midterms, problem sets, and late nights studying and doing work. It will be a nice change of pace to have a few days off to enjoy being home and spending time with family. I'm also very excited for Thanksgiving itself. I love watching football and the Macy's Day Parade as well as enjoying the great food. My friend from Trinidad will also be coming home with me and celebrating his first American Thanksgiving.

On another note, today in the dining hall I saw who other than Dr. Bogen. There was a bit of a situation at my table, and I am a bit embarrassed that Dr. Bogen (sorry about this, by the way) witnessed the event. We were all ragging on my friend for turning in his bioengineering paper over 12 hours late and still receiving a higher grade than all of us on it. I was under the impression that in college, late work was not accepted and instead given a zero. I was very surprised to learn that I was wrong and in fact, only 5 percent was deducted from my classmate's paper despite the fact that he was took 12 additional hours to complete the same task. This came as a huge shock and frankly I was pissed. In high school, we lost at least a letter grade for each day the paper was late, and in college, none of my professors accept late work. However, in this particular situation, my classmate only received five percent off of his total grade. This also shocked me because he did not even start his project, neither the paper nor the machine diagram, until just that morning. So I ask myself, how is it that someone who chose to not follow the grading deadlineS (yes, I purposely capitalized the s, given that there was a deadline for citations, a machine diagram, and a paper) received a higher grade starting the morning it was due AND turning it in 12 hours late? But, going back to the original story, we were all a little angry at this particular individual who, as he put it, was able to "manipulate the system" to his advantage to get a good grade. In any event, we pulled a little prank on him, which may or may not have involved projectile pepperoni pizza in his vicinity. When he discovered we had taken a video of it with my friend's camera, he pinned me against the wall, yelled at me, and slapped me two times across the face. I was extremely surprised, so surprised in fact that I had no response. Needless to say, there was a bit of a scene in the dinning hall, and I apologize, Dr. Bogen, that you had to be of witness to that.