M257 officially comes to an end on Wednesday, with its 3-hour exam on Wednesday morning. Normally I’d be looking forward a distinction – I love programming units, they’re right up my mental alley – but this time around it ain’t going to happen. Not because of lack of understanding – I’ve got an OCAS of 97.35% going into the exam, and it should’ve been higher bar a very inflexible marking scheme on some of the assignments – but I haven’t been able to give the course the attention it deserves. A combination of the dread M359 and the arrival of a new baby in the house a week ago have kept me from even looking at an M257 textbook since January. I’m planning to give the specimen paper a thorough going-over tomorrow, but that’s it as far as my revision for the exam goes – meaning that realistically, I’m looking at probably a Pass 3 at best. The perfectionist in me is screaming that this just won’t do, but unfortunately for him reality has other ideas.

On the bright side, the course doesn’t count in the Honours classification for BSc Computing and Systems Practice, which is the degree I’m working towards. The only slightly-related downside is that M359 does, and that could well be a trainwreck of note…