Ok. So I don't know exactly how well or poorly I did, but I have pretty fair sense. I'm almost sure I got a 75% at least. If I messed up and got something wrong that I'm fairly certain I got right, I'll still be above the magic 67% mark for an A- GPA. There were four or so problems I was able to get answers for, without having any serious confidence in the answer I came up with. It's unlikely, but still possible that the grade could shoot from a 75% to a high 80%, or even a low 90%, and I'd get a 4.0 in the course.
I finished the problems I was able to do easily, and was right under the 67% mark. I freaked out a bit, but pulled myself together. I've never had as much satisfaction from solving a problem as I did when I got one I'd been staring at for 10 minutes, and thought I was completely stuck on. That's the problem that (probably) shot my final grade up to an A-. After that I got a few others when I remembered that you can't differentiate the absolute value function at 0, etc, but nothing compared.
I also relearned two things I really knew all along:
- Don't let yourself take a week off mentally because things seem like a sealed deal- it can easily catch up with you.
- Don't go out and celebrate success up to a point in a course when you should be using that time to study for success at the course's completion.
I'm lucky things ended well, and that I'd been able to do so well up to the final to give myself the buffer I had. Things could easily have ended up differently. I'll make sure to never loose sight of these points again; I might even make a wallpaper for my pc with a list of "things to remember" artfully included.
What now? Some well-earned vacation.
Courses will start again in roughly three weeks. I get to spend one of those weeks at the beach looking at ponies and other assorted wildlife. The other two I'll spend coming up with a new plan of action.
Edit: I've changed the layout to something darker. I don't know if it's better or not, but it's different, and I like the change for now. I'll work on making this a real site in the future, I think, but that's a distant and unimportant priority.
