Midterm

The theo mech midterm.

It's been looming large in my mind since I declared as a physics major. I could occasionally convince myself that the older students were exaggerating, as they had with the first chemistry midterm. There was no way it could live up to their tales. But then I watched the chemistry majors go through the pchem midterm last semester - 4 hours, 1 question - and I knew there was no hyperbole here.

On the first day of the semester, the professor confirmed our worst fears. He tried to lighten the blow, to explain that the format was meant to reduce stress. But it only ever added to it.

And now it's here.

I've been studying every night for a week. I skipped my grandmother's funeral. I might feel bad about that. If it weren't on the other side of the country. If I'd ever been close to my grandmother. If our relationship hadn't been tainted by the bad blood between her and my mother. As it is, it's just another fact of life. Midterms are more important than the funeral. If I'm being honest, they're significantly less scary, too.

The point is that I've prepared for this exam as much as I can. I don't feel ready. I'll never feel ready. The only way out is through. A passing grade will be good enough.

The exam officially starts at 6 pm. It's in the middle of the week, as though we don't have classes the next morning. Come to think of it, I'm not sure anyone does. Morning classes are mostly filled by frosh and sophomores. It's the rare upperclassman who has lecture before noon. Unless they prefer it that way.

Following an early dinner the junior physics class, all thirty-two of us, gather in the small lecture hall on the far end of academics. We take our seats and make sure to leave buffer chairs. This gives us more room to spread out. The professor begins to pass out the exams, face down, and explain the rules.

That makes it sound like a game. Would parameters be better? Expectations? We're on the honor system after all.

I digress.

The exam is open book, open note, open Nobel Laureate, if we know one, the professor jokes. We can use calculators, a rarity for exams. The only people we cannot consult are each other and the internet in general. Not that anyone can get a signal down here in the basement.

We may work on the exam for as long as it takes. Essentially. Pizza has been ordered and will arrive at midnight. The professor will collect the exams at 9 the next morning. We may take as many breaks as we like, so long as we don't actually leave the building. Rumor has it that any remaining students race through the halls on the wheeled chairs sometime after midnight. I can only hope that I'm not around to see those rumors proven true or false.

On the signal, we turn over our exams and get to work. There are four questions, worth a possible total of 20 points. Which means that any mistake will cost us dearly. We have access to our materials and all the time in the world, which does take some of the pressure off.

It also means that the exam is really difficult, designed to test a deep understanding of the material rather than a more superficial knowledge. The questions are variations on homework questions, each demanding that we make connections that haven't yet been spelled out for us. Not that I've come to expect anything less from a physics exam.

I work industriously and almost gasp when the first student, easily the smartest person in our class, turns in his exam after a mere hour. But I'm not actually that far behind him. There are things that I could probably figure out if I stayed here and worked until dawn, but I've long since learned to settle for good enough. A perfect score isn't worth the sleepless nights or lack of social life, and subsequent mental breakdowns, it demands.

I turn my own exam in shortly before 8 and dash back to my dorm, determined to get there before my bowling team leaves for tonight's IM event. Roughly half the class is still there when I leave, and they're the ones who probably will stick around until the professor returns.

Ultimately I score 16/20. Looking over the answers, I see a couple of obvious mistakes. If I'd given myself another hour, with a break and fresh eyes to look over the exam, I could possibly have pushed my score up to a 17 or 18 out of 20. A perfect score was always out of the question for me. And it would have cost me an evening of bowling with my friends, which wasn't a sacrifice I was willing to make.