Wanna hear my drunken story of test trauma?

[tedoll78]

(very intoxicated right now.. and I want to share with someone!)

I'm now officially halfway through my medical radiography program - it's flying by!! My classes came to an end today with two finals: one in radiation biology, and the other in cross-sectional anatomy. Radiation biology would be a slam-dunk for me; I needed only about an 82 to get an 'A' in the class, so I sailed through that test.

Anatomy though.. what a devil of a class! We have a 7-point grading system, which means that anything under a 93 is a 'B.' No curve, and very limited rounding. I rode the 93/92 grade line for the entire semester, and missed one day of class. Well, someone informed me that I missed a quiz on that day (ZERO), sinking my quiz average, and my overall average to a 90+1/2. I didn't do the math exactly, but my gut told me that I'd need a 98 or a 99 on the final to get an 'A.' Did I mention that the final would be on brain anatomy? Yeah..

We took the test at 845am. Only 50 questions. Damn. That meant I'd probably need to get 1 wrong.. at most. Multiple choice. But they aren't ordinary multiple choice. Many of the questions are like this:

========================================================
"Which of the following statements is not false?"

Statements:
1. Each ventricle of the brain has choroid plexus.
2. The foramen of Luschka allows CSF to flow from the 3rd ventricle to the 4th.
3. The 3rd ventricle is best demonstrated in an axial plane.
4. The thalamus forms the lateral walls of the 3rd ventricle.

a. 1 and 4 only.
b. 2 and 3 only.
c. 1, 2, and 3 only.
d. 1, 3, and 4 only.
e. 1,2,3, and 4.
=========================================================

That's the type of questions found on our program's tests. Really, they like to almost use double negatives in their questions, just to trick us. "Which one isn't not true?" Sheesh.

{sidebar: This is gonna sound crazy.. I have an internal orchestra. Yes, it sounds crazy. There's this orchestra inside my head that plays background music to my life. Trumpets will blare when someone important walks in. Violins will eerily quiver when I'm about to open a door in a strange circumstance. There is a drumroll when I get test grades back. ... For most of this test, there was an abosolute cacaphony of thunder in my hear, with violins furiously playing in the background, only to occassionally shriek at key moments. It wasn't making things any easier for me.}

I began the test. "This isn't so bad," I thought to myself, but my heart was pounding like crazy. But then I heard people silently cursing to themselves around me. Cursing the instructor. Maybe it was bad - maybe I was fooling myself. I finished it pretty quickly, going back over the questions two more times to make sure that I was happy with the answers. Checking to make sure that I bubbled that Scantron sheet perfectly. But still, there were a few questions I was leery of - my anatomy exams ALWAYS have something that escapes me. I was to wonder for several hours more.

The instructor immediately left to run them through the scantron, while we were taking the rad bio test. Then, we all waited in the hallway for our grades. She walked up to me with a perfect poker face and handed me the scantron. It had a smiley face sticker on it.. and a 98. But was it actually a high enough score to drag me back above a 93? I had no calculator on me! At that point (according to the instructor), you could see all of the blood drain from my head in a whoosh of about 10 seconds. I could feel my heart.. it was about to burst-through my chest. She saw this, laughed, leaned into my left ear, and whispered that, yes, it was enough! I'd be getting my A. I nearly fainted right then and there. After all of that agony, that frustration.. I pulled this outta my ass. Feels so good.

God, I'm such a geek - look at all I've typed! Haha! (and I wouldn't really care about a sectional anatomy grade if I weren't applying to CT or MRI school when I'm done with this.) What's also great is that I lost my seasonal job at the IRS last night, so now I get to collect unemployment benefits until the call me back in January, lol! Life's good! B-)

[hang a left]

1. Congratulations.

You have an orchestra, I have a board of directors, always arguing.

[cally]

2. Congrats

I'm impressed that you got the A and that you shared with us.