3 more down
This week has been fairly good-ish. My mind refuses to let me say it was good JUST IN CASE I have some major disappointments.
Neuroscience was Monday. Looovely. Only four of us sat the paper (it was an option) and he changed it for the first time in nearly a decade. I was well pleased, 'cause I started studying for it back in January before I'd looked at the papers so I hadn't done the whole prediction thing and gotten myself into a right mess when the paper changed. I answered one fairly straightforward question on resting potentials which I knew inside out, but wouldn't have known anything about if I'd predicted off old papers. Before that I did one on experience, molecules and genes in brain development which is one of my favourite things ever, ever, ever to waffle on about. Can't and won't predict a mark 'cause I could have completely overshot the information he was looking for but it was a nice exam overall.
Perception, my favourite psych subject, was yesterday. I did questions on infant perception and methodology, and on neuropsychological damage and perception. I knew them both pretty well, especially the latter, but I was hoping for a nice wee question on Biederman/object recognition or maybe sensory modality integration, where I could have chucked a bitta Bayes's theorem in. No such luck but the exam went well regardless.
Today was stats and methodology. It was grand, between this year and last year my average in stats test has been significantly higher than my average in anything else siply because it's MATHS and OBJECTIVE and marking isn't BIASED towards not giving anyone a mark above 70, and certainly not breaching the 79 point. Obviously this was schols and so a wee bit harder but I was fairly pleased. This was my let-go-and-let-God exam 'cause I kinda 'forgot' to do much work for it but I think I did fairly well.
Tomorrow is English, with postcolonialism, Victorianism and American lit, it's going to be a bit tough I think but I'll give it my best shot. Trying to consolidate quotes and stuff tonight.
I don't know if this is endemic to people halfway through schols but I simply cannot even consider the possibility of either getting exemptions or the scholarship itself. I went a bit mad last night thinking that I wasn't good enough to get above 59%; but I think that was just an offshoot of my inability to think about an endpoint. I guess logically I should get exemptions, considering my marks over the past year and a half. I refuse to even contemplate schols until I get word on whether I'm exempt or not. I guess I am worried about whether I'm 'good enough' for them or not but I know that good enough in schols' case is a measure of having done enough work so I'm hardly going to quit college with a bunch of broken dreams if I get less than a 70% average. I think a few people have been disappointed with exams - hell, I was disappointed with English 1 - and it can be heartbreaking especially if you go into exams with the assumption that you'll nail them, or if you've committed a lot of time to studying. I don't think I've committed more time to work than I would have if I didn't have schols, my one sacrifice has not been going out much so I can get up early and work 'cause I am such an early-to-rise nerd.
There's one guy in English who works very hard (I've only seen him once since exams started and he was happy) and people get so nasty about him. First people were scandalised that he had dumped his girlfriend for schols but I get the impression it wasn't all about schols; that was just the easy ready-made excuse. Second, it became established fact that he's always in the library which is bull 'cause I only ever saw him there in the evenings, not in the mornings or at weekends which were my favourite times to be dans le bibliotheque. Thirdly, it emerged that he went to France during the summer for a grammar course and read lots of this year's English books while there. SCANDALOUS. I know I'd never go to a country I have to spend four months in to get my degree, and do something useful while there. I just feel bad for him because he is a hard worker and he is, shock-horror, talented, and so he deserves the schols, but he's not going to get much praise if he does get them, and if he doesn't he's just going to be used as a parable for why you shouldn't be motivated or work hard or read a lot or show some commitment to your course. Thankfully there's no-one treated like that in psychology. There are some people who get a reputation for always being in the library (not me! I'm the stealth-riser ¬.¬ get in first to the library and get the best books, be out of there fairly soon after lunch) but everyone knows library time =/ total study time.
Okay I have to study now. Have a nice day/evening/week everybody!
Neuroscience was Monday. Looovely. Only four of us sat the paper (it was an option) and he changed it for the first time in nearly a decade. I was well pleased, 'cause I started studying for it back in January before I'd looked at the papers so I hadn't done the whole prediction thing and gotten myself into a right mess when the paper changed. I answered one fairly straightforward question on resting potentials which I knew inside out, but wouldn't have known anything about if I'd predicted off old papers. Before that I did one on experience, molecules and genes in brain development which is one of my favourite things ever, ever, ever to waffle on about. Can't and won't predict a mark 'cause I could have completely overshot the information he was looking for but it was a nice exam overall.
Perception, my favourite psych subject, was yesterday. I did questions on infant perception and methodology, and on neuropsychological damage and perception. I knew them both pretty well, especially the latter, but I was hoping for a nice wee question on Biederman/object recognition or maybe sensory modality integration, where I could have chucked a bitta Bayes's theorem in. No such luck but the exam went well regardless.
Today was stats and methodology. It was grand, between this year and last year my average in stats test has been significantly higher than my average in anything else siply because it's MATHS and OBJECTIVE and marking isn't BIASED towards not giving anyone a mark above 70, and certainly not breaching the 79 point. Obviously this was schols and so a wee bit harder but I was fairly pleased. This was my let-go-and-let-God exam 'cause I kinda 'forgot' to do much work for it but I think I did fairly well.
Tomorrow is English, with postcolonialism, Victorianism and American lit, it's going to be a bit tough I think but I'll give it my best shot. Trying to consolidate quotes and stuff tonight.
I don't know if this is endemic to people halfway through schols but I simply cannot even consider the possibility of either getting exemptions or the scholarship itself. I went a bit mad last night thinking that I wasn't good enough to get above 59%; but I think that was just an offshoot of my inability to think about an endpoint. I guess logically I should get exemptions, considering my marks over the past year and a half. I refuse to even contemplate schols until I get word on whether I'm exempt or not. I guess I am worried about whether I'm 'good enough' for them or not but I know that good enough in schols' case is a measure of having done enough work so I'm hardly going to quit college with a bunch of broken dreams if I get less than a 70% average. I think a few people have been disappointed with exams - hell, I was disappointed with English 1 - and it can be heartbreaking especially if you go into exams with the assumption that you'll nail them, or if you've committed a lot of time to studying. I don't think I've committed more time to work than I would have if I didn't have schols, my one sacrifice has not been going out much so I can get up early and work 'cause I am such an early-to-rise nerd.
There's one guy in English who works very hard (I've only seen him once since exams started and he was happy) and people get so nasty about him. First people were scandalised that he had dumped his girlfriend for schols but I get the impression it wasn't all about schols; that was just the easy ready-made excuse. Second, it became established fact that he's always in the library which is bull 'cause I only ever saw him there in the evenings, not in the mornings or at weekends which were my favourite times to be dans le bibliotheque. Thirdly, it emerged that he went to France during the summer for a grammar course and read lots of this year's English books while there. SCANDALOUS. I know I'd never go to a country I have to spend four months in to get my degree, and do something useful while there. I just feel bad for him because he is a hard worker and he is, shock-horror, talented, and so he deserves the schols, but he's not going to get much praise if he does get them, and if he doesn't he's just going to be used as a parable for why you shouldn't be motivated or work hard or read a lot or show some commitment to your course. Thankfully there's no-one treated like that in psychology. There are some people who get a reputation for always being in the library (not me! I'm the stealth-riser ¬.¬ get in first to the library and get the best books, be out of there fairly soon after lunch) but everyone knows library time =/ total study time.
Okay I have to study now. Have a nice day/evening/week everybody!