In Java class last night I learned that I managed to get a 97 on the makeup midterm that was offered because so many people failed the original midterm. I learned this because the professor decided to use the makeup midterm as a way for the whole class to review for the final next Monday. So he went to the white board with my test in hand and was using it as the template for reviewing the questions. It was plain to see that it was my test because it had my name written at the top of it and it was easy for everyone to see that I got a 97 on the test because it had a big 97 written in red letters at the top of it. For one reason or other people already knew that I didn’t need to take the midterm. The woman sitting next to me asked me why I took the midterm by saying “you didn’t need to retake the midterm?” I told her that it was good practice to do a graded exam that doesn’t have any risk of failure associated with it plus I always want to know what I don’t know. I also learned that two of the people who really had needed to take the midterm, one of whom was one of the more vocal students about the problems with the course, teaching style, etc. had taken the makeup test but both of their tests had mysteriously disappeared in the computer science office. So here I was sitting in a class with some people who didn’t feel particularly happy with the professor and the system with my 97 test score waving in front of them as a slap in their face.

I could feel the heat and daggers against my back. To make it worse the professor announced the scores on the test by saying that the scores were much higher than on the original test and that one person had gotten a 97 BUT that person didn’t really need to take the test. The woman next to me whispered to me that he was talking about me. She knew it. Then she went to chat with the man in front of me about their assembly language course. Apparently many students at BU are working through the Masters in Computer Science program. Maybe I should get a fancy sounding degree title like that. It sounds impressive and I like doing the work to learn the new technologies.