Just one of the many ways to measure my value as a human being...
I finally got up to courage to look at my grades for the Fall 2005 semester. Actually, that's a lie. I HAD to look at my grades because I had to print a copy of my transcript to send to our insurance company to prove that I'm a full time student so I would still have health insurance. Basically, my grades are still mediocre, but they're LESS mediocre than last semester! I'll clarify that: whereas I got two Cs and a B- in lab last semester, this semester I received two C+s in comparable classes (including physics!) and a B in lab. E&M lab had to have been heavily curved for me to get that B. And Fourier wasn't curved at all; it was graded on the same scale used in high school: 90 and above for an A, 80 to 89 for a B, 70 to 79 for a C. Had that class been graded the same way as, say, E&M, I would have gotten at least a B. I did think I'd done better than a 74% on the final, but obviously not, and regardless I know I learned everything that course was supposed to teach. But it's the same way with the core physics classes; I feel like I have an excellent understanding of at least 90% of the material, and an average homework score to back that up, and then I give my usual lackluster performance on the midterms and finals, and get the corresponding grade in the class. At least if my grades continue to improve by about one third of a grade each semester, I'll finally be earning As by the time I'm a senior.