Cake or pie?

Sunday, October 4, 2009

The Results Are In!

We got the results of the first organic chemistry exam on Thursday. The exam was 20-ish questions, as I said earlier. The professor waited until the end of the class to announce the exams had been graded, which, in hindsight, is a really smart move on his part, because if you hand them out at the beginning of class, then a lot of people will want to:

A) leave lecture since OMG it's Thursday and the weather's nice OR
B) go over the exam with a fine-tooth comb and not pay attention to the lecture.

I was fine with him withholding until the end, but I know some people can't wait to see how they did. I used to be a pretty impatient person, but I guess I have just mellowed out as I'm in the downward slope of the back end of my 20's. The class average was a 60%. That was far better than I had expected. Everyone has heard the stories about how it's a weed out class, the exams are so difficult, the class average on exams can be in the 40s/50s and everything gets scaled to make the class average a 75, and funny enough only about 2/3 of the section showed up for class.

The professor noticed it too, as usually in our lecture hall when everyone shows up we're seated shoulder to shoulder in the auditorium, and aside from the first 3-5 rows packed with the gunners, there were a lot of empty seats. He said, "It looks like 1/3 of us have already given up hope!" I don't sit with the gunners by the way, I don't think I will ever have that mentality. I obviously want to do well, but I sit in the middle 1/3 of the auditorium with the other people who are not high-strung.

So long story short, class average is 60, meaning 60=75. He explained there was a number on the second page of the exam that would have our raw score, meaning, how many we answered correctly out of the 20-ish questions. With the class average being 60, that worked out to 12 or 13 right. I got 18 right, for an 87 (without the curve). With the curve, I guess my grade for the exam is 102. Yippee! Exhale.

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