Soapbox

So its midterm time, and i'm not gonna lie, I'm thinking I am going to kinda suck up a couple of my tests because they are crazy hard and they cover so much material! How in the world am I supposed to memorize 6 weeks worth of lectures and homework and readings? Its pretty much impossible and then you always have the issue of how each professor is completely different. So some of them test your understanding of the theories and ideas and such, while others test that you have memorized every chapter and every word they have said in class, so when you go take the test and you have studied for hours and hours on the theories and ideas and you go in feeling pretty confident and then you sit down and look at the first question, you dont recognize the question or any of the answers at all, nothing rings a bell, and then the confidence you had disappears like water in a strainer and you do awful despite your long hours of studying. It drives me crazy! I enjoy learning, I love understanding things I have always wondered about and learning things I have always wanted to know, but I don't like being tested on those things, because its hard and frustrating and doesn't really show what you understand or don't understand; and really all they are doing is comparing me to someone else. How is that ok? For some people their very best no matter how hard they try or how long they study will never be a 90%. When others don't have to study at all and they get a 99%. Why is it that students who get an 80 or a 70% are called average? They don't know what else is going on in their lives. For example: I am a full time student, I am taking 6 classes, I work part time, and I am a wife. I know many people before me have done the same thing and have been very successful in school, but I have to study long and hard to do well, and I don't have time. To me it is more important to be a good wife, so most of my free time is filled with spending time with my husband, or cooking, or doing dishes (which takes forever! because we don't have a dishwasher), or cleaning. Whenever I don't do these things and focus on homework, my life gets much harder because then I have a house that is a disaster, no dishes to eat on, which I guess doesn't matter to much because there is no food to eat anyway, and a cranky husband because the house is dirty and we have nothing to eat. So I have decided that we should all be graded separately because it is unfare for me to be graded on the same scale as a person who still lives at home with a mother that will cook and clean for them, with no job and only school to focus on. I am pretty sure that if I was graded on just me and what my life involves and my learning capacity I would be a pretty darn good student. So anyway, just had to vent, better get back to studying for my tests :(

~ Catherine