<p>I'm currently in my freshman year and I'm attending a pretty prestigious university hoping to major in chemical engineering. After studying pretty hard for a chemistry midterm, I still scored a std. dev. below the average (C+) and now I'm seriously depressed. This trend has been going on for a while now and I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. Honestly, I manage my time pretty well and I feel like I know the material well enough to get at least a B... What really sucks is that all my friends did really well on this midterm which makes me feel even more insignificant. To top it off, I really need a B in this class if I have any hope of transferring into the college of my desired program. I read, understand the concepts, do problems, understand the math behind the problems, help my friends who score better than I do with the material, and I STILL do poorly? There must be something I'm doing wrong because I cannot accept that as what I'm capable of. Does anyone have any suggestions to how I can improve academically or at the very least, on midterms alone?</p>
<p>On these midterms, are you genuinely messing up questions that have black-and-white answers, or are you losing point on subjective grading?</p>
<p>Maybe nerves could have something to do with this? If you get nervous during a test and forget how to do problems that you were able to do when preparing for the test that could be a problem…</p>
<p>Have you gone over the midterm yet to see where you lost points?
It might help you to meet with your professor or at least the TA to get their feedback, too.</p>
<p>I have not received the test yet but once I do, I will scrutinize it to see what I did wrong and why. On my last test, most of the errors were from erroneously applying concepts it seems. However, I was pretty nervous for the last midterm because preceding the test, I had to write an in class essay which I didn’t think I would do well on (but I did -_-). I think switching gears like that throws me off a bit but not to the extent that my grade(s) would be impacted this severely.</p>
<p>From everyone’s feedback, I’d surmise that nerves could be a contributing factor and I’m losing points from subjective grading.</p>
<p>This is why I study only the night before, or few hours before class.
So that If I do bad, I know its because I could have studied harder
If I do okay, I’m happy, it is more than I deserve
If I did really well, I must be genius.</p>
<p>I do not read the book, I study off the previous exams
and try to solve as much problems as I could.</p>
<p>If nerves are a problem that may be hard to fix. Maybe mentally preparing and trying to calm yourself down before the test may help. Usually the more you study the less nervous you will be but I think what is happening is that after getting a C from hardwork you are not believing and not feeling confident which is probably the biggest contributor to pressure. Maybe if you try to think of the test in a different way something like “I got a C last time so I shouldn’t have much trouble scoring higher than that” you know? If you can tell yourself that you did the best you could in preparing for this test and whatever grade you are going to get on it is going to be the best grade you could have gotten then you should be fine with what you get on the test and should also feel less pressure knowing you gave it your best.</p>