The Final Grade

Tonight was my math final. I've so enjoyed math and I've done so well on my past assignments and tests that it was hard to be nervous about the final. Math just seems to come naturally to me. Unfortunately, procrastination also comes naturally, so at 5:00 this evening, I sat down with my books and realized that I was an hour away from a comprehensive final and I hadn't looked at anything for at least a week. Oops.

So, I pulled out my trusty note cards, my extensive notes, my heavy textbook, and a hot cup of Chai tea (with a side of Snickers, of course) and pulled an "all nighter" in 50 minutes. Probably not my best idea ever. . .

But with only seconds to spare, I raced into the classroom in a whirlwind of notebook papers and dropped into my seat, just in time for her to hand me my test.

The test itself wasn't too bad. The multiplication couldn't be too big because she doesn't allow us to use calculators on the test. I only looked at my note cards twice and both times were simply to verify that I had all the signs right in my formulas.

I moved through the test pretty quickly, like usual. 5 pages isn't that bad when you consider that there are only a few problems on each page with lots of room for showing your work. In the middle of the test I came across the the first bonus question: What is the quadratic formula? Without looking at my notes I quickly wrote it out in math form (-b + or - the square root of "b squared minus 4ac" all over 2a) (it looks much prettier when written out correctly) and hoped she wasn't asking for a definition of how we get to or why we use the formula itself.

At the end of the test was our final bonus question. After breezing through the rest of the test, this brought me to such a sudden halt that I almost felt whiplashed. For the life of me I couldn't remember how to condense several logarithmic equations into one complex equation. I remembered working on it last week. I remembered thinking that it was rather simple. I remembered that it made perfect sense. But how to do it was completely gone. I sat there for a good 15 or 20 minutes writing out what I could think of about logs, hoping I'd stumble onto something that turned the light on in my head, but to no avail. Finally I gave up. I would have to be satisfied with my confidence in the rest of the test and accept whatever grade I got, even if it was less than perfect.

As soon as I handed in the test and left the room, I sat down and opened my notes to the section we covered last week and looked at how to do it. I was so close! If I had just trusted myself a little bit more, and given myself a few more minutes, I would have got it. Dang!

And that's when I realized that for all the teasing Terry has been giving me the last few quarters, there was no denying my newly developed Hermione-like habits. I really am one of those students. You know, the overachieving ones we all hate to be in class with. Yep, that's now me. Oh well.

Oh and in case you're wondering, I got online later this evening to check out my grade (she said she'd have the tests graded and posted tonight) and I scored 119 out of 118. Guess I didn't need that last bonus question after all.

Final grade for the class: 101.48%