December 08, 2009

Bad Semester >.<

I don't think I'm going to be happy with my grades this semester. Not because they're not good - well, that too - but also because I have a feeling that they're not really going to be fair - not really going to reflect my knowledge. I'm only taking four courses, and by rights two of them should be pretty easy classes, with A's - Cross Cultural Journalism and 20th Century American History. The other two, Micro and Macro Economics and Biological Anthopology Lab, should be harder. By this I mean that I should work a moderate amount in the first two and get A's, and work fairly hard in the latter two and get B's. I would be happy with that.

However, how it's ending up is that I think I'll have worked hard in Cross Cultural Journalism and gotten a B (please not C! :(), worked not hard at all in Economics and gotten a B, worked hard in Biological Anthropology and barely gotten an A (please not B! :() and worked the normal amount in 20th Century American History and gotten an... ??? (Probably an A)

Why? Because Cross Cultural Journalism is loads of work, is mostly just memorizing jargon that exists only within the class, and is graded 100% subjectively, and I apparently have the harshest TA, by far. I'll probably get a B, but in the end it's ENTIRELY up to them, and based on my understanding of the class I should be fairly comfortable with an A, not worried about the possibility, however unlikely, of a C.

I don't know how to feel about Biological Anthropology. I've put in a good amount of work and I've felt like I understood it quite well, and that's been reflected in all of my assignments, but somehow I managed to get low A's and high B's on most of the tests... and then there was the Lab Final today. The actual Final is still ahead, but the Lab Final was incredibly hard - worse than I'd dared to imagine while studying. I don't feel like we were prepared for it, and based on the shocked, horrified, frightened expressions of my classmates, I don't think they did either. Since my A wasn't super firm before, this could possibly knock me to a B. I'm going to study hard for the actual Final, though, and keep my fingers crossed...

Econ? Fair enough. If I'd worked hard, I could have gotten an A. I didn't work hard. I wasn't interested enough in the topic, and CCJ kind of sapped my life force academically this semester. A B is fine in a class some struggle for C's in.

History? If I get an A, all is forgiven. If I get a B? Bad news. The entire grade in the class is based on three essays - two in class, one take home. They're graded by TAs very quickly and no comments are written on them. I got a 93% on the first one and an 89% on the second one. So, everything depends on the last in class one... I'll study hard.

Well, now I know I can study hard for History and Bio Anthro... that's what I can do. But I feel like so much of my grades this semester is out of my control, and it's not a good feeling.

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