But I'm still happy.
I took my Chemistry test at 8:00, after having been unable to fall asleep most of the night because of stress. I think I got two hours of sleep... something near that. The stress managed to keep me up for the test though, and - knock on wood - I think I did quite well. Right now I'm expecting that I got an A- on it, though it's possible I did a bit better or a bit worse.
That means I can reasonably expect to salvage my Chemistry grade for the semester. An A is out of the picture, given how I flubbed the first test, but if I do this well again an A- is still possible, and a B+ is very attainable. B+ is too weak a score for Vanderbilt Medical School, of course, but it's strong enough to keep me in the running for others.
I finished the test very quickly too, which was fun. I used to do that back in college, but haven't been able to do any tests well /and/ quickly since returning to school. It was a really fun feeling to just walk in, crush, and walk out.
The fun faded a bit after that, since I got to sit around for an hour waiting on my Physics class to start. A more cautious person might have double checked their test. Maybe even twice. That's not stylish though.
Physics brought more nice surprises. We got our tests back and, as I thought, I'm not the only person who didn't get around to finishing the last problem. So the last problem was just scrapped and counted as extra credit. Not having (most) of the unfinished material count really helped out my score, and I ended up with an 82%. It's not a great score, sure. But it's actually enough to let me still get an A- in the course if I do about as well on the final. It was also better than the average score again (which was somewhere around 74% this time).
The "word" is that a small curve gets put in place after the course as well, so even an A might be possible, if I do well on the final. That could bring me to a tangent about ridiculous grade inflation and its attendant problems.... I won't get into it now though. I'm just happy to not have an F.
The Korean, by the way, was my Physics lab partner. He got a 108%. (Someone's getting into med school....)
Friday, October 30, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
I Don't Remember The Last Time I Failed A Test This Badly...
Possibly because it's never happened.
Didn't have time to finish ~25% worth of the test, score wise. Of the parts I did finish, I know I didn't get it all right. I expect my final score to be somewhere around a 50%. Possibly worse, with a minuscule chance of being slightly better.
Oddly, I'm not as upset as you might think I'd be. Whether that's because I saw this coming a long way off, because I worked as hard as I reasonably could have, am pretty sure at least half the class failed as well, or am simply in denial, I'm not sure.
What's most upsetting is that I have to somehow find the motivation to convince myself to study for next week's Chemistry test now. If I bomb that test, things are kind of pretty much over. If I do well though, I'm convinced "something" will happen with Physics. I mean... I just can't imagine a class giving over half the students failing grades. It doesn't seem possible. I don't know.
I just have to try and get myself caught up on Chemistry over this week.
Didn't have time to finish ~25% worth of the test, score wise. Of the parts I did finish, I know I didn't get it all right. I expect my final score to be somewhere around a 50%. Possibly worse, with a minuscule chance of being slightly better.
Oddly, I'm not as upset as you might think I'd be. Whether that's because I saw this coming a long way off, because I worked as hard as I reasonably could have, am pretty sure at least half the class failed as well, or am simply in denial, I'm not sure.
What's most upsetting is that I have to somehow find the motivation to convince myself to study for next week's Chemistry test now. If I bomb that test, things are kind of pretty much over. If I do well though, I'm convinced "something" will happen with Physics. I mean... I just can't imagine a class giving over half the students failing grades. It doesn't seem possible. I don't know.
I just have to try and get myself caught up on Chemistry over this week.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
And Here We Are Again
Test-Night's Eve. Almost.
It's been awhile since I last posted, so let me fill you in on what's been going on in my life: studying physics.
I've been going through that book, the problems, and dropping by office hours every day, more or less, since I last posted. I've managed to spend up to six or seven hours in a day working on Physics, which is a level of time I'm not really used to putting into a subject. To be fair, most of my days have been closer to 3 or 4 hours spent studying Physics before I burn out on it, but that's still a lot (I dropped studying Chemistry so... I'll pay for this later. But like I said, there's no use doing well in Chemistry if I can't get a B in Physics.)
So how much has this helped me? That's a good question.
If I had another week or two, I think it would help me a lot. I have a pretty clear idea of what's going on now, although I still fumble around reforming the equations properly and (non)uniform circular motion. And I have problems dealing with harder problems that combine all sorts of kinematics. But still, I've come somewhere. I know what's going on, I can use my trigonometry properly to decompose the right vectors, etc, etc. I've come "somewhere".
Unfortunately, of course, I don't have another week or two. I just have tomorrow.
I'll probably spend the day (the part I'm not in chem lab, at least) going over the in class multiple choice questions we've been given, and the multiple choice questions in our book. I'll also spend some time working on non-uniform circular motion, but it's really late enough now that I can't expect to be able to go from stopped cold on that type of problem to getting it correct overnight. 40% of the quiz will be short answer/multiple choice type questions. If even just one or two come from questions in the notes that I've looked over, that could make an impact.
I'm hoping now that I'll get a 70. That would be a pretty nice number, and would keep me "in the running" if I improve a little bit more by the final exam.
Even though I'm struggling, a 70 seems possible. I felt I would do absolutely horrible last time (and I did....) but I still got a score in the mid-sixties. I'm somewhat more confident this time, and only need my score to go up by 8 or 10%.
Here's hoping.
It's been awhile since I last posted, so let me fill you in on what's been going on in my life: studying physics.
