Well, I did it. The written qualifier is over. It was the biggest, most stressful test of my life and through the whole thing I was weirdly...calm. I swear I could feel the peace of Christ just sitting on top of my panic like one of those huge guys in a cartoon sitting on the villain. I got there early of course, and I was just calm. Zen.
I had spent weeks trying to memorize the hundreds of formulas we learned in the past 3 semesters. I thought I had them down cold. As soon as the prof handed me the test, they left. Just walked right out of my head. The only thing I could remember was Snell's Law. Which is a nice, fundamental optics law that was utterly useless to me. I had nothing else. I eventually dragged out the lens makers equation, which also turned out to be useless.
But it didn't bother me. I knew that I didn't have a single mathematical thing in my head to draw on. I just had all the concepts. I would have to explain everything in words. And it didn't bother me. I should have been freaking out. Some of those equations would have been incredibly useful. But I just stayed calm, and kept working. There's a better than 50/50 chance I passed, assuming I don't mess up my oral exam next week.
I am unbelievably glad that it's over. Even with the rest of the exam ahead, I feel like I've passed the major hurdle. I just need to hang in there, brush up on the topics I ignored in the exam and stay calm. I won't know for another 3 weeks if I passed or not, but whatever the outcome, the rest of the semester will be so much easier from here on out.
I'm going to take at least tomorrow off, and hopefully write a good 'real' post or two on not-optics before I have to dive back in and finish off the beast. But tonight, rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment