midterms

what a bitch! i've survived two, now one class left.

the first midterm was for my favorite teacher, and probably my favorite class this semester. the teacher's tests are difficult but not impossible; his midterm is always harder than his final; he gives more than 100 points, while keeping the grade out of 100; and he's the easiest grader and gives points for everything. so this test was probably the worst out of the bunch. i can't say that the material covered was hard, though he did throw us for a loop with the first problem. he did tell us to skip it and go back, so that's in his favor. i was extremely anxious going into the test and was on the verge of hyperventilating the entire time, which did not improve my test-taking skills. i was shaking horribly and had difficulty handing it in. i finished early though; first one done like always. looking back on it, it wasn't a difficult test. there were only four questions, and the last three were not horribly difficult. we were allowed our notes, so i had made a three-page abbreviated version to quickly look at. i feel bad for people who had to flip through the entirety of their class notes to find assistance. the first problem was crazy. lots of variables, all over the place. i finished it, but many others didn't. i feel okay about it. i'll find out tomorrow.

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last night's midterm was a whole other beast. for this one i was allowed a one-piece of paper cheat sheet, so 8.5x11 front and back. i didn't start studying or even working on the cheat sheet until yesterday afternoon. this teacher is a horrible test writer. she puts in problems that have no relation to the homework, and she includes definitions of certain terms, although there are a million terms to choose from. also she writes the problems so that you know exactly what she is looking for although the question doesn't actually ask for it. and she is the toughest grader; she nitpicks everything that is at all wrong. some parts of the problems threw me for a loop, but overall i did well. i'm just scared of the nitpicky grading. she'll mark an entire problem wrong because i messed up one part out of five. if i did poorly, i can really only blame myself, because i really didn't prep for the test. we'll see...

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my final midterm is next tuesday and thursday. yes, it's over two days. the class meets twice a week for an hour and ten minutes at a time, with the weekly class time adding up to the normal 2.5 hours. so for the midterm to be the 2.5 hours, we have to take it over two classes. tuesday is open note-open book, which is fabulous for me. and thursday is closed, but i intend to fill up my calculator with the important equations. still i will have to learn what those equations mean in order to use them. this test will definitely be interesting. he's sort of a stickler in the grading department, but the benefit of having half of the test as open book will be extremely helpful. the weirdest part is that since i'm an online student i will have to, essentially, attend that class for the week. i don't know how the entire class is going to fit into that room to take the test. there will be a lot of cheating off of each other. for the tuesday part of the test i will create another cheat sheet for myself, so that i don't have to flip through the book or my notes to find helpful information. i will just have to sort through a couple of pages.