mathieutozer.com

Felt like a bit of an old hack walking onto the exam venue today, seeing people last minute cramming in the stairwell before they went in.

I also felt awful because I knew the exam was going to be evil, and I didn't have any friends to chat with and complain about how evil it was going to be before the exam.

Thoughts I was having:
"With all the colour and wonder in the world, why the hell am I sitting in a drab Caufield racecourse with thousands of people in rows scribbling lame answers to questions on paper?"
"I feel like just running away to live a life in Brazil"
"What would an intelligent agent do in my situation? Maximise his utility given his current knowledge base and precepts of the world"
Etc etc

I spent the rest of my time observing all the different groups of people. How you can see the geeks over there, the commerce students over here. I thought about how many high strung hours have I spent sitting at the Caufield racecourse.

My head was in another world, all I could think was "I'm a miserable failure and I know nothing about what this course requires of me".

Finding seat 1415, and snapping the Monash ID onto the desk (something I mentally note as a milestone in each exam), I was still full of miserable dread. Not really a healthy kind of head space.
The invigilator checked the underside of my buscuits for cheating notes.

The announcer made one admission to human-ness, reading "Please check the the paper you recieve is the one you were hoping for!" This is the first time I've ever heard anything that deviated from the norm.

The paper actually turned out to be alright. The stress of it all dropped away as I read though it. Sure, I couldn't answer it all, but it wasn't going to be something that I would be battling to write anything for every single question.

I ended up leaving about 1 quesiton blank, because I had NO IDEA and I made guesses at another 2 or 3, but the rest I had something to say. And I did it all in an hour. In a 3 hour exam. Hmmmm... I know the lecturer isn't given over to verboseness, perhaps his his admission to not wanting long answers to have to mark for hours and hours? The faculty only has limited man hours.

It remans to be seen whether I pass this or not, but my current head space is certainly an improvement on the past week, where I was certain I didn't have what it takes.

I'm going to the gym.