I am very happy to report that I've completed the first of two final exams for this semester at St. Petersburg College. My Studies in Applied Ethics final has been wrapped up and submitted to my instructor. This particular final exam was a writing assignment, and was based on watching a video of Bono's 2001 commencement address at Harvard University. In case you didn't know, Bono is the lead member of the rock band "U2". He has some very interesting views on activism and global responsibility, and the speech was very well-presented. Additionally, I was required to visit a Web site that provides some very interesting statistics about the world population and the global distribution of wealth. Students were required to review the material, provide our own response, and relate the information to someone else, then record their response as well.
I put a lot of time and thought into the assignment, and while the instructor said that a minimum of 500 words were required, I managed to double that and do a report that clocked in a just under 1,000 words.
I must say that I really enjoyed the class. Going into this semester, Studies in Applied Ethics was simply another course that I had to take in order to meet my degree requirements. I really didn't have an interest in the subject of ethics (in fact, if you had asked me I probably would have told you that I almost always acted in a way that I would describe as "ethical"). Well, as it turned out, the class was very interesting and filled with some very useful practical information and useful concepts. In fact, I found out that I actually had some room to improve on my own ethics.
Because this was a writing assignment, I didn't receive a grade upon submission, so I'll have to wait to see how I scored.
Next I need to complete my Earth Sciences final. That's going to be the tougher of the two. As I told you last time, that test is a 100 question timed test, and students are provided just one minute per question to provide an answer. I'm not fond of these sorts of tests, and in fact I didn't do so hot on my mid-term in the same class, using the same format. So I think I'm going to take that one on tomorrow evening.