CS1231 Midterm: Reflections

I was kinda concerned about the difficulty level of the paper rising, since this was the first open book test for CS1231. (apparently the past exams were not open book)

Finishing the mcqs in around 10mins gave me some confidence, but the structured questions scared the hell out of me..... Even though I had 50mins left. -_-|| Especially the first order predicate logic questions. That made me realise that I had spent too much time on the Relations and Sets chapters. (I didn't understand them very well before the mid-term break)

Prof Bressan was standing next to me; staring at my answers for the predicate logic question. I was feeling so terrible because I was panicking as soon as I realised that I wasn't able to converse in predicate logic after all! All I can do is read them. It's kinda like Japanese. I can read and sorta understand *some* Japanese, but I can't speak or write Japanese fluently. Guess I need much more practice on that.

Having spent so much effort and time on the Relations chapter, I was expecting to breeze through the last question. BUT NOOOO..... The panicky feeling from the predicate question remained, and I took a very long time to understand the question. By some stroke of luck, I somehow managed to prove (contrapositive proof, I think) the first part of the question. (but I omitted the proof to show that there exists an X such that x is related to y. Damn, I just thought of the answer when I woke up this morning, after only 6 hrs of sleep. If only I realised that letting y=x would result in a singleton where xRx!!!)

Sadly, I left the last page blank because I couldn't even understand the question after all that panicking. Sigh. How could I have spent THAT much time panicking?? Strangely, I thought of the answer after showering last night. Maybe it's really true that people are the most creative when they're in the bathroom. :P

Undoubtedly, this paper was much harder than those in the previous years. Maybe I have not prepared well enough. :/ Maybe nearly getting hit on the head by a huge tree branch (while walking to technoedge) before the exam was a bad omen? :P (be careful if you hear a loud crack from above while walking under tall trees! If I had walked a step slower, that damned branch would definitely have knocked the top of my head, spot on.)

Let us all seek solace in the fact that this isn't the paper which constitutes 60% of our final grade.

This means that attaining that A+ (or some variation of A) is not impossible, just kinda improbable if I don't practice even more questions for the finals.

We have about 2 months left. That's a lot of time.

Let's all continue working hard towards that goal! :D