and nearly 1 month later...

Ok, so this blog post won't be quite as happy as some of the others...

As it turns out, I did a good thing when I set expectations for this part of my life. Coming to Israel on a few month's notice, studying in Hebrew, beginning a Master's Degree, while learning the language... my expectations were explicitly set at "this being both the hardest thing I've done and something that I will never forget." You may notice that there are no "have a good grade percentage" or "ace all my classes" mentioned in those expectations.

And... that was a good thing when my midterm came around. The course is Analytical Methods I, and is basically an Advanced Differential Equations course where we derive the Bessel Function, and use Legendre Polynomials and all manner of crazy mathematical tricks to solve differential equations.

-The exam turned out to be over a week further into the material than I thought it was.
-I made an early mistake in an infinite sum expansion in the first section of the first problem.
-The later sections of the first problem bulit upon the (correct) answer to the section I knew was not coming together. This therefore had me freaking out and spending nearly all my time working on trying to get the infinite sum correct.
-The second problem, while quite straightforward, required the use of approximately 4 specific equations that I had neglected to put on my equation sheet. Therefore, a few of my answers were along the lines of "here, you would make a certain substitution... which I don't remember."

This was the ONLY test I've taken in my life where I experienced the feeling of despair, and a true sense of failing. As it turns out, my sense was faily accurate... final percentage below:

my percentage: 37%
class average: 57.8%
median: 59%
mode: {69,82}
my distance from average: -1.23 standard deviations
my percentile: 15.4

stem and leaf plot of reported class grades on the midterm:
0|
1|
2|3,9
3|3,3,4,4,7
4|2,3,4,5,8
5|0,3,4,4,5,6,8,9
6|1,1,2,2,5,6,9,9,9
7|0,2,4,6,7
8|0,2,2,2
9|1

Obviously, to anyone familiar with my academic record to date, this will probably be somewhat surprising. I'll be really honest: failing a test is a terrible experience, but it is one that I am glad that I have now had. I've never been able to relate to people very well who have struggled academically, since I myself have in the past had nearly no difficulties. Especially since I eventually see myself as a professor, probably writing exams which people will fail, this is a particularly valuable experience to me from a life-long/ relate to people viewpoint.

(A little-known fact is that I actually took two attempts to pass the amatuer radio operator test, failing the first attempt by 1 pt. However, this didn't really count, since I took the test with no preparation, and it was just for an extra-curricular activity).

(and, yes, I am a technician class ham radio operator. massive nerd points.)