Midterm Season

Just one left.

So far, I've gone through two midterm exams and turned in one paper (that counts for 1/3 of my final grade in that class). Results have not exactly been as I would have hoped.

Let's reassess.

So I come into Harvard, knowing that these are the top students of their respective high schools, knowing that it means lots of competition, lots of hard work, lots of new challenges. Despite that, I still came here expecting to be the exact same student I was--straight As, putting work over play, and doing as much studying as I felt was necessary but no more than that. In fact, even though I knew that it was a new environment with higher standards, I felt up to them. Everyone talks about how classes are easy, how there are curves and tons of grade inflation, so I felt like I didn't need to stress out or worry exceedingly.

How that has come to bite me in the ass.

My first midterm was Econ. It's an intro class, probably taken by roughly half the Freshman body. The class has been easy, with sections just repeating and rarely supplementing material from the readings. It doesn't seem like we're covering that much material in the midterm either; just really basic supply and demand analysis, with some taxes and subsidies involved, plus a bit of international trade. No biggie. I do some review, and score about 80% on the practice. Seeing that most of my mistakes are just small, stupid errors, I'm just like "Oh well, I'll just be a little more careful on the actual test since I'll have more time." So I leave it at that.
Result: I get 94 points out of 120. 4 points above a 75%. 2 points above an "A/A-", with the curve in place.
So much for "this will be a piece of cake."
The test wasn't even difficult; I missed 4 MC questions, which put my MC right on the 75% mark, but I felt my success on the long responses would have made up for it. I even caught a few errors that would have lost me quite a few points in the last few minutes of the test. But rather than passing with flying colors as I'd expected, I'd just scraped by. As of now, I have yet to actually look over the exam to see what exactly it is that I missed. Planning on doing that soon.
Impact: I'm going to study so much harder next time. Darn you midterm.

Midterm number two is linguistics. At this point, I hadn't gotten my results from my Econ test yet, so I'm still pretty confident about my abilities. My study group has a little pre-midterm review session that lasts for 2 hours, and by the end of it we're all feeling exceptionally prepared and really confident. I set my alarm that night for 9:00 so that I can wake up, shower, and eat breakfast before class.
Doesn't work that way; I woke up at 9:30, and had about just enough time to shower before I had to walk over to the classroom. Only had a few minutes to do some last minute studying, and I spend most of that time reviewing phonetics. Then I hastily flip through everything else, catching a few key terms here and there. Test arrives, notes go into the bag. Test begins.
It was much more painful than expected, and a little harder than previous reviews of the class had suggested. 1st section was strange and difficult to maneuver, but then the next few sections went by pretty smoothly. I committed a small, stupid mistake in the middle because I overthought the question. And then there's this wall that everyone hits: What the hell is "scope ambiguity?" I struggle over it for a few minutes, then skip it to finish everything else. Nothing bad for the last two problems (although I get marked off 2 points for the last one--this I need to ask about) and then go back to the crazy semantics problem. Think about it some more, and then there's only 5 minutes left so I put down something that's semi-plausible but doesn't seem to have anything to do with the "scope" part of "scope ambiguity." I don't have time to put anything for part (b) of that question.
Result: 89. 89 on a test with a high score of 98. How ironic. Each of my 3 small errors were marked off 2 points, and part (b) of that semantics question was a -5,. They decided to give the points for part (a) if an attempt was made, and so I got that, luckily. I'm hoping that with the curve, this turns out to be an A-.
It's not. B+.
Not to be a grades-bitch, but I'm going to ask about the last 2 points taken off. It's the difference between a B+ and an A-. In my book, anything under than an A- is an F. In some peoples' books, anything under an A is an F, so my standards are already quite low. Harvard or not, I am not getting a Ken-F.

Essay 1: In my Contemporary Immigrant Fiction class, we had to analyze one of two short stories and write an essay about them. My essay wasn't exceptionally good, but it at least got me an A. A nice pick-me-up after finding about about my F. Gotta keep up the hard work.

Midterm 3: I just have Chinese left, and that's tomorrow in class. It's only an hour long, so it shouldn't be too bad. Just in case, though, I'm reviewing all the vocab and phrase-constructions that we've learned so far. Sometimes it's a little disheartening when I just completely blank out, other times it's really rewarding. Gotta get a move on it, though. Otherwise I'll be up all night--as always.


Overall, I'll just have to work harder. Doesn't mean I have to freak out every time I have an exam or an essay, but I definitely need a bit of an attitude change. Can't be so happy-go-lucky, let-it-be, things-will-be-fine anymore. Gotta get down and do work.
My friend, the one who's always telling me how scared he is about the tests and how much smarter I am than he, got higher scores on both midterms, and he's consistently getting better scores on his linguistics homework than I am. Sure, his Econ homework grades are slightly lower than mine, but he works really hard (and parties a lot harder), so I have to take a page from his book. Hopefully by the time finals roll around, I'll be more prepared.