fast forward

Wow--July went by fast.

The last time I posted, I had just started class, and now I'm done and it's all over. The MCC math class was a bit disappointing. I thought I'd get out early each day, but in fact the teacher had us stay the whole day. Sure, we could have just left early, but she never said it was okay, so we didn't.

I took and passed my math content exam. I studied a lot for the exam, trying to refresh my memory of all the things I learned oh-so-many years ago. Ten days of class (even 8am-4pm classes) are not enough to learn everything you need to pass the exam. I just focused on familiarizing myself with the different types of questions and the basic rules/theorems I needed to know to answer the questions.

I wasn't very confident going into the exam because to my dismay, about 10-15 percent of the questions were going to be statistics. I never learned statistics. I took a mathematical statistics class at BYU, but I remember it being so over my head that I finished the class and promptly emptied my head of anything I may have learned in the class. In other words, the problems I studied for the exam didn't even sound remotely familiar. I did what I could to learn any basic statistics, and in the end it worked out. The test had 11 stat questions, and I only missed one. I'm sure I got credit for a couple of good guesses.

Overall, I missed 10 questions on the 80 question exam. I'm not sure how it is scored, but I got a 279 out of 300. A score of 240 is the minimum passing score. The exam actually has 90 questions, but 10 of the questions are non-graded field questions. I had 5 hours to take the exam and I took all but 4 1/2 minutes of that 5 hours. Two and a half hours into the exam, I was only on question 36, so I stopped obsessing about checking and re-checking my answers and picked up my pace a bit. I finished the last question with 10 minutes left, and then went back and checked a few of the questions I wasn't sure about.

Through this experience I learned a few things about myself:
1. I am a good test taker. I don't think this has always been true, but when faced with difficult multiple choice questions, I am able to work through the problems and use good problem solving techniques to find the right answer.

2. I have a high tolerance for doing math. This is why I am a math person. I'm not the most intelligent person, but I am persistent. I could have easily taken 6 or 7 hours to take the exam and I would have been fine with that. Many people give up on math problems after a very short amount of time, but that has never been me.

3. I am a "how" person, not a "why." I realized that I know how to do a lot of math, but I'm not too sure why it is useful. This is awful. All I can say to a curious student is, "engineers and physicists use it." What kind of answer is that?

4. I have retained much more information over the years than I thought I had. I talked with the math teacher that took Calculus for me this year (so I wouldn't have to teach it) and she said that she only agreed to teach it this one year. I should expect to teach it next year--and you know what...I'm okay with that. I was terrified to face my weaknesses, but now that I know I'm not as weak as I feared, I look forward to making my weaknesses into strengths.