So I go upstairs to the tables by the professors' offices and my class is there, taking their test, and I walk in to my professor's office and she hands me three sheets of paper, and says in her accent, "Okay, this one" she pointed to one "is a poem you haven't seen before, and here" she indicated another "are the notes for it. Now this other one has two poems you've already seen before on it, which you need to translate and compare."
So I sat down and started with the longer first one, the one with the notes, thinking it would be easiest (I don't remember my translations very well and I don't have a Horace-sized vocabulary-- pretty sure you have to be an expert for that). I finished it fairly easily, only had about 15 words I had to look up. Then I checked the clock-- 4:10. I was doing pretty well on time. So I started the first of the two shorter poems.
Unfortunately, they happened to be poems that, in my stressful fall, I managed to not translate, or not finish translating. Regardless, I couldn't remember very much and I was looking up like, three words a line without the aid of notes. I guessed and rushed and by the time I finished the thing it was 4:40. Feeling frantic, I hurried to do the next one, and ten minutes later I had only one stanza done, as I couldn't even remember the plot of it. With ten minutes left and the analysis to do, I dashed off a note about running out of time, wrote down what gist of it I could glean, and finished my paragraph-long comparison of the two right at 5.
Then my professor came out and I explained that I hadn't been able to finish.
"Well, how much did you get done? Did you get the basic idea at least?" she asked.
"Yeah, I got most of the winter poem and the very basic outline of the spring one, and I did the comparison. And I finished the first poem, I did that first."
She glanced down. "You did the first poem?"
"Yeah, that's done, it's just the other two--"
"Oh, [Basiorana]! That was all you had to do! You were suppose to chose, not to translate seventy-five lines of Horace in an hour and twenty minutes!"
I was a little shell shocked, to say the least. I think I managed a "What?"
"Oh, you must have thought I was a monster, trying to make you translate so much! I'm impressed you got this much done, did you finish any of the poems?"
"Yeah, I did the first one, I wasn't as rushed for it so it should be fine..."
"Well, I will count that one and give you bonus points for the rest. Seventy-five lines, my goodness!"
So my panic was for naught, and I admit I left a bit sheepish. But it'll work out, I mean, she's giving me the bonus points and everything so I'll probably do better than I would have done just turning in the normal translation. Still, took a while to come down off the "Oh crap it's ten minutes left and I have twenty lines left, what to do what to do" rush.
So today at recitation my Biostats professor wanted to give back our tests and our homework from last week. Now, the sensible thing would have been to place the tests in the back on separate chairs based on the first letter of the last name, and do the same in the front with the Opportunities, right? That way people wouldn't all be congregating in one place and it could go faster.
Nope. He stood in the back with the tests and had the TA stand in the front with the Opportunities. Then we all kind of swarmed-- all 150+ of us.
So half the names he called were down getting their opps, and the rest of us could barely hear him through the mob and couldn't get over to him anyway, plus we're in this massive hall , standing on stairs or seat, pushing and shoving. It took me 10 minutes to get the test and I nearly fell down the steps thanks to my backpack being loaded down with my laptop (which I need for recitation), my Biostats notebook/binder, and my Latin books (which I didn't need... grr).
Anyway, I got that test back. 64%. So not as miserable as I was expecting but still crappy. If I completely bomb another test and I have to keep this grade, it won't kill me, but I'd really rather not bomb another test. Still, I consider this a comparatively good ending.
And Heroes tonight? AWESOME. Just needs a bit more Peter and more depowered Sylar, but we can't have everything, can we?
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