It’s been pretty eventful this past two weeks, which is why I didn’t really have much time to write something up., but here we are. This post isn’t really gonna have a main topic, but I’ll just write about what’s been happening since my last post.
First of all—things got pretty busy as soon as the first weekend of the school year flew by. Not anything I didn’t expect for Grade 12, but it was pretty surreal having to study for multiple classes every night, multiple days in a row. You don’t really have that happening often in Grade 11, unless you were genuinely aiming for high 90s, which wasn’t super necessary back then. This made me pretty envious for anyone lucky enough to have a spare first semester, especially when you’re urgently trying to juggle studying for three tests in the same week. But it is what it is.
I think something that really surprised me going into this semester was how difficult Data Management turned out to be. I never thought I’d ever struggle with counting ever since graduating the first grade, but it’s almost funny how wrong I was. For anyone wondering, no, you don’t do that type of counting. The first unit we’re starting in MDM4U is called Organized Counting, which is unlike any other math I’ve done in my life. Instead of learning about functions or theorems like any other math class, you take a deep dive into the number of ways a number of events could happen, like rolling a die or flipping a coin. This in itself obviously doesn’t sound hard at all, but it really does get challenging once you get to problems that seem to be closer to competition math than anything else. If anyone wants to see what I’m talking about, just take this problem for example.
How many even six-digit numbers have all their digits different?
I’m not gonna lie, I struggled pretty hard when I first tried solving this one. It’s not as hard to me now, but I would’ve had no idea how to even start this problem if you gave it to me a week ago.
Now, onto something a little more recent. Yesterday I wrote a physics test on kinematics. If I’m being realistic, I was pretty prepared for it, but I was incredibly anxious for every single moment prior to writing it. I normally get test anxiety, but it’s reasonably multiple magnitudes worse when you know that the grades are directly tied to you getting into university. I remember that O Canada was being played right before the test, which meant I had a solid minute and a half to listen to nothing but my rapid heartbeat and heavy breathing. It wasn’t my proudest moment, but I guess test anxiety is what everyone suffers from at one point.
If you’re wondering how that actual test went, it really depends on your standards. For someone aiming for a competitive engineering program like me, you really can’t be sure if a test went well unless you feel 100% confident after taking it. And I sure don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I really can’t say that the test went bad, but the reason why I’m not completely optimistic about it is because the last projectile motion question was particularly difficult, which drained all the time I had to check any of my answers. The worst part is that I’m not even completely sure if I got that last question correct. I’ve always believed that the most important part of a test other than actually solving the problems is checking your answers, because it gives you a final chance to fix any mistakes you might’ve made while you weren’t thinking clearly.
But of course, there’s nothing I can do about that test right now other than just reminisce about it. I’m sure there’s a universe out there where I got 100%, and it sure as hell might be this one. But I seriously doubt it.