I'm going to China!

The title is just in case someone here didn't know. But yes, I'm going to China this fall to teach English. I have a feeling anyone who cares knows that, though.

So in my gen chem 2 class, when we first started, Dr. Wieder told all of us that if we didn't do our homework, we were guaranteed to not pass his tests. And if we did do our homework, we weren't guaranteed to pass his tests. When I heard this, I thought "Oh no! I need to start doing my homework!" It's not something he collects, it's just something we do so we know how to do Chemistry.

Well, as it would turn out, my first test in Chem was the same day as my first test in Criminal Justice. Awesome. My criminal justice teacher is pretty cool, I like him a lot, but he doesn't really teach us much. We definitely have to read and study our text book to do well on the test. And the material we covered in chem was something we had covered my first semester, although it definitely wasn't my strong suit (thermodynamics). Since I didn't know anything, really, about criminal justice, I spent a great deal of time studying that and absolutely no time doing Chem homework. It wasn't that I didn't want to do the homework, necessarily. It was just that I needed to study for criminal justice. And that was taking a lot longer than I thought it would.

So the day of my test came closer and closer. I was paying attention in chem and felt like I understood what was going on, but I still hadn't done any homework. So I turned my panic stricken "I need to do homework!" thoughts to more "Challenge Accepted" thoughts. I decided that I would make it my personal mission to pass one of Wieder's tests without doing the homework. Probably not the best idea ever, but it excited me.

The day of my tests, I did my Criminal Justice one and did awesome. So in my hour-and-forty-five-minute break before Chem, I decided to read up on thermodynamics in my text book and study a little before the test. I felt like I had it down comfortably, although I had only been reading and not actually doing any of the example problems in my book. (For the record, doing any of the problems in book doesn't count as doing my Chem homework because I have a different text book than Wieder uses.) It would probably be a good idea to go through a problem on my own to make sure that I could do it, so I reached into my backpack to get out my calculator and--

It's gone. No calculator in my backpack. I must have lost it somewhere. It belongs in THIS backpack. I have a Mon/Wed backpack and a Tues/Thurs backpack, and my calculator belongs in my Mon/Wed backpack because that's the day I have Chemistry. I thought back to the last time I had it. It was in Chem Lab. Did I leave it in the Lab room? No... No I definitely put it back in my backpack... And that was when I realized that my Chem Lab is on Thursday. Which means my calculator belongs in my Tues/Thurs backpack, which makes sense because my math classes are on Tues/Thursday.

So. My calculator is at home. Not only did I not study for my Chem test, but I also left my calculator at home. Looks like I'm going to be doing math by hand. Hopefully there's nothing too crazy...

I took the test, which went alright... Sorta. There were a lot of problems where I'd do all the math for it, get my answer, and the answer I had didn't correlate with any of the options on the test. So I'd go back and try to do it again. Still nothing. (Note to self: It's important to know the density of water.) So I'd give up and just pick an answer. But in general, I felt like I did alright. Everyone says Wieder's tests are impossible because he doesn't ask the question straight out, but it didn't seem that bad to me. Maybe that's because this class is just Gen Chem, and he usually teaches OChem, but the test itself didn't seem all that bad to me. If only I had a calculator...

The next class day, we got our tests back. I got a 69% on mine, which isn't just passing, but it's only 1 point away from getting a C! Not only that, but the class average was like a 62% or something. So, now that I've won the challenge, I can properly prepare for the rest of the tests and get A's on them all. That way, at the end of the semester, Wieder will drop my 69 test and it will be like it never happened.

Oh, and I went through and checked why I got certain questions wrong. For three of the questions, I got partial credit because I made dumb little mistakes that would've been easy to fix if I had read the questions correctly. I forgot to switch one answer from Kelvins to Celsius. I got my endothermic/exothermic terminology mixed up. And I forgot to add in part of the answer in the very last question. Had I gone through and fixed all of those, I would've had a 76% on this test. Oh well. Live and learn.