Man, I feel so beat down after midterm season 1 of USC... very disappointed in my own performance. Some of it is "ok, I realize it was my fault and now I'll act a little more responsible", others it seems like "Damn, maybe I just suck".
In terms of the "it's my fault", this would attribute to my rather low grade on the test in Calculus and my presumed failure in the computer science midterm. By saying low grade on the calculus I mean that I recieved a B; before anyone damn tells me "it's good, that's fine" I have to say that no, it's not good because I'm trying to stay on a program that will allow me to graduate in Biology with honors. In actuality, I could probably care less about the honors part; it's the opportunity to work in a lab that I'm after. But that's something else. Regardless, it's true that recieving a B isn't bad at all, but recieving an A is always much better, especially when your school expects you to keep a freakin 3.5 GPA in math and sciences just so I can stay in research labs.
In any case, calc and csci was my fault. I thought arrogantly that I didn't need to study for the tests since everything we covered so far seemed simple, but obviously there had to be some things on the test which I was slightly unclear with. And calculus has steep point drops. Miss one constant and everything else is right? 7 points off. Well, obviously that constant must then be important, but nevertheless, it teaches me that I should go over things I'm a bit unclear on next time, so I can get a better grade in calculus than I did this test. So, for calculus and for computer science, yes I did bad first midterm, but hey I learned my lesson, I'll study for these tests and go over things I'm not clear on, and hopefully I can still pick up an A in the classes. I hope.
Then comes the Molecular Biology test. Unlike Math or compter science, I studied for this one. I studied ever since I began the class, memorizing base pairs 1 week into the season, so obviously I had that down. But in the end, I was still slammed down hard, which is why I come to the conclusion of "maybe I just suck". Looking over the test, I see a lot of it is "need more explanation" (which I was advocated not to do, because apparently the TAs were looking for specific wordings or stuff? So either I didn't get the word right or I should have BSed more). One question involved scientist names, which I thought the teacher said we didn't have to memorize and completely screwed me over. Lost a good 7 points or so from random error and overlooking. When it comes down to it, I would probably have been satisfied with my results if the random error was eliminated.
I am probably the only person in the world that would cry over what would be considered a "decent" test grade. Perhaps again if the stress of "I need to get As or I won't get to work in a lab" gets to me too much. Or, it could be a hidden, malicious desire to try to prove to everyone that I'm better than them, only to fail horribly and recognize my humility with repentence. Of course, this could have been a result of the fact that everyone is graded on a curve, so the worse the rest of the class does, the better I do. Consequently, I always hope that everyone fails the test, or at least gets lower scores than I do so I would be able to retain a grade. This is confirmed as true as in one of my chemistry tests last semester, I had recieved a 70 or something but still retained an "A" according to the curve, and I was satisfied. On the contrary, the semester before in chemistry I recieved a good 91 out of 100 on a test, but I recieved a B because everyone did really well on the test, and I was devastated. Which tells you that curves can suck sometimes, but most of the time they're in your favor. But realizing that I am not better than everyone else and there's a good chunk of people that will always be better than me is obviously smart to recognize, abeit painful.
There is no A for effort in college. Except in humanities courses, maybe, but that's not the point. The point is that it is very possible for a person to get an A in a course just because he's smart, but impossible for a person to get an A in a course if he doesn't have a nick for it, no matter how much he studies or whatnot. Granted, an accomplished person who studies will technically be the ones that will always get the high scores, but there's always a couple who can get away without doing anything and get perfect scores. Never the other way around. If the person devotes his entire life to studying a subject but still doesn't have a nick for it, he won't get a good grade. With that in mind, studying still helps and I'm still going to try and get that A. I failed to get an A in physics, which is bad. I don't want the same to happen with all my courses. Even in BME, I will study for the damn midterm because I want to stay in the high end, to be able to participate in things like research and upper division classes. The classes I'm taking this year are awesome. I love learning the material, though trying to memorize it can be tedious. I really don't want grades to ruin my semester, or the rest of my days at USC.
/ag!! If only the damn limit for honors was 3.0 instead of 3.5... /pif
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