UMEP

It is now about 34 hours away from the first uni maths exam, and I've got no clue how I'm going to go.

With all of my other exams I've felt fairly confident about my knowledge of the course and that nothing much can throw me too off guard; its like the cliche about having a solid foundation, a deep knowledge of what is happening.

With uni maths, that foundation is more like the thin ice that forms across the lake- a strangely worded problem, or a slight mental blank, and I have as much of a chance of working out the problem as most of you who haven't done the subject.

Its funny how I always thought it was slightly disappointing how I didn't really have a clean 'cut' which signified the end of my VCE exams, because this subject isn't really a proper VCAA subject. I always thought that after chemistry it would be a kinda-not-really end to VCE while after uni maths its another sort-of-in-a-way ending too, so there wouldn't be a clear point where I can celebrate the end of my secondary schooling.

The disappointment stemmed from my belief that I could bludge my way through the subject and scrape through with some last minute cramming.


How wrong I was.


I've heard that the brain is one of the highest energy users out of all the organs in the body. Whether or not this is true, I wish there was a way I could measure my brain activity over the last week or so, or calculate how much content i've tried to force into it. I've been relearning the course, one intense, painful 'problem sheet' at a time.

I think I express myself pretty reservedly when I work; its usually only in the desperation of sporting arenas that I physically release my emotions. At most, I would clench my fists in quiet celebration at the end of a particularly hard english or chem exam, or possibly even after solving an annoying problem.

With umep, I can do full half minute celebrations after completing a single problem without getting it wrong, and slump my head into my hands when it is incorrect. That is how draining it can be.

It's funny because I always thought that a week and a bit would have been plenty of time, but the reality is I've been working far harder than I did for the vce exams and have desperately needed every minute of the break. People who did uni bio or accounting crammed their study in the day before the exam due to timetabling, and if it was anything like this, they must been absolutely BEAST.

To any fellow uni maths students reading this, hang in there. It's only a few more days left, and judging from just about everyone else, the light at the end of this long, dark, slippery and frustrating tunnel is very bright indeed.

Good Luck,
Loz