I’m currently in an Intro to Algorithms and Data Structures class. The class is mostly just the professor going through his lecture on whatever the topic is and the students taking notes/asking questions. We meet 3 days a week and out of the 8 weeks we have met I have missed a total of 2-3 days of class. I have done well in previous CS homework (avg 90%) and I regularly finish/get to the points I’m supposed to in the lab.Its pretty easy for me to find a solution/break down the problem and at least get a general idea of what I’m supposed to do. It takes me a while to get all the “code” statements working like they should but I never cheat/ask for help from my classmates. I studied studying about 2 days before the actual exam based on what I saw from the difficulty of the practice test.
Most of the stuff is conceptual so it’s hard for me to really understand what he wants when it comes to tests. I went through the stuff he told us to and I(thought), I had a pretty good understanding of most of what he wanted us to learn. I took the practice test he posted, knew the answers to the questions without any searching/looking up and without even coding really. The “practice” exam consisted of mostly questions that tested concepts like…“what output”…, “what happens when X…”. The actual exam was nothing AT ALL like what I had practiced with the practice midterm and it seems like most people in the class had the same reaction. I scored a 56% and now the best I could do in the class is like an 87%. I completely ran out of time on the test and didn’t leave myself enough time for a question worth 20% of the exam. But even with that it doesn’t explain how I lost so many other points? Am I just overconfident or is there actually something wrong.
I have a problem where I have to kind of re-read and like remind myself what I was thinking while taking the test. So i’ll be writing a statement and lose my train of thought and have to start over or use detail to re-write down parts of the problem or I won’t remember what I was thinking. After the exam was over I could almost immediately realize what I had gotten wrong and the actual correct solution to the problem. I have this problem of running out of time because I have to keep re-reading and making sure I don’t lose myself. What should I do in the future to make sure that I don’t choke/fail?