Pastelland Forum

dVanDaHorns wrote:

Well, stress never influenced on me. I am a pretty nervous person, but exams? No problem. What bothers me is something I can't really define. It's like this: I can follow and fully, and I mean fully understand all math lessons at school, I can do my homework, I practice, but when it's time for test, it's like something in my brain just cracks and I lose myself. I don't have this issue with other subjects, just math. Not really sure why. I could practice a bit more or try a bit harder, but it wouldn't make much difference since I always somehow manage to fu*k up the whole thing on the test. Funny thing is, I laugh at my own mistakes when I see them.
And the worst part? When the teacher reads our names from the best grade to the worst and I'm ALWAYS somewhere at the end of the list. It's so depressing to watch other people stand up and get their tests while you're just sitting there PRAYING for a D. And then you don't even get a D. You get an F. *sigh*

Maybe I should just practice more. Maybe I shouldn't have gone to math gymnasium. Then again, math is the only thing I love and, at the same time, could make a career of.

Just saying, don't let this issue keep you from achieving your goal of a career in math. Exams do not dictate your level of intelligence, as they tend to be a really bad method of evaluating how well you understand the material.
I know what you mean. I have a few friends who are exactly the same: they know what they're doing, and love it, but can't write a test on it to save their life. I have had that happen to me on a few tests before as well. So don't let that detract you from your love of math!

Yeah, that's right. Actually many teachers do have mistakes too, and if they don't so much it's because of many, many years of teaching the same things to students again and again. And they are just like you, but with more experience; they also had to go through all those exams when they were young. So don't be sad about it, you don't have to be perfect, just like what you're doing, and everything will come in time.

Whatever virus that crashed my IE has crashed the entire computer.So I can't post any pictures for now.

dVanDaHorns wrote:I...honestly don't know. We've (me and my class) been too busy for our next finals coming up to check with his other questions. If he doesn't curve, we're getting him fired, at least from teaching.

I personally believe that he does give a sh*t, just that he's got no clue how to balance an exam accordingly. He was, overall, a fairly good teacher, and he and my class were on good terms, even after the crappy midterm. So...I just...don't know. Thankfully, I won't have him as a prof again, so as long as I pass, I'm good!

Fight the power yo.

It must be nice, though. Moving on to next semester without having to worry about that shitty professor. I've had a lot of good professors this semesters, and before sign-ups were even open to freshmen like myself all of their classes were filled up. Conversely, every calculus one class that WASN'T taught by the professor I had this semester- whom is the only professor I truly disliked- was filled. Hell, they were OVERfilled somehow.
I keep watching for openings. I'm not always so optimistic though.

dVanDaHorns wrote:EDIT: Oh hay, Raxas is back!

Shh you saw nothing.
You will forget you ever saw me and instead post in the shitventure thread.

Raxas wrote:Fight the power yo.

It must be nice, though. Moving on to next semester without having to worry about that shitty professor. I've had a lot of good professors this semesters, and before sign-ups were even open to freshmen like myself all of their classes were filled up. Conversely, every calculus one class that WASN'T taught by the professor I had this semester- whom is the only professor I truly disliked- was filled. Hell, they were OVERfilled somehow.
I keep watching for openings. I'm not always so optimistic though.

Crap, man! I hate those sign-ups. You pretty much need to be on the site and registering within 5 minutes of it opening in order to get into the exact class you want, and within half an hour to guarantee you won't end up in the worst class of them all. It ticks me off, which is why I am so glad my professors are pre-assigned in my program. Usually, they are plain awesome. But every once in a while, ESPECIALLY in Calculus, we get the ones who just don't give a crap...

Although I gotta say he was nowhere near as bad as my stats prof last year, who really shouldn't have been there. (The year before's class got their stats prof fired, so they stuck the best TA they had that term as the prof. She spoke...maybe 3 words of English? So the entire experience ended up being just as frustrating for her as it was for us. Since it wasn't really her fault, we didn't do anything, (heck, we even applauded her at the end for trying!), as I assume she wouldn't accept the position if she was offered it again.

Raxas wrote:Shh you saw nothing.
You will forget you ever saw me and instead post in the shitventure thread.

Your Jedi mind tricks do not work on one with as patheticly low an art skill level as myself! >: D
Mooohoooohaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaahhuh? Who was I talking with?

What wasn't fair was the number of questions. The test was written in such a format, that had it all been questions straight from our assignments, and all we did was regurgitate numbers all exam long, we would have barely had time to finish. Factor in the critical thinking, and you get this convoluted mess of an exam.

