Still an Overachiever

The class wasn't difficult. Too much reading for a fundamentals class, but not hard. Theatre History/Script Analysis (a new class that combined 2 old ones) was more of a nuisance than anything else, filled with Freshman that made stupid comments in class and complained. About. Everything.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Everything was worth 10% of the grade except for the final project (worth 20%). Both the final exam and the midterm were each 10% of the grade. At the end of class, I had received perfect grades on everything except for quizzes (overall grade of 94) and a presentation I gave (97). I had more than an 88 in the class, without the final exam. Knowing that I only needed less than a 20 on the final exam to get an A, I was confident that all it would take is showing up and blindly guessing to get it.

So I did something new for me. I failed it. On purpose.

I did study, but only for 3 hours. Max. I decided that it wasn't worth my time during finals week to really put forth the effort or stress over it. I studied other things, worked my butt off at my job, and even relaxed a little. I know, what a concept.

The nice thing about this is that I went into the final yesterday afternoon with not a drop of stress in me over it. The only anxiety I felt was to start the exam so I could finish it as quickly as possible and get out of there. When I got the test, I scanned it briefly. I answered 1 of 5 short answer questions, answered 2 of 3 extra credit questions, and then began at the beginning. If I knew the answer right away, without having to think about it, I answered it. Otherwise I skipped it. The matching sections I put a little bit of effort into. But even some of those I skipped. Then I counted them all up, assuming I had gotten them right if I had answered them, and came up with a number of about 50. So I stopped there. That was plenty high of a score to keep my A, even if in my haste I had accidentally circled the wrong answer on a few that I knew. I turned it in and walked out (and then kind of freaked out later that I had just failed an exam on purpose). I needed about a 15 percent, and I got about a 50.

I'm still an overachiever.