Sanskrit exam.

[icarus]

The Sanskrit exam.

You know it's rough when you're picking through the test, trying to find individual words you can translate because entire sentences are a lost cause. Knowing that you've seen this before, dammit, but it's only barely familiar.

In my estimation, I got about 70% on this test.

I've never been in this position, of struggling so much. Normally I finish the test early and spend the last half hour double-checking my answers, adding details I left out, catching stupid slips. I don't normally find myself guessing. I know I'm in a class of classics majors, grad students, people who've already taken years of Hindi or who speak Hindi as their native language. I am infinitely jealous of the classics major who finished this test in 20 minutes, and I joined the group of laughing students afterward who said, "Oh, you just wanted to strangle her, didn't you? Augh."

I chanted, "I'm not jealous, I'm not jealous... oh hell, yes I am."

I'm used to being one of the "front row" students, you know, the Hermione type with her hand in the air, trailing the teacher home with questions after class. I'm getting used to trudging along, not aiming for the top of the class because that's totally out of reach, but instead just working on my memorization technique, putting my shoulder to the wheel and doing more drill, more drill. My performance sucked? Do better next time.

No matter how poorly I did, I do have one thing to look forward to:

Next quarter is going to be harder.



ETA: At our study group Sunday, the guy who's learned two years of Hindi and lived in Sri Lanka to study Sinhagalese debated whether to continue Sanskrit next quarter. He finally decided to stick with it, saying, "Well, I've suffered this long. Might as well make it worthwhile."

Yep. That's about right.

Comments

[electricandroid.livejournal.com]

drive by hugs - in the UK, all good, job interviews blowing my brain with their complexity but everyone likes me so far which is god. Now, for money :)

Hope all well with you since this bitch is over with, talk to you soon honey!

xxx

S

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Sounds good. You've planned well, so it's good to see the opportunities lined up for you like a box of candy. :)

I have this in my (and everyone else's) favor: the professor is a very generous grader. My average on the quizes was a 3.76, so that'll help, and homework gets full credit if it's done neatly and properly. My other grades may prop up how I did on this final.

It's one of the hardest languages in the world, some argue the hardest, so we'll see. It's like taking advanced physics. On the one hand, people see the depressed GPA. On the other hand, they'll look at your classes and note, "Wow, she took advanced physics." It's pretty clear that I'm not taking fluff.

Icarus

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

70% sounds DAMN good under the circumstances. Congratulations, and I'm not being sarcastic.

That's very encouraging.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

The subject is all memorization and keeping a variety of "levels" of memorization of the same sort of thing straight. I can feel my memory getting sharper because of the class, and my memorization of the paradigms did improve.

I can think of ways I could have done better:

1) I need to go back to the consistent daily study pattern I had a the beginning of the quarter.
Not letting myself leave the campus until I'd drilled my way through the next day's chapter had me in a much stronger position.

2) Less panicking, more study. :)
This is the sort of class where effort and time pays off. Instead of worrying, I need to sit down and just start recopying what's worrying me.

3) Better notes on the reading translations.
When I went back through my notes, they sucked. That meant that to study I had I redo all the translations. That was a big obstacle.

4) Better attendance.
My attendance was good, 92%, and much better than my norm with a morning daily class, but this is a subject where I can't even miss those five or six days (granted, one was a snow day when the U didn't close). 100% is unrealistic, I'll rebel and people do get sick, sleep through alarms, so I think I'm going to allow myself two days for next quarter.

5) "Extra" memorization.
When it came to the memorization, if it wasn't required, I didn't do it. This cost me a bit when vocabulary was used that hadn't been on a quiz.

Things that went well:

1) Much better attendance than my norm, and I showed on class days I wasn't prepared.

2) I've been very disciplined about using the Sanskrit alphabet, the Devanagri, instead of English romanizations. I found this helped when I was reading my notes for study.

3) Talking to the teacher. I should do this more, but I did make use of her office hours several times, and it was always invaluable. In the past I've chatted with professors after class, but office hours are so much better.

So. Um. There.

Wow that was detailed. I'm sure you're fascinated. ;)

Icarus

Re: That's very encouraging.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I am. I should keep these in mind for Portuguese.