Well that was disappointing.

The Applied Maths A-Level on Monday didn't go very well.

I was well pleased with Paper I, I worked solidly for the whole three hours, and completed around 85% of the paper, which is pretty good for what it is.

Paper II however was a disaster. Of the ten questions available, I hadn't studied one of those topics (too complicated for the amount of time I had) so I was down to nine of which I had to choose seven. I worked two perfect questions, and one nearly perfect, but the remaining six questions were not good.

Of course, one of the topics I knew really really really well didn't show up. Of COURSE.

Of those six, I'll admit that one or two I should have known, but a couple were in forms I had never seen before. These two were both "prove that x equals y" but I just couldn't get x to equal y, it was maddening.

Although I only needed to work four of those remaining six, I couldn't manage to complete a single one so I worked all six partially. I'm not sure of the rules (if they count your best questions out of those attempted, or if they just count the first seven you attempted) but it was the best I could do at the time.

Here's how bad it was - out of the whole of Malta, there were only about fourteen people registered for the exam, one of whom did not show up at all. In Paper II, one guy left after two hours (with an hour still to go), followed shortly after by another four. Now there is no way you can work that paper in two hours, so these people were basically abandoning a lost cause.

By 18:50, with ten minutes to go, there were just six of us left.

I had, honestly, done everything I could do. I heaved a sigh, and I heard a couple of others do the same. Sod it, I said, and began to pack up, and I laughed when I saw that three other people had also decided, at the same time, to do the same thing.

We walked out of there leaving behind two die-hards, one of whom it seemed was only waiting for the other.

I'm quite annoyed and disappointed at the way things turned out - if the questions had been of a different form, I'd have done much better. This exam has cost me around Lm45 in textbooks and Lm30 in exam fees (the late application fee was Lm20, ouch). Besides that, I've been studying in my lunchbreak for months, studying on buses, studying in cafes, slogging through the syllabus.

So it represents quite an investment in time and effort too. The other students are doing this as part of their education but on the other hand they have twenty hours a week of lectures, whereas I have a full-time job, they get a stipend for being students and I don't, they get free tuition and I don't, and they get free books and I don't.

On the other hand, I don't have to worry about getting into University and they do, msieken, plus most of them also had another A-Level, three Intermediates and the Systems of Knowledge to worry about :-)

But yeah, I'm still disappointed about it.

I've been trying to phone the Matsec office all week to ask if I can sit the resit even if I passed the exam, but no-one ever answers the phone. Maybe the numbers in the phonebook are incorrect, who knows. However I just read on the website that students sitting the Matriculation Certificate can register for resits irrespective of what grades they got in the first session, and I imagine that it would apply to Single Subject candidates too. (Because I registered for just one subject, not for the whole caboodle that is the Mat Cert).

I want to resit because it would be a shame to go through all this and just walk away with a low grade, so if there's a second chance going, I'd like to take it. *looks at her textbooks with renewed hope*

Well, two months to go before the results are out. If you know anyone who just did their O-Levels or Mat Cert, be extra-nice to them during this time because it can be very stressful just waiting!

Me, I spent the rest of this week enjoying not studying in my lunchbreak (instead I'm re-reading Sqaq l-Infern (Book I of the Fiddien trilogy) before diving into my brand-new copy of Wied Wirdien (Book II)), and also watching DVDs in the evenings, aaaaah.

Comments

[Pawlu]

Yep, to my knowledge you'll be able to take a resit - a couple of people in my year had done that to get a better grade for particular course requirement at University, so it has been done before.

Still, it could also just be post-exam jitters that're driving you nuts. Best of luck with the waiting for the results.

[Athena]

I really hope that in the end you did really well - sometimes stress makes you think you did worse than you actually did. Whatever the results say, you get an A from me - it's a really tough subject and I think it's great that you're pursuing things that interest you.

[Owen]

Don't give up. Sometimes you feel you haven't done well in an exam and still get on a grade. Don't forget, it feels worse for you when you're in the thick of it

[hsejjes]

I will keep my fingers, eyes, toes and everything else that can be crossed, just for you.