A Short Break

After a rough Mother’s Day last week, I took a short break from most activities to focus on getting ready for the two exams I deferred for the same reason Mother’s Day was rough.

If you’re new to my site, or don’t already have me on some social media somewhere, here’s two paragraphs of background info as to why I’m even writing exams at my age. Feel free to skip ahead.

In 2020, COVID closures shut down the industry I was working in (Gaming). Weeks became months and the company started to find extra ways to save money in the future when things could open properly again to make up for some of the money it wasn’t making at the moment. One of those ways was to eliminate a lot of salary jobs and reduce the amount of management and oversight they would use when things opened again. Thanks for fifteen years of service, here’s your payout, have a nice life. (In fairness, it was a good company to work for as a manager, and I do understand the basic nature of capitalism.)

But now what do I do? Well, my wife pointed out to me that there were certain dreams I’d been talking about for a long time and maybe it was an opportunity to pursue some of them. After a little consideration of how those might go, I sent some emails, made some phone calls, and talked myself back into post-secondary education. After proving I could handle the workload and produce decent grades as a full-time student, I was able to make the move from a General Science Degree to an Honours Physics Major and have been working hard at things since. Those two deferred exams were the final pieces of Third Year.

For reference, the two exams I just wrote were for Quantum Mechanics II and Laser Optics. Neither went as well as they might have in the ordinary course of events, and exams and I aren’t usually on great terms to begin with, but due to the nature of the past month or so, I’m just happy that they’re in the past now.

And I didn’t actually stop writing for the week, but all of it was long hand and written after all the screens were turned off for the day. My computer time this week was dedicated to either work or academics. (My job this summer is also academic, but more on that another day.)

Right now, though, I have a few pages of chicken scratch to transfer into a computer file or two.

Be well, everyone.