I last wrote at the beginning of October about the course in Nutrition that I am taking: "I realised with a very heavy heart that the course requires memorising the material but not necessarily understanding it." Of course, that was written before October 7, when the world had somewhat different priorities. After a pause of a week or two, I carried on learning - or at least, reading through - the material. At one stage I looked at the course's timetable and saw that I was far in advance of where I should be. So I stopped.
It was only after receiving an email from one of the course's tutors about two weeks ago that I realised that I had missed an exam that awards 50% of the course's marks. I immediately took the exam - this is an open book exam just like the practice MCQs but with a hard limit of 45 minutes. I didn't bother 'revising' for this exam; I knew what I knew and what I didn't know could be looked up, albeit as quickly as possible. I finished the exam with about five minutes to spare. I later explained to the tutor why I had missed the exam - both the local events and my disappointment with the course had contributed to this. I was told that I had received a B for the exam, but no numerical number.
For all of last week I was suffering from a bad cold: I didn't have an elevated temperature or headaches, but I produced phlegm in commercial quantities and my capability for thinking was greatly reduced. Friday and Saturday saw improvements in my condition, and yesterday (Sunday) I felt that at least mentally I was back to full capacity.
So I logged into the university website and discovered that I had missed the second compulsory exam that awards the other 50% of the course's marks. I waited for a lull at work (generally after lunch) then worked on this exam. It was harder, in that there were fewer questions to which I knew the answers without thinking, and some of the other questions defied my lookup capabilities. In the end, the exam cut off before I had answered all of the questions (maybe one or two were incomplete). Results won't be announced for another couple of weeks.
I imagine that I passed the course - my professional pride won't allow for anything else - but to be honest, I don't really care. At the moment, I don't have any intention of continuing these studies; I don't have any motivation and most of the other courses in the degree or certificate tracks don't really interest me. At least the function of this course - to see whether the course or subject or studying methods are suitable for me - has been successful. I dipped my toe in the water but didn't find it too much to my liking.
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 152 | Bits and pieces | Weather | |
| 436 | Watching the weight / 3 | Diet | |
| 660 | DCI Banks mistakes | DCI Banks, Peter Robinson | |
| 992 | Robbie Robertson - Testimony | The Band | |
| 1448 | A fruitful day, part one: "Building the life" (new song) | Song writing, Janis Ian | |
| 1449 | A fruitful day, part two: a conversation with my doctoral supervisor | DBA | |
| 1450 | A fruitful day, part three: continuing work on PrioXRef | Programming, Personal | |
| 1451 | Further thoughts on running Excel from a background thread | Programming, Delphi, Office automation |
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