I need a fix cause Im goin down

I need a fix ‘cause I’m goin’ down DID YOU KNOW? Mary Tyler Moore sent a signed copy of the single Buddy Holly to Weezer. Yesterday I met three people who did not know who Mary Tyler Moore was until I educated them. While dispensing said education, I discovered on Wikipedia that TV guide rated her iconic hat toss as the second-greatest moment in television history. If memory serves me correctly, #1 was the moon landing or something ridiculous like that. Its about that time of season when MIT students buckle down, chain themselves to a differential equations textbook, buy their first starbucks doubleshot from LaVerdes, and get ready for their first exam of the fall term! Ive got a German III test tomorrow, but general consensus on campus is that HASS-D tests dont really count. So really, the only test class Ive got this term is 6.003: Signals and Systems. And, to be honest, I dont even care anymore when those tests are. I think the quintessential MIT story to tell freshmen during orientation is Oh yeah, I cruised through high school without doing any work, then I got to my first 8.01 test, pulled an all-nighter studying for it, realized I didnt know my butt from a scalar product, and got a 42 on it. But then I realized I was on Pass/No Record. And then I went to a party at my frat. Hey, want to come over? Its free lobster night! Well, I didnt exactly cruise through high school, I got a 95 on my first 8.01 test after studying for like one hour, and since then Ive never actually failed a test in an MIT class. That doesnt mean Ive never done poorly on a test, or never left five pages on the same test blank, or that Ive never scored below fifty percent just that those scores have never, well, technically been failing. To me, succeeding at MIT is just a gradual process of lowering your standards until youve learned to be satisfied with mediocrity. And so, in the spirit of exam season, I thought Id give you a term-by-term breakdown of my lowest test scores at MIT. Fall 2003 I was inconsolable after getting a 79 on my second 5.112: Chem for Masochists test. It wasnt even my lowest grade of all time in that pointthat honor fell to an AP US Government test on the legislative branch in which I was asked What is the mace? and I wrote down a popular brand of pepper spray. It wasnt even a Bclass average was 68 and standard deviation was 15. But man, I studied that Schrodinger equation and those funny shaped orbitals and that vibrational degree of freedom, and I was not going to be told that 30% of the people in that classroom knew it better than me! GRRR!! Spring 2004 The first test in 5.12 (thats organic chemistry) is historically all nomenclature, so if you remember like eight simple rules for identifying your primary carbon, youll just be like Oh, thats hexa-para-n-butyl-blah-blee-blah-blee-blah and get a 98 on your first exam. Emboldened by such an experience, I came to the conclusion that I was rocking organic chemistrys face off and ended up studying about two hours for the second exam, not really paying attention to the fact that I was getting all the answers wrong on the practice exams. So I strolled into the exam the next day, sat down with my five sharpened pencils, opened the first page, and then I was all, WHAT-side attack?! I was rewarded for my feeble efforts with a 59, only 2 points below class average, but still a potent motivator for me to do hundreds of pages of practice problems in preparation for the next two examsand this was before I knew the lpr -Pprinter2 -h command to print without a coversheet. Fall 2004 So I took six classes in about four different majors this term and ended up with four exams in the same week, three of them consecutively on Friday, following a 10-page lab report due on Wednesday. I actually started off extraordinarily well out of the gate, with a 196/186 A+++ on my test in 21M.271: Symphony and Concerto. However, I failed to keep up this momentum, spiraling downward into a 98/105 in 5.07, an 80/100 in 5.13 (thats organic chemistry), and a putrescent 54/100 in 18.701, a class which I dropped one day before the final to go Christmas shopping. They told you about P/NR (the term when nothing is real), but nobody ever mentions SOPHOMORE EXPLORATORY AWESOME! Spring 2005 I didnt actually see a test score lower than 54 this term, but about half of my 5.43 (thats organic chemistry) final was basically an elaborate work of fiction set in some fantasy world where some mischievous deity had invented new laws of physics starting at the molecular level. There were people leaving this test after about 1 hour, and I dont think it was humanly possible to finish the test that quickly. Thanks to an 85 on a previous test, though, I still made out with a B in the class overall. Fall 2005 So, as a point of comparisontwo years ago a 79 had left me inconsolable, but by this point a 50.5 on my 10.213: Thermodynamics midterm barely fazed me, especially because it was only one point under class average. The next test had an average of 44 and a standard deviation of 25, which meant that my 63.5 was pretty darn good. It also meant that you could have gotten a zero and still technically passed. Spring 2006 I was stomping a mudhole in 6.002: Circuits, and RLC was like ABC to me. Then we got to the RLC test and I forgot, like, what an imaginary number was, and what a resistor was, and apparently what addition was because half the test was quanititative and I got basically all of that wrong wrong wrong. As I described in an earlier blog entry, the 40 I got on this test was not quite as upsetting as me to the staple that I put through my finger ten seconds after seeing my grade, and neither was traumatic enough to prevent me from falling asleep in recitation. And dont despair, frosh: even with a 40, which was well below class average this time, I still pulled it up on the final and made an A in the class. It really does happen. So there you have it. And If I ever score below 40 percent on a test at MIT, rest assured that you guys will be the first to know. Because Yay! A 33 in 6.003 that I took in 38-101 before UROP! is just MITese for I love being a senior at MIT!