Problems with Problems Again.

July 11, 2010

Problems With Problems Again

As my college summer course has been progressing, I've been steadily increasing my confidence in my meager mathematic abilities. Yes, I was still dreading my second test almost as much as my first test, but some of the new concepts that were introduced to me began to "click," so I was pensively optimistic. During the Independence Day "extended" weekend, I studied for two of those days. I was fairly confident with almost all of the concepts, but there were two things I didn't know. One of those concepts was the equation of a parabola, which isn't terribly difficult. The other concept was functions of functions.

Much to my dismay, I completely forgot to do that chapter that dealt with the parabola functions. Much to my annoyance, I couldn't even do the chapter that dealt with functions of functions. So, I decided to study what I knew and "make my money" off of what I knew. Test day, which was July 6^th, came and went, and right away there were three problems I couldn't even do. As I planned, I went on to the problems I knew I could do. Out of the seventeen problems on the test, I answered fourteen of them fully and with minimal mistakes.

I get the test back, and lo-and-behold, I got a 72% on it! What is the chance I would get the exact score on two different tests? I was really, really sad, and disappointed in myself. I had no idea that those three blank problems would do me in that way.

After class, I went up to my instructor and asked him if I should even consider staying with the class during the summer or just wait until the new semester begins. He told me that even though I've been scoring "C's" on my tests, I'm still in the top half of the class [!] so I shouldn't worry too much. Then he showed my aggregate score compared to the rest of the students in the class, and sure enough I was ranked right up in the top half of the class.

Still, I have my worries. Right now it is a close to my bed time, but I still feel that I should be doing more studying. (Of course I could!) I do the homework problems for each respective chapter, and much to my surprise, I can (now) do a surprising amount of the easy and moderately challenging problems. Right now a new chapter is dealing a little bit with functions of functions - the very thing I abhorred not too long ago - and little by little the pieces are falling into place. I'm also worried that I'll put all this effort into this class, and I'll still perform . . . insufficiently to continue the math portion of my required education. I factored into my college schedule me completely screwing up this class, so I could take it again if I needed to. My goal is for me to get a "B".

Like I've said before, my biggest fear is that I put all this effort into this class and I totally screw the pooch at the end of the class, like I did with the previous statistics class I took a year ago. In that class I had a "B" average, but I lowered the average down to a "C" because of the final.

I would feel so burned if I did put all this effort into this class and I couldn't even go with Kevin to Ely, Minnesota.

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