Oct 19, 2007

Whew! Test 2 is over.

It's been one crazy week. Once Roger left I had to hussle this weekend to get caught up with all the reading for both of my classes plus write a paper for my history class and study for my anthropology test. I didn't go into the test on Thursday feeling good. I felt like I needed another day to prepare but I didn't have a another day. And after I finished it I felt the same. There was a lot of material on this exam and it wasn't easy material to remember. Just to list a few things: we had to know all the traits of, physical and behavioral differences between and the history of the appearance for each species in the genus of Australopithecines and Homo; the characteristics of each era, period and epoch of time from the Pre-Cambrian to the present; plus all the traits and differences of each taxonomic order (phylum, subphylum, superclass, class, order, suborder, infraclass, superfamily, subfamily, genus, species) of primates and what they aren't; plus a bunch of other stuff. It was just a lot to remember. I was quite worried about my grade.

But today we received the email from the teaching assistant that the grades were up. He explained they dropped the two most missed questions and applied a curve. There are two possible curves for each exam: (1) Subtract the highest grade from 100 and add the difference, or (2) subtract the raw average from 75 and add the difference. The highest raw score was 86 (+14). The raw average was 56 (+19). Therefore, 19 points were added to every grade. So I rushed to see what I made. My final grade after the curve was a 92. I was shocked. I couldn't believe it then I had to know what my real grade was, 73. That's how I felt about my grade after I took the test. I know this is going to sound mean, but thank goodness so many people did so bad on the test because it made the curve larger and my grade higher. This is going to sound really bad, but it seems like me doing good in this class depends on others doing not so good. I know, that's so sad. But I'm ready to get back to my normal schedule and stay up with my reading. And Roger's not here to distract me. Oh, also, I made a 93 and a 92 on my last two history papers. So I'm doing good in that class. Not a surprise that history is my major. Two more tests in anthropology and three more papers in history. I'm off to read some anthropology homework. That's my Friday night.

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