Test

This will be a random entry about a test I had today. It may somehow go into philosophy of life and happiness, so you have been warned. The details of the test are that I did quite horribly, and as you may expect, I am not enthusiastic about my performance. Seeing how I have not finished two of the five problems on the exam, as well as being confident that I have misinterpreted two of the other problems in the exam, I estimate that I may get less than half correct on the exam. Obviously this brings up an onset of emotional despair, but, I decided that today I will analyze my own stress over the test, the actual importance of the test to me, and many other things that if I want to I'll just BS right now.
You know, tests, along with school itself, isn't more important in the overall picture to life than even something like anime. This is true with money, clothes, social status, anything humans ever value or treasure... it's not that damn important. In fact, when looking at it from a logical perspective, there's no real "purpose" to life; that is, not that I'm going on a depression streak, but life merely just spontaneously appeared on a rock in the middle of nowhere (literally), and it will just as likely spontaneously disappear one day. So in reality, even if things aren't important, it's not going to hurt in worrying about these things. Just, in terms of ranking, nothing is TRULY more important than the other. However, for most people, myself included, there are some things that hold value to them more than other thingss. This is perfectly fine; this is how we pretty much find motivation to live.
So some people like money, some people like clothes, some people like power (political, military, whatever), and some people like anime. While I sometimes may criticize some of these people for caring about such "unimportant" things, I myself wonder about my own attentiveness to school and grades. Why is it that I have become like the person I am, someone who feels such despair when doing bad on a test, that it was similar to, say, a couple breaking up? Perhaps? It might not be a bad analogy, but it gets the idea across, especially for people who regard relationships as something important.
Well, I thought about it a little more, and I realize that in actuality, I don't get disappointed about the grade of the test itself. I have had tests that I have bombed, and I felt... well, not satisfied, but more or less "ok, I got that grade" sort of attitude. Maybe apathetic, but that seems misleading. However, this time when I finished the test, that I knew I was going to bomb, I felt horrible. This is because I knew that the grade I will recieve cannot represent what I think I am and what I "deserve" on the test. Deserve is a sketchy word, since it implies that someone did something wrong, and it is not my fault. No, it was still my result, but it is the result of something not from my knowledge of the subject, but my lack of composure and attentiveness. Perhaps this is what truly upsets me: that I get graded not because of what I know on the subject, but because I ran out of time on a problem that I could have definately without a doubt solved, and that I am mislead in a problem because of my poor reading skills.
Grades are not what make me "happy". When people compliment me on my grades, saying "what a good student you are", I shrug, and I don't really care. Why is that? Well, maybe its because grades I feel aren't something that truly can represent me. Too much of a percentage of my grades are not representative of what I know, but rather of what I did because it was assigned, along with some non-knowledge related mistakes I made as I had indicated earlier. What really makes me feel satisfied and "happy", more so than any game that I could play or any anime that I would watch, is when I help other people, or similarly when I am working on a rather difficult problem that I know I can solve. In both of these situations, I feel that it's not the end result that I'm looking for, but rather that I am using my intelligence, should that be the word. In the first case, I feel immensely satisfied when someone looks at me as smart not because of my grades, but because they watch the process I explain to them in which to solve a particular problem; I am not perfect, and I had many occasions where people correct me in minor details or even give me a different way to think, but the impact that I had on them, that I showed them I could solve a problem or explain this situation to them, gives me a feeling of happiness that matches almost no other. In the other case, the basic thrill of solving a problem is something like exercising the brain; now, before I do the problem, I may groan why I have to solve the problem because of homework, and after the problem, I may forget about it completely and just move on to the next one or whatever I do next. But while doing a problem, and knowing what to do, it's exciting. Only in one case is it not exciting but immensely stressful is if there is a time limit, as there is on a test, and this time limit is almost approaching its end. At this point, its no longer knowledge but more stress, and because of this many times a problem that would not have been difficult to solve (and even enjoyable) would give me a hard time because of the time limit. This is why sometimes I will become frustrated over one test that I bomb, then say "Meh, you idiot, try harder next time" on another.
Well I guess if I'm living in this world I do have to look to the menial work and be more attentive to the time and mistakes that I make; in chemistry, for example, I have significantly reduced the amount of error that I make in my tests and have scored, in the last semester, many grades in the 90s. I don't know, but I guess since this test is done and over with, it doesn't help to mourn over my nervous breakdown during the past problem of this test, along with all the other mistakes I thought up AFTER I turned in the test, but to go on, start on thermodynamics, and when the final comes next week, work quicker, double check the work, and whatever grade I get, will be the one I felt I deserve, whether it be good or bad.