Update on My University Exams

I apologize for my posting schedule not being as frequent lately. It’s challenging balancing running a home, taking care of kids, and working, let alone as someone with chronic illnesses and chronic exhaustion. When you add studying for finals on top of that, things get a bit hectic. (Forget about actually having a life.)

I just had my first final this semester, in statistics, and I was really, really, really nervous for it. When it came to learning statistics, I mostly understood what was going on in class, but once it came to actually doing it on my own after class, I was at a loss. I wrote about how I used some EMDR to help me get over my mental block with statistics, as well as getting a tutor, and that was life changing. The tutor was really helpful and I caught up to where my class was, and I started to really understand most of the subjects (just don’t get me started on combinatorics!!!).

As the finals approached, I decided to increase the pace of my tutoring because I needed to make sure I passed. Not only that, I needed to get a good enough grade that I could be part of this transfer program, but more on that later. Yes, it cost me quite a bit of money to have all this tutoring, but a bigger waste of money would be to pay for this semester and some tutoring and not pass, so it was worth it.

The days before the final came and I was really, really nervous. I did some practice tests, and in every single one there was something I didn’t know how to do or something I made a careless error on.

The day before my final I had one last tutoring session with my teacher, and we went over and made a list of things I needed to remember, hints to follow, or tips for myself based on mistakes I’d made in the past to get me through the test. I said that instead of practicing any more problems, I’d go over those and make sure I remembered them, because it was careless errors that could get me screwed over on the final. I took a picture of that and that is the image for this post.

The day of the final came and I was nervous, but did a little praying and reminded myself that in my country there is always a second opportunity to take a final if you don’t get a good enough score. I had told my teacher that it wasn’t goodbye, it was goodbye for now, because I’d probably still want some tutoring before the second test, and he said I shouldn’t assume I’ll do badly.

I got to bring in a dictionary with me to the final and I got an extra hour in addition to the three hours we were given. The final needed to be done in pen, which scared me, but I’d asked around and was told that I could use an erasable pen, which was a good solution.

For the final, the way it works is there are 5 questions with multiple parts. The first question had 5 parts, each worth 5 points, and it was required. They were true or false questions and we had to prove why they were true or false. They were a bit challenging, but in the end I think I got 4 correct, though one I absolutely got wrong, so I’m starting off with a maximum of 95 points on this final.

Then there were 4 more questions, of which we only had to do 3. Two of them were on a subject I knew really well, something I practiced over and over and over again and knew down pat, standard deviation and z scores, so that was a relief. The rest was on subjects I knew really well. There wasn’t even something about combinatorics that I was planning on skipping if I came across it. It was just left off the final.

I was able to breathe a sigh of relief and didn’t even need the full 4 hours I got for the final; I was finished in under 3 hours. I only opened the dictionary once, and I would have been fine without it.

I’m not going to jinx it and say what grade I think I got, but suffice it to say I feel a lot better after the final than I did going into it. I’ll still probably end up taking the final a second time to try to get as high a grade as possible, but I’m not worried that I failed it. (Though maybe I shouldn’t jinx myself about that either…)

Now I have one more final, social psychology, and I just now started studying for it. It’s much different to study for, since there are 200 pages of notes that I have for it. So much to memorize, so many names and theories and studies. But now that I have stats out of the way, I can give my all towards this, if my anxiety doesn’t get in the way (which it has been, unfortunately, but working on that too)…

I’ve been rewriting my notes, condensing them by hand, and then having chat gpt condense my notes to see if I did the same more or less. I then have chat gpt give me study questions on those bits of notes, making sure I fully understood the concepts in depth. It’s a bit slow going, but that’s my life for the next week and a half until the final.

While I need to get a high grade in order to transfer to the social work program I want to get into at the local university (average of 90 or higher and no grades lower than a 70), I realized that I have other options. There are other colleges in my area with social work programs and I can see if I can transfer there if I pass my courses but just don’t get a high enough grade for this program. My last option is I can stay at this university I’m in, one with open admissions, and switch to a major in psychology instead of social work and go that route. It’s still an option to becoming a therapist, just a slightly longer route and involves more testing, which is why it wasn’t the route I originally chose.

So next semester I haven’t signed up for any classes because I wanted to see what grades I got this semester, so I can make plans for the future depending on my grades…

And now, back to studying! I know I can do this!