Post-Midterm

Despite the surrounding birthday balloons and birthday mail, I feel sad. I blame my midterms, which threw me into a funk because I studied for them every day since receiving the material, but didn’t get the desired grades. When I took my midterms, I felt pretty confident and knew most of the answers, but my grades suggest otherwise.

I guess I should study more. Once my first year seminar ends, science and art history will dominate my life. Did I mention I have to make a giant comic book for my first year seminar? It’s not difficult or anything. It’s just work and I think that’s behind most A’s in college: diligence. You need to focus on schoolwork all the time and you can’t think about or do anything else because it’ll distract you from the task at hand. Maybe that’s why so many kids take unprescribed Ritalin—maybe they don’t have the discipline to sit and study for a couple hours.

I don’t really know, but I do know I tutored Zach in chemistry for the better half of last week. It was more difficult than I expected, seeing as he’d never taken a chemistry class before and I barely remembered the material from two years ago, but I scored well in the course and wanted to help him.

Sometimes we worked in circles, going over the material several times before moving to a different task. The worst was valence electrons because I didn’t remember it and he didn’t understand it. We spent three-ish days on it, and by the end, we had enough of electronegativity.

In the middle of our studying, he would roll around on the floor and ask, “Can we take a break?

“Like lunch or something?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” I’d gather my things. “And we’ll study when we get back?”

“Yeah.”

We never studied when we came back. We usually watched Glee or read bad fan fiction or something. Sometimes we’d take another break and then study again. It was a good routine, but I felt like we didn’t do much those days. Maybe it’s because I’m used to intense studying, so breaks throw me off, but maybe we could have done more if I’d pushed. Maybe not. Who knows?

Earning grades is a little tougher than I expected, but I think I’ll pull through. I study every day, and I know it didn’t earn me A’s from the get-go, but I’ll study harder and then everything will improve. The most intimidating classes are science and art history because there’s a heap of material to memorize and it’s not as much understanding as it is recitation, but I’ll be okay.

Another thing: my birthday landed on my art history midterm. Isn’t that lovely? When I should have been celebrating my 18^th, I was identifying ancient coins and corbelled architecture. Maybe I’m being harsh, but it was my 18^th birthday and who wants to take a midterm during their initiation to adulthood? I hope it went well. A poor grade would make a terrible birthday present. :<

In response to the snail comment, name your sluggish little pet whatever you want. Gary would be creative (even though I’m not a huge Spongebob fan) and it’d be nostalgic. If I had a snail, I’d name it something lame like Shelly or Goo. Isn’t that lame? I wish I were as good at naming snails as you. Please tell me if/when you buy it and what you decided to call the darling little molluscan.

Anyway, I’m going to study dinosaurs until someone comes along to talk. Right now, we’re learning about ceratopsians. They have bones on their upper jaw that don’t connect to their nose. Hooray!