Wohn, wohn, wohn...

So I bombed my first test last night.

Like, really bombed.

And before you ask, no, this is not some Jessica-mentality where bombing a test means getting an 85%. I mean, I really, epically failed, like I'm hoping for a 65%.

Normal people bombing.

Needless to say, this is more than a little unsettling. As a person that has always been fantastic at school without really needing to try all that hard, this is an extremely humbling moment.

And not a humbling moment like when someone says they're 'humbled' by winning an Oscar. What? No. You're not humbled, you just won a frakkin' prestigious award. That's the opposite of humbling. The other guys who lost, they're humbled. Learn English.

Anyway, there are a myriad of explanations and excuses as to why I did poorly on this test. They're perfectly plausible, and I really shouldn't let this get to me so much. Allow me to take a minute and rant about some of them.

One - The professor mentioned that this would be primarily a design test, so that's what I prepared for. However, as it turned out, the majority of the questions were terminology based, which I hadn't worked on.

Two - I was stuck in traffic for an hour and a half before getting to the exam. And despite leaving work early anticipating a bit of traffic - only to be met with an enormous amount for no reason, I only made it to class with seconds to spare. I was frazzled, and therefore a bit off my game.

Three - I have a tendency to over-think situations, making them out to be more complicated than they are. One of my major flaws, if you will. So on the first part of the test, which I should have nailed, I ignored my gut instinct to cater to my over-thought logic. STUPID! And it will have cost me 15 points.

Four - During the last couple years of my college career, I was spoiled by teachers who allowed open book/open note tests. They realized that the value in engineering was not necessarily memorizing equations, circuits and timing diagrams, but rather knowing where to find the information and how to use them in applications. Definitely not the case for this class.

Now there are two ways I can think of this situation, My first instinct (and what I did a lot of last night) is to freak-out and beat myself up and wallow in my failures, whining about how this shouldn't be happening to me.

Or two, I can learn from my mistakes, focus on the positive, brush myself off and work my toosh off to prove myself and my mastery of the subject matter. After all, success builds character and failure reveals it, right?

So that's what I'm going to do. For example, regarding the first question I so stupidly missed, I will now forever remember that Disconnects A & B are disconnects with data transfers and Disconnects 1 & 2 are disconnects without data transfers. 

And even if he doesn't curve, and I end up needing to drop the class, it won't be the end of the world. Honestly, the course is becoming so specific that it really won't have any practical applications for me outside of the classroom, plus I'll have more time to focus on other things - like side electronics projects, improving my Spanish and exercising.

As the great Benjamin Franklin once said, "I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong." 

Everything in life is a learning experience, and me? I'm certainly going to learn from this one.

I can't be Wonder Woman every day.