it's over
Needed a 52 on the philosophy final to pass the class given a 50 on Essay 2 (I suck at writing). I just woke up to something MUCH BETTER, so good that my accumulated grade is already over the passing threshold, meaning the final doesn't matter anymore (in terms of passing).
It's such a weird attitude to have towards school, but I don't care about grades right now?
When the semester started, I took a really heavy courseload that I did not know how to manage. I was doing fine in three of my classes, but I was really behind in two others.
One of those classes was linear algebra. Because I was so behind, I would end up skipping every single lecture, and because there are weekly quizzes each worth 1%, I ended up skipping seven of them. I was also really behind on homework, which was worth a little bit too.
Fast forward to reading break, where I caught up on most of my courses, but I decide halfway through the week to start working on the other course I was behind on. That was CMPT 125 (intro to C++). Not only is this class extremely difficult, but I was seven, almost eight weeks behind (I got to this point because the midterm wasn't until halfway through the course).
I told my dad I wanted to drop the course, but he said I shouldn't give up yet. In hindsight, listening to him was the stupidest decision I have made in the past while.
I spent the next two weeks doing nothing but study for the midterm. I tried to cover all the material, but I only got about halfway. Unsurprisingly, I failed, and it wasn't even close (although it made me feel better that the average was 56%, the distribution being skewed slightly right).
I talked to my academic advisor (you're the best btw), and decided to drop the course.
But it still left me in a bad spot. I was now behind on ALL my classes by at least two weeks. I didn't go to school anymore. I stayed home to catch up because courses go by so fast that if two weeks behind, I cannot get anything useful out of a lecture (and I would to wake up at 6:45AM, ruining my sleep schedule).
Fast forward to finals and I've mostly caught up. My second exam was linear algebra, and despite losing about 10% from missing quizzes and homework, I'm very sure I passed the class.
It was then April 15th, and I had my stats final to study for. My results have been quite good so far (due my prof being generous with her exams), and I calculated that a 95 on the final would give me an A+ in the course. Having three weeks of lectures to catch up in three days was tough, but I thought I could manage it.
It turns out, I did not. I started practice problems, and I just couldn't get anywhere. It seemed like my conceptual understanding had gone out of the window. I was so demotivated that even reviewing content that I already knew was quite challenging to get started. In the three days I had to prepare for this final, I spent like one pathetic hour "studying".
I barely got a passing grade on the final. Not only did I forget so much of the content, but the prof did a complete 180 and made the exam a lot harder than the two midterms. And that's when it hit me. This class is difficult too. On the first lecture, the prof warned us it had a reputation for being hard, but I didn't take it that seriously because I knew I'd be able to muster the work ethic to tackle it, and I did. But I think after writing my first two finals, for the first time, I got burnt out.
This semester has been such a roller coaster due to how often my goals were changing. It also didn't help that dropping CMPT 125 meant punching a two week hole that I could have used to catch up. It's not surprising that eventually I'd lose motivation due to exhaustion.
That brings me to today. I just woke up to an email saying that my second philosophy essay had been graded. I calculated that given a 50, I would need a 52 on the final to pass the course, which worried me a bit because not only am I also behind in this course, I've been having lots of trouble studying.
But when I saw my mark, I thought I was dreaming. It was so good that I already have a passing accumulated grade. I couldn't contain my happiness so I actually got out of bed (after like 6 hours of sleep) to pop off. And now that I'm in no mood to go back to bed, I decided to write this post.
This brings me to why I don't care about grades anymore. Just like in high school, they're unstandardized, procedure based (in the short term), and usually way too early in the morning. I have so many examples of dumb mistakes either but I don't think it's necessary to state them all here.
And with that out of the way, given my intense desire to get out of this semester, all I need to do is pass my courses, and today, I achieved that goal.
So what did I learn from this disaster?
It all starts with study habits that I've been reflecting on. Next semester, I plan on reviewing the slides before class, so that I actually get something out of the lecture, and most importantly, NEVER FALL BEHIND! (so take a reasonable amount of classes, it's better to take too little than too many)
I have other reflection on how to study effectively in a sustainable manner but my thoughts haven't fully formed so I will probably make a whole separate post on work ethic.
now that there's no more school time to learn how to speedrun minecraft! and apply for jobs