important lessons...

1. be nice to the registrar's office and the registrar's office will be nice to you. i've got an ugly finals schedule, consisting of a 48 hour take home exam that has to be completed in the first five days of the exam period, and three in-class finals that all occur during the first five days of the exam period (thus, no available 48 hour period in which to do the take-home test). but the registrar's office is my hero and kindly helped me move around some finals.

2. finding jobs truly is all about whom you know, not what you know. or, less euphemistically, career services is a joke.

3. it is a bad bad idea to have a lot of coffee and then go talk to the professor under whose supervision you want to write an independent study paper. just take my word on this one.