Coffee and candy have become my best friends, pulled me through an abnormally long nightmare that lasted 2 weeks! Midterm season! Ha midterms were unbelievably brutal for me. In high school I aim for 95+, here I’m just trying to get a decent average(70+) and thats even hard. My midterm schedule was not the best. First time doing midterms at UBC, and I have 4 in a span of 4 days. Physics and English were on the same day, and let’s just say I think I hit insanity the night before! But good news is I’m done! I finished all 5, and though I felt like I could have done tremendously better, I now know what to do differently. I’ve dipped my feet in the pond a little, and I now know how to better prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. In terms of midterms, that is. Though I finished midterms, I start this process all over again in about 2 weeks.
Side note: Most UBC students use Vista for there courses, and some have discussions. Some people actually put on the discussions, “study group needed for TOP students, i will need a scan of your midterm grade…” All I can say is WOW. Ha!
Anyways here’s a review of a couple midterms I’ve gotten back:
Math 180 – why oh why did I switch out of Math 104. This class moves FAST. For a course meant for students with vague calculus knowledge, i’ve never felt so rushed. Anyways I thought the midterm was fair, I found myself rushing in the end though, so had it been shorter, it would have been perfect. We got our midterms back, and I was shocked at my grade. Significantly lower than expected. My grade was about 16% above the class average, but it wasn’t good. And I talked to the professor…he said he’s not scaling it. I didn’t understand how I could do so badly, and it was the grading scheme, apparently if you do all the work, every step, but miss a negative sign, your highest mark for that problem would be 1/6. I’d figure if you did everything, and messed up a calculation itd be like -2 or -1. Had I known this before the test I would have tried to pay special attention to each question rather than try and complete the test because it would have made a huge difference. SO HEADS UP to future math 180 kids, there grading system is bad, so instead of attempting each problem, make sure each is right, you could make the tiniest mistake on a couple problems, do all the work, and fail. And HEADS UP to math 180 professors, tell us this information or put it somewhere before the midterm… -__-
In terms of scaling for math 180, my professor said that at the end of the course when we take the final that all the math 180 courses take, if our class has a higher average than the other classes, then all our grades are scaled up. Problem with that is that now I find myself relying on the class rather than myself. Because if I do ok, but the class average for the final is bad, then none of us gets scaled up. Its going to take time getting use to this grading, cause it makes NO sense to me.
Chem 121 – no comment.
Phys 101 – My grade could have been better, I was below the average:( Physics is by far my worst course. WHY did I leave my Physics for Dummies at home?! I think I relied on the solutions manual when doing problems that I didn’t realize that I wasn’t really absorbing that much material. Well now I know, and I plan to go into the next midterm and murder it, dig it’s grave, and throw the corpse of my great grade in there. Ha, its suppose to get harder for the second midterm, but I find myself more involved and active in the course now than before, so I’m hoping for the best.
Bio 121 – same, I could have done better. It’s my favorite course so I’m sad I didn’t do as great as I wanted to. Who here HATES when they make dumb mistakes? Like you look at your answers and think..why did I put that down? *sighhhhh*
Thats it for midterms as of now. I haven’t gotten chem yet..but lets just say it wasn’t fun. Practice midterm was midterm for last years kids, I got a 85 on it. The midterm we had on the other hand..could end up with those digits flipped. I’ll find out Wednesday, and likely find out my english grade on thursday! Can’t wait…but at the same time I can!