Midterm 2/Calculating my Grade/End of the Semester

After taking the second midterm, I feel confident in that I did well. I think the finite difference part of the test gave me some doubts because I didn't know what the final equation was supposed to look like. Other than that, I think the matrices was straightforward and the only part I think I could've messed up on was the algebra and missing a negative sign. I didn't study as hard as the last exam, and if my theory is correct, I will hope to get a better grade than my last exam. It was a theory I thought of because I noticed that I did better on tests that I studied a decent amount for but not too much. The takeaway from this exam is to keep improving, I felt that I knew the material on the exam but even if I did well on it, I have to keep going. The group project and the final are coming up and they are worth a total of 40% of our grade and to slack off and think I can do them without even trying will decrease my grade. At this point, we are just a few weeks away from finals then summer break. This is technically a extra credit blog since this is the eleventh blog except I plan on doing the extra credit so that I can worry less about this final. The same with the homework, I did all of the homework and if I go any further it will only help me achieve an A in this course, which I am striving to achieve. I calculated my grade and I believe that I have a 98% in the class, this is without the midterm two, final, individual and group project grade. This means that I only completed 30% of my total grade, but if the midterm and individual project are graded, then I would have completed 60% of my total grade. Overall, I am doing pretty well but that only confirms 30% of my grade which is somewhat weird. Nearing the end of the semester and only having 30% of our grade show up but that's expected in most courses. You really can't calculate your grade until you've at least done 70-80% of it. My plan is to not slow down and to achieve that A in the class.  

Group Project Continued and Midterm 2

As we are getting closer to the deadline for the group project, I have yet to create my group let alone choose what to do. However, I have emailed other people asking if they wanted to make a group and hopefully we can get started on it. I doubt we would need more than a week to do it but I don't know what everyone's schedule is and what work they need to do. I'm not worried too much about this project since it only took me a total of 10-15 hours to do my individual project and to split that work into four people will make it even easier. Also, I doubt anyone would want to work on the project til after the test even I wouldn't want to. For the idea of the project, I didn't care too much, but I found a group that wanted to do a chemical species project. I thought it would be a good idea and that it was different to a truss. For the second midterm, I don't think it'll be too difficult. The hardest part might be the finite difference or the Gaussian Elimination. I felt that I stressed to much on the first test, and worried that I could have made a mistake because it felt like I knew everything and that the test was too easy. In fact it created more mistakes on my test and I think over studying for a test is a bad thing. It took too much of my time doing unnecessary studying. I also feel like I do better when I don't study or if I do study, studying more than 4-5 hours hurts me more. I remember taking a class and took the first test and got decent grade on it. I told myself that I would study harder and when the next test came I got a lower grade even though I studied hard for it. It could also be that the second test was harder, but then when the next test came I studied the bare minimum and got a really good grade. Overall, passed the class with a B but it felt weird with the up and down grades. Sidetracked a bit but my thoughts for this exam is to study enough not too much.