Students' Archthesis on Uni-Verse

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Which one do you worship?

Tyrant Lord of Exams
aka: The Dread Lord, The Black Lord, The Watchful Death, The Patient One, Dread Judge, etc
Alignment: LE
Spheres of Influence: Stress (only exam-related), exams, examinors, examinees, tests, scores, tricky questions, the bastard that gave you a A- even though you should've gotten A+, time, studying two hours before the exam starts.
Likes: Extra paper.
Dislikes: Calculators, cellphones.
Dogma: Study. Study and learn. Learn, and thereby pass. Patience is the key to examinations. Learn the quotations well; learn the commands; practice writing thousands of essays before hand. Two thousand words is a minimum. You may not use calculators. You may not leave in the first fourty-five minutes, or the last fifteen minutes. If you want to go to the toilet, put up your hand and an examinor will attend to you. Put your cellphones in your bag. Turn it off. It is impossible to get a good grade; but if one works hard enough you may get a not-bad grade.
History: The Tyrant Lord has existed with his companion and arch-nemsis, The Benevolent Lady, for as long as exams have been in existence. He is the epitome of disaster, the advocate of endless studying. In recent history, he has slain and absorbed the spheres of the Benevolent Lady, and is in the process of destroying the remainder of her followers. Despite his lawful behaviour; he is indeed an evil God, for he delights in the expression of students who notice that OMGWTF, WE DIDN'T STUDY THIS. He also accepts blood sacrifices.
Evil-aligned teachers and lecturers who worship him are said to gain great power in return for throwing tricky questions at students. The secret is that he feeds off frustration and stress, and thus rewards his followers accordingly.
Followers of The Tyrant Lord prick their bloods and write essays with them on skins of the unworthy, and it is said that this increases their essay prowress by a whole grade (B -> A, etc).

The Benevolent Lady
aka: The Helpful Fairy of Exams, Exam Godmother, Goddess of the Silver Heart, etc
Alignment: NG
Spheres of Influence: Exams, optimism, hope, happiness, bunny rabbits, knowledge, essays.
Likes: Easy questions, study groups.
Dislikes: Microsoft Office line of software (because they tend to crash at vital moments)
Dogma: Study, but relax. School is education; exams are merely a test. Do not be afraid, and let the Benevolent One guide you. Help others if you can, and let everyone pass - even if not perfectly. Passing is the most important thing.
History: Co-existing alongside the Tyrant Lord, The Lady has long been a counterbalancing force in the cosmos, aiding stressed examiness whenever possible. While she still advocates studying, she aims to help people pass as easily as possible, and demand the same from her (lecturer) followers. Recently, her arch-nemesis broke down the defences of her fortresses and slew her, absorbing her powers for himself. Theologians have noticed, however, that the Tyrant Lord is changing more and more towards LN, and they theorize the two was in fact one being, long separated, now rejoined.
Although the Lady does not condone cheating; many evil followers of her take her to be a goddess of chances and do so anyway. Those that do are struck by lightning, and are forever condoned by BOTH deities of exams, leaving them to wither and die in the Cheater Underworld. Followers of the Lady like to help people whenever possible by discussing exam-related stuff and distributing encouraging hugs. The Lady feeds off positive emotions like unrequited goodwill and hope.

 

Nice one, DM.

 

