Yesterday I took my first math test in nearly a decade. It has been a long time since I felt racked by anxiety. I am not completely sure what it was that made me so nervous. I have been doing very well in class (getting a 94% on all the homework thus far) and felt I had a good grasp on all the concepts. I think what freaked me out was not being able to check my answers with a calculator. I will admit to being somewhat calculator dependent. But not quite in the way you may think. Unless it's some ridiculous numerical set (like 1,237,564.9860598 divided by 23.48596756, or the number 17) I will almost always try to do things in my head or write them out on paper first. It is then that I like to check my answers with the calculator.
The instructor decided, I am assuming unknowingly, to torture me by having a non-calculator portion of the test. I am thankful that the class period is two hours because the non-calculator portion of the test took me a little over an hour. I checked and rechecked and erased and redid and stared so hard at the paper I almost burned a hole right through it and the table underneath it. I swear at one point smoke was coming out my ears and the numbers in one linear equation jumped up and started doing the Chacha.
Regardless I survived. I think I actually did ok, but we'll see when I get the test back next week.
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