Done!

[philena]

But man was it tough getting here! I studied most of last evening for my Russian phonology final, and walked into the exam room at 10:30, fully expecting to be ready to leave on break in two hours. Hah! 12:30 rolled around and I was not done. 1:30 rolled around, and I was not done. By about ten to two I finally decided that I had written all I knew and walked out, but who the hell writes a final exam that takes over three hours!? Oh, right, Bill Darden. He felt slightly bad about it, at least. He kept walking in and mentioning that he hadn't thought it would take us this long, (as we glared at him balefully from under out piles of pencil shavings and eraser fluffies) and finally said he would give us extra grading laxity on one of the questions. I would much prefer 1/3 laxity spread out over the three questions I didn't know.

I completely blanked on having to construct a distinctive feature matrix for stressed vowels (except I knew that [+/- front] was not supposed to be used), and I still have no idea why p'os, psa, and p'os'ik cause problems with the rules for vowel insertion. Or rather, I do (because p'os'ik should actually be ps'ik), but I don't know how to handle it. I still remember my first syntax midterm, when the correct answer to a problem was something along the lines of "yes, this is indeed a problem, and none of the theory we have been taught can explain it.' Those were the days, but they'll never come back again, it seems.