The Sloth
aka: The Procrastination Bug, The Sludge Monster, The Dreaded One, The Terror of the Ages, Slowmoving Death
Alignment: CE (what else?)
Spheres of Influence: Addictive but useless games, stress, procrastination, not doing work, fun stuff, distractions, annoying people who come to talk to you while you're studying, printer malfunctions, interesting websites, Youtube videos, trickery, etc
Likes: People writing stuff about him when they should be working
Dislikes: Studying
Dogma: There's no use. You're going to fail. Even if you don't, studying can be done tomorrow. There's always a tomorrow. You have lots of time. Relax, enjoy life...and study one day before the exam. You'll be FINE. I PROMISE.
History: The God of Sloth is an ancient being, and looks like a massive pile of sludgey slothy mushy muddy stuff...with evil, glowing eyes. It is the hated nemesis of both Gods of the Exams, and delights in procrastination. He is much more powerful than any of the other Gods, due to the sheer amount of people that (unwilling or not) pay tribute to him by procrastination. However, he can't be bothered devouring all the other Gods; maybe he'll do it tomorrow. Although everyone at some points at their life pay tribute to him, he has no real followers, because people put off worshipping him for as long as they can. Those few of his favoured ones are said to hold insane amounts of power, and they devote their time to making more addictive yet pointless games and devising new ways to distract people.
The Sloth can often be found manifest in different forms to tailor to the individual, appearing in such forms as That Damn Plane Game, Planescape splatbooks, or BG1 Mod projects. It is said that he has infinite forms, which all draw from his awesome power.

 

The Procrastination Bug is the true ruler of the universe! All things shall bow to him eventually! And I say The Sloth is CN, not CE. The Terror does not care for good or evil. The Dreaded One is totally amoral, beyond good and evil.

 

Heh, what's the god for passing exams without bothering with the irritating studying in the middle?

Just checked my exam results- Philosophy and Latin were both B2's. The Latin was fairly predictable due to lack of studying. Slightly disappointed with Philosophy- I thought I'd have done better than that. Still, it was hard to tell with the exam being rushed. Maths, on the other hand, was an A2- a pretty decent mark. Unfortunately, I don't think I did as well on the mini-tests throughout the term as I could have- with better results there, I may have got an A1. Ah well, all I needed was a pass anyway!

 

Hail the Benevolent Lady, but next semester I'm placating The Dread Lord - because really, **** this. Watching my GPA nosedive directly into the ground with the pilot in it frantically screaming 'PULL UP! PULL UP!' but the engine-demons are too ****ing lazy to do anything about it and may, indeed, have disconnected the steering mechanism from whatever actually makes planes go up because it sure beats actually doing anything ever is *not* especially enjoyable.

Also thinking about changing majors, because software engineering turns out to be the dullest discipline of any sort. Only the benevolence of the Lady will save me for the subject this semester - and there's another course just like it next semester.

 

What an interesting metaphor...is it linked to the plane game?

 

Hail the benevolent Lady.
Sloth has enough power already.

 

No its not! It depends on your choice of language

 

Computer Games Development is where it's at

 

In a glorious, yet futile attempt to avoid the Sloth, pre-exam quarantine might hit me soon . If I do not wish to do battle, have I already lost, or am I the wiser party involved?

 

Oh, programming is fantastic - but software engineering doesn't actually involve any. Software engineering is planning out how to program it, designing it so that there's no defects when it's implemented, etc. etc. Things like integrated behaviour trees, code inspections (which are like some weird arcane ritual to magic away the errors), UMLy type stuff, and other painful, boring nonsense.

 

Exams are over. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

 

If exams are over, everyone everywhere rejoice, random monsters included.

EDIT: Exams ARE over, rejoice, rejoice!

 

Congratulations to everyone who's done with exams!
I wish I could say the same about my thesis
Oh well, I should be done by December!

 

Congrats everyone- the end of exams is brilliant.

 

/me transfers any remaining get-the-work-done points to Ziad
Good luck Z.!
What's the thesis about?

 

I've not yet picked a title for it. At the moment it's about everything I've done in the past 3 years, which includes far too many unconnected bits and pieces that I need to fit together somehow. The general idea seems to be shifting towards something like "Initiation of DNA replication in a deep-sea bacterium" but this is both too narrow and too general, depending on which project (or sub-project) I try to fit it to.

 

Good luck with it, Z. If it has three years of your research in it, I'm sure it will be great, regardless of what name you pick.

 

Whoop, looks like I'm finally getting somewhere with accomidation. Spoke to a woman called Emily and the disability coordinator who are going to ask the accomidation office what they're playing at should hear from them next week.