Guys, I’m a terrible blogger. HAHA but seriously, my blatant lack of posting is kind of getting out of hand. But have no fear, since my midterms don’t start again for a few weeks (whew!) I’ve dedicated myself to posting every week. We’ll see how well that goes…
So my first round of midterms ended a few days ago, which means that I no longer have to hole myself up in my room, and surround myself with a never-ending pile of textbooks and papers, a 16 oz jar of Nutella, and as many cookies as it took to quell my midterm misery. In a nutshell, this was me the past three weeks:
So here’s how my midterms fared:
ECON 101 (Gateman)
I mean, when you really think about it, Gateman’s midterm is probably the worst way to start off your batch of midterms. Professor Gateman is the infamous microeconomics professor who’s tests are notorious for being, well, a crapshoot. The midterm was 20 pages long, and consisted of vague, broad conceptual questions that really force you to think out of the box to apply the questions to microconomic principles. Since there was so much negative hype surrounding this midterm, I studyed hours and hours for it. And I ended up doing really, really well! Honestly, I hated how there was so much anxiety and tension created by the hype and rumors; as long as you studied the concepts, the test was fair and passable (and most people did pass!).
PHYS 107 (Affleck)
Oh man, I REALLLLY screwed myself over taking Honours-level physics instead of the regular class that 95% of first-years physics students take. I spent the 48 hours leading to this exam studing only physics and nothing but physics and I still made tons of mistakes (not to mention screwing up the last GIANT question entirely). The format of the test was 1 hour individual (80% of the grade) and 30 minutes in a group of 3 taking the exact same test over again (20% of the grade). PHYS 107 is a great class; Ian (the proffessor) is brilliant, all the students are all so inspiringly intelligent, and the material is fairly interesting. I just don’t think this class is right for me. I haven’t gotten my grade back yet, which is fine because I really don’t want to know, haha.
CPSC 110 (Kiczales)
The Computer Science test was a good mix of easy and challenging problems. I studied extensively for it, doing all the online practice problems. They also had a few old midterms posted online as well, so those were really helpful in studying. 70% of the test was pretty managable, as they followed the same format as the previous midterms. However, one of the programs that we had to design was unlike anything we had covered before, and really required you to think hard. So that was probably the most difficult part of the test. Overall the average was a 70% and I ended up getting a really good mark.
MATH 223 (Karu)
You would think that MATH 223 (second year Honours Linear Algebra) would be my most difficult class, but, sigh, this midterm was really easy. I literally studied maybe 1-2 hours for it. There were two practice midterms posted, which I did to study, and the actual midterm was pretty similar to the practice ones. I pretty much breezed through the test, and I haven’t gotten my exam back yet, but I’m fairly certain I did well (but it’s still totally possible I screwed up some problems unknowingly). We shall see lol. In general, MATH 223 is going really well for me, and hopefully it will continue this way.
Ok, my obnoxiously long blog post midterm rant is over now, haha. Overall, I’d say that midterms were fine, but that’s only because I actually studied copiously for them. So STUDY HARD, kids, and YOU WILL SUCCEED <3.