Mercy Marks, Maybe?

I was told that my theology prof is a hard marker. He even told us himself that for some reason people did miserably on his final exams. So his way of making us do better is by splitting it into two and giving one as a midterm. If you ask me, it actually makes it harder because by splitting it, you now can make the first one as hard as your final, then there's the final itself that is probably the same difficulty.

I kind of got into the room and shuffled my way closer to the back because I didn't like being watched when writing an exam. The second I got my test, it dawned on me that I haven't written any midterm or final since April of 2009. And then I panic'd. I tried to make sure my name was nice and legible. I made sure to use a blue pen (but really, I should've brought a pencil) so it's easier to read than black ink. I tried to remember any test strategies that I have ever been taught. One of them was to make sure you skim the test first to make sure everything is fine. So I read the first question on the multiple choice, and I had a good idea of what the answer was. So I flipped over to the fill in the blanks part, took a skim, and knew right away that I am going to fail this test. Then I got to the short answer part. Seeing that the short answers are half of the tests worth in marks, and seeing the kinds of questions that it was asking, I kind of wanted to put my hand up and ask to be excused because I am feeling sick. After wiggling my way through the 15 multiple choice questions, I knew that I had probably 75% of those right for sure. If my fail-logic and guesses were good to me, maybe I'll get a few more. Then I got to the fill in the blanks and I wanted to die right there. I think that of the 10ish blanks, I filled in only 1 or 2 with confidence. For the rest of them, I just found a BS answer and slapped it in. There were still a few blanks, but I had absolutely zero idea of what the answers would be. So I flipped to the last section.

My, oh my. I kind of wished that I was writing the wrong midterm or went into the wrong room or something. But I looked up and thought, nope - these are my classmates. Other than maybe one question, I put down your typical church answers, hoping for some mercy marks maybe. When I did what I could for the ones that I could, I looked at the clock and only 20 or 25 minutes have passed. And usually, if there was a question that I didn't know right away, I'd leave it blank and come back later to think it through. So I went back to check to make sure I got the multiple choices that I wanted, I proceeded to write a bunch of irrelevance to fill up the rest of my test. I knew that I wouldn't be able to suddenly have a magical appearing light bulb moment and have the answers in my head, so sitting in class fiddling with my pen would be nothing more than what it is: wasting time. So after about 40-45 minutes, I decided that I would just GTFO. I handed in the test and hung my head when I walked out. When I walked up to the front of the room though, I saw a few people that had blanks on the same questions that I came up empty on. So is it that the test really was that hard? Or were they just waiting for the perfect worded answer and get bonus marks?

Whatever it is, I don't feel good about my chances of passing this test. If I manage a 40-50%, that is probably what I will be content with. I'm really only expecting a mark in the 30s. If I suddenly miraculously get a grade over 50, then it means that God really wants me to do well to the point that he will intervene.

So anyways, school has never been my thing, I've been a B student with a couple of As at the very best. But nonetheless, this was quite the face smacking experience telling me that I really need to step up my game. But it's definitely too late for the midterm I'm going to write in a couple hours because I haven't studied a whole lot for that one either.

Mercy?