21/5/12

Well as you know today was the day of my first exam, and I was a bit nervous about it!

I met my new scribe at 11am (5 and a half hours before the exam!), I cam