Our informatics teacher likes giving tests like this. Also, she puts questions and tasks that were on the NATIONAL competition because we, as she says, can do that and if we can't, we shouldn't have come here. Wtf

That still kinda sounds like a stress issue to me. If you were in a relaxed state of mind your brain wouldn't 'crack' so to speak.
What I do get from this is that, as far as mathematics goes, you're just a shitty test taker. Which isn't a bad thing, really. A lot of geniuses don't perform well in an academic environment.
It might help to discuss this with someone who has a similar problem. See how they handle it from a psychological standpoint. See if you can adopt any of their practices. There's got to be some way that you can mentally prepare yourself for tests. You'll figure it out, too, if you're really as passionate about mathematics as you say.

Yeah, I suppose it's a stress issue. What I don't understand is why only math? Why do only math exams drive me crazy?

And yes, I've asked others how do they handle the pressure and they said that I should just practice more. Bleh. I'll do it, but I'll also try to find my own way to deal with this problem. Thanks for the tip though.

That happens to me too. Sometimes I make unexplainable silly mistakes in exams or in works. And I think that's because I tend to do things quickly. I do check for errors, but I'm over-confident and sometimes assume a result is right if it looks right in first sight, when it's actually wrong :/

Hahah, there's also another problem about checking. I solve everything quickly too, but I like to save some time for thinking over some complicated questions which always somehow takes too much time and I'm left with mere minutes for checking. Which I almost never, or very reluctantly do. What makes me think that the solution is correct is its simplicity - it looks convincing while it's actually wrong.

Yeah, that's right. Actually many teachers do have mistakes too, and if they don't so much it's because of many, many years of teaching the same things to students again and again. And they are just like you, but with more experience; they also had to go through all those exams when they were young. So don't be sad about it, you don't have to be perfect, just like what you're doing, and everything will come in time.

I know I know, I've heard that so many times. I guess I'll just have to keep trying.

sundayfever wrote:Yeah, I suppose it's a stress issue. What I don't understand is why only math? Why do only math exams drive me crazy?

Hey, math hurts. Seriously.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Ad ... ne.0048076

The link posted above wrote:We show that, when anticipating an upcoming math-task, the higher one’s math anxiety, the more one increases activity in regions associated with visceral threat detection, and often the experience of pain itself (bilateral dorso-posterior insula).

ON A RELATED NOTE

RANT:


You can't attach links to your words with the [url=fuckin'whatever.com] things. It appears to be specifically blocked.
Why??
Why can't I make my posts pretty?

FU***NG SPAM! It shut down old Pastel Forum... Damn, SPAM killed Pastel Forum! And now it tries to destroy this forum...
Why noone fights with Spam? What does government do? They should killed those who send spams! I'm serious now. WHY DOES NOONE TRIES TO CLEAN INTERNET FROM SPAM?

You can't attach links to your words with the [url=fuckin'whatever.com] things. It appears to be specifically blocked.
Why??
Why can't I make my posts pretty?

We could post urls at first, but Mateusz seems to have blocked it. To block spam, I guess... So far it's working better than the captcha, but I don't think it's a good solution.

FU***NG SPAM! It shut down old Pastel Forum... Damn, SPAM killed Pastel Forum! And now it tries to destroy this forum...
Why noone fights with Spam? What does government do? They should killed those who send spams! I'm serious now. WHY DOES NOONE TRIES TO CLEAN INTERNET FROM SPAM?

There are many people who try... but sadly, the desire for money of some companies is much stronger. There are programs for a thousand dollars or so whose developers are working to break all new captchas and solutions to spam. Just for money... or maybe they are brainwashed and think that spam is legitimate? I agree that governments should implement laws to make spam disappear. And not just with small money penalties. Those companies have a lot of cash, the policy should be recovering all their non-legitimate money and sending them to jail.

See what I meant? URL blocking is probably not gonna solve the problem. Bots learn fast.

I thought of this: for new users there should be a button so that we can choose to accept it as a legitimate user or to mark it as spam, hiding that post from any view, or maybe deleting it. It wouldn't cause problems because we are all reasonable users here. And if we ever marked someone as spammer by mistake, he can always go ask some mod to revert it (bots can't do that, as far as I'm concerned >:D not that many users register very often here either). How about that? it's a good idea?...

Or, as was established on a BBphp forum, change the captcha for a question captcha