Warning: a very long entry about exams. I talk about C programming and Communications engineering and I whine a lot and generally feel very sorry for myself. You may want to skip this one.
So I had my Computer Engineering exam on Wednesday aka C Programming. The exam was held in a reasonably small computer room so we were split off into two groups- one took the exam in the morning and the other…later in the morning. I was in group 2 so I arrived there at 10.45am alongside everyone else and then we were stuck sitting inside a lecture room for 30+ minutes waiting for the exam to be setup, and for the other group to leave, as we couldn’t come into contact with the other group. It was terribly boring. I couldn’t even browse the net on my phone as we had to switch them off and put them in our bags. Then the actual exam, which was horrible. The past three exam papers have been pretty much identical- but this one? Almost totally different. I had memorized the most beautiful solution for opening and reading a file, then returning statistics about it because it had been on every exam paper for years, and this year they did’t have it. I wanted to cry. My solution was beautiful OK, and I had worked so hard to memorize it in just a matter of days. (Is it bad to call coding beautiful? Like, that’s not too geeky is it?) And for the past few years they instruct us to write a program which lets users type, and then counts the number of key presses and the percentage of vowels/numbers pressed. But for this paper they decided to change it and make it more difficult and honestly I didn’t understand. So I just wrote the program that did the former and left out the complicated bits XD Thankfully they had the question where we prompt the user to enter resistor values and calculates the series and parallel arrangement resistances, which I can totally do. My best friend taught me functions by walking me through that code, and it was the first time I thought “Maybe I could do this programming thing”. A hope quickly dashed by certain other questions, like the second part of the exam papers. The questions are longer and unpredictable and ugh. The last question had to be the worse. Through a series of if statements and while/for loops I managed to make it work…to an extent… and my coding was messy and just ugh. I am so bad with C Programming.
I got home from that exam and just fucked around wasting time for hours, until it was late and I really needed to cram for my communications exam today but it was a very half asked attempt. I got up early this morning to cram as well, but again it was a lazy effort. I truly needn’t have bothered with even that much. Communications engineering is a subject I hate because I am terrible at it. In theory it seems quite understandable, in practice it’s like WHAT. WHAT IS HAPPENING. WHAT DOES THIS GRAPH EVEN MEAN :| The past 3 exams papers have been near identical so I decided just to memorize methods and focus on understanding it at a later time. Typically again, just like in C programming, the exam had bits thrown in there that had never been on any exam before. I wanted to cry. I couldn’t answer questions, and I made a royal mess of an entire section of the exam worth 25 marks. 25% of the entire paper. I dropped so many marks. They also didn’t have the two questions I really wanted and understood and was good at. 3 years in a row they have asked about line balancing, and this year the didn’t! ¬__¬ I am hopeful that I may scrape a pass, but probably I’ll fail. It was depressing, though I guess I had that one coming with my terrible approach to the exam.
I came home and lost myself in fanfic and now its late and I still haven’t revised for my exam on Saturday. I also have a Japanese assessment on Monday that I am unprepared for which is also…bothering me. I feel like I am wasting such a good opportunity, and a lot of money. Finally I have the opportunity to learn the language I love most, but now I don’t have the time. Well, that’s a lie. I have the time, I just cannot memorize a language on top of everything I need to know for my exams. My memory is just not that good. I am just not that clever, nor that motivated.
I’m losing confidence here. All my exams have been terrible and I just, can’t be bothered anymore. Next is circuits and fields and I like it, and I’ve worked so hard to understand it…and my poor father has sat with me for hours teaching it to me but I just cannot memorize it and I can’t do it without my notes and I can’t do it quickly so I’m terrified.
And I’ve reached the point where i am so scared of failing, of these papers also being as horrible as the past three, that I don’t even want to try. I don’t want to do this anymore. Because I said I was content to scrape a pass and I am but that doesn’t stop me wanting more. That doesn’t stop the fear that I won’t even reach that- and then what? I am naturally anxious all the time, always worrying about this and that, and exams just make it so much worse. It hurts. And its driving me crazy.
(And it, all this, makes me doubt myself. Why am I doing engineering? I feel like I am not clever enough for this, not motivated enough, not dedicated enough. I wonder what it is about this subject that I couldn’t let go of it the first time round, that I worked so hard for it. Despite how useless it makes me feel I want so badly to be an engineer. But it does, it makes me feel terrible about myself. I guess that’s what happens when you do a degree? It’s not like anything is easy. My sister, she loved chemistry, until she did a degree, and then she hated it, and then she graduated and got a job and now she loves it again. She always said she’d never work in an office, but she is and she is so happy. Will that happen for me? But I cannot imagine so far ahead.)
Sorry for the past few whiny entries. Hopefully by the time exams are over I can get myself into a better place, well, if Semester two and starting electrical engineering and real time systems doesn’t also make me miserable XD