I've been going through that book, the problems, and dropping by office hours every day, more or less, since I last posted. I've managed to spend up to six or seven hours in a day working on Physics, which is a level of time I'm not really used to putting into a subject. To be fair, most of my days have been closer to 3 or 4 hours spent studying Physics before I burn out on it, but that's still a lot (I dropped studying Chemistry so... I'll pay for this later. But like I said, there's no use doing well in Chemistry if I can't get a B in Physics.)
So how much has this helped me? That's a good question.
If I had another week or two, I think it would help me a lot. I have a pretty clear idea of what's going on now, although I still fumble around reforming the equations properly and (non)uniform circular motion. And I have problems dealing with harder problems that combine all sorts of kinematics. But still, I've come somewhere. I know what's going on, I can use my trigonometry properly to decompose the right vectors, etc, etc. I've come "somewhere".
Unfortunately, of course, I don't have another week or two. I just have tomorrow.
I'll probably spend the day (the part I'm not in chem lab, at least) going over the in class multiple choice questions we've been given, and the multiple choice questions in our book. I'll also spend some time working on non-uniform circular motion, but it's really late enough now that I can't expect to be able to go from stopped cold on that type of problem to getting it correct overnight. 40% of the quiz will be short answer/multiple choice type questions. If even just one or two come from questions in the notes that I've looked over, that could make an impact.
I'm hoping now that I'll get a 70. That would be a pretty nice number, and would keep me "in the running" if I improve a little bit more by the final exam.
Even though I'm struggling, a 70 seems possible. I felt I would do absolutely horrible last time (and I did....) but I still got a score in the mid-sixties. I'm somewhat more confident this time, and only need my score to go up by 8 or 10%.
Here's hoping.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Here's What's Going To Happen
So, in case it hasn't become clear to anyone reading yet, I have a tendancy to get too down over setbacks and too excited over success. Apart from being a generally bad trait for a doctor, that's also not a good trait for someone trying to simply get the chance to become a doctor. Also, I think I talked in my first post about how my old undergraduate science grades scared me off science courses more than they probably should have.
So. A 74 is a bad test grade. Sure. Instead of focusing on that, it would make more sense (and be more healthy) to focus on the 2/3s of the test I effectively got an A- on. I made some mistakes, they were repeated because the problems were similar, and that's just how things go. I have two tests left, plus my lab grades. Fixing my Chemistry grade is something I can totally pull off.
Physics is bad still. Sure. But by just thinking about that and repeating it ad nauseum I'm not doing much more than discouraging myself. I just need to focus on one thing in Physics - getting a 70 or better on the next test. If I can do that, things can really start to look up.
All this said....
The Next Tests:
Physics - October 23rd
Chemistry - October 30th
There's a good chunk of time in between each test, to study for the next one. I need to prioritize, and just work. If I crash on these tests too, that will be that. But I'm not going to let that happen without a solid effort on my part. If I do well on them, then everything is back in play.
So. A 74 is a bad test grade. Sure. Instead of focusing on that, it would make more sense (and be more healthy) to focus on the 2/3s of the test I effectively got an A- on. I made some mistakes, they were repeated because the problems were similar, and that's just how things go. I have two tests left, plus my lab grades. Fixing my Chemistry grade is something I can totally pull off.
Physics is bad still. Sure. But by just thinking about that and repeating it ad nauseum I'm not doing much more than discouraging myself. I just need to focus on one thing in Physics - getting a 70 or better on the next test. If I can do that, things can really start to look up.
All this said....
The Next Tests:
Physics - October 23rd
Chemistry - October 30th
There's a good chunk of time in between each test, to study for the next one. I need to prioritize, and just work. If I crash on these tests too, that will be that. But I'm not going to let that happen without a solid effort on my part. If I do well on them, then everything is back in play.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
A Bad Day
I got my Chemistry test back today, and did worse than I thought I would. I ended up with a 74. What makes that really terrible is that I just saw the number on the front at first, and thought I had an A-. So I was happy. It wasn't until ~30 minutes later that I looked inside, and realized the A- was only for the first part, and that I had done some problems in the last half completely incorrectly. So A- and Awful averaged out to a C.
Physics is... as awful as ever.
When I got back home, I found out I'd accidentally thrown away the bagel I had been saving for lunch.
Things look bad. It's still premature to say they certainly won't work out - I could manage a B in Physics, and Chemistry is certainly something I can turn back into a B+ or even an A- if I score on the next two tests like I did on the first half of this one. ... But overall things look pretty bad.
I'm not sure what I'll do when/if this doesn't work out.
I'm not particularly qualified for anything, and I've been away from school/work for so long that my resume is full of gaps and no one would want to hire me anyways.
Not. Looking. Good.
Physics is... as awful as ever.
When I got back home, I found out I'd accidentally thrown away the bagel I had been saving for lunch.
Things look bad. It's still premature to say they certainly won't work out - I could manage a B in Physics, and Chemistry is certainly something I can turn back into a B+ or even an A- if I score on the next two tests like I did on the first half of this one. ... But overall things look pretty bad.
I'm not sure what I'll do when/if this doesn't work out.
I'm not particularly qualified for anything, and I've been away from school/work for so long that my resume is full of gaps and no one would want to hire me anyways.
Not. Looking. Good.
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