Two down, two to go
Well, I had my penultimate calculus test today, or sort of did. Instead of a comprehensive final the teacher decided to have just the "final" be the chapter 5 test. He's a pretty hardcore professor, the kind that really likes the subject he teaches. You'd think that you'd have to be in love with the subject matter you taught if you were a college professor, but sadly that's not often the case. *cough*Tanner*cough* He said that, to paraphrase, there was no way that he'd be able to issue a satisfactory comprehensive final with only a two hour window to work with. It kind of gave me chills that he felt that way, not in a good way, but more like the way you'd feel when a bullet passes by your head close enough to singe your hair. He didn't pull any punches with this test though, regular ol' chapter test or not. It was over integrals which contain high doses of my kryptonite, anti-derivatives, and took me past the alloted two hours to finish. Two hours and fifteen minutes to be exact, in comparison the three chapter tests we took in class that we had to finish in an hour fifteen. I got all the questions finished but one, but I'm not sure about them though. About an hour in I was seized with this kind of urgency and almost mechanically blew through most of the integrals in a few minutes. It reminded me of the English final I took a couple of semesters back; I had two hours to finish and I spent the first thirty minutes gripped in a panic, but after I got over the panic I went through the rest of the exam on autopilot. I remember just writing and writing, not really consciously thinking about the words I was scribbling down, only stopping when the muscles in my hand started to burn from the effort. I went through those integrals the same way, not really thinking about the anti-derivatives I had to figure out but just mowing through them. I think I did seven of them in fifteen minutes.
All in all, I don't really have any feelings about finishing. I don't feel good or bad about the work I did on the exam. I don't feel any real relief of getting it behind me, which can probably be attributed to that I've still got Java and chemistry exams to go through. I have a good idea of why that is though, and it's probably that nothing has changed now that the exam is over. Unlike pre-calculus, where I worked my behind off reading the chapters and doing the homework, and getting a palpable feeling of relief after walking out of the classroom for the final time, I didn't put so much effort into calculus. This will probably come back to bite me in the ass, but nothing I can do about it now. I don't feel the relief of never having to do calculus work again because I never really did much in the first place.
All in all, I don't really have any feelings about finishing. I don't feel good or bad about the work I did on the exam. I don't feel any real relief of getting it behind me, which can probably be attributed to that I've still got Java and chemistry exams to go through. I have a good idea of why that is though, and it's probably that nothing has changed now that the exam is over. Unlike pre-calculus, where I worked my behind off reading the chapters and doing the homework, and getting a palpable feeling of relief after walking out of the classroom for the final time, I didn't put so much effort into calculus. This will probably come back to bite me in the ass, but nothing I can do about it now. I don't feel the relief of never having to do calculus work again because I never really did much in the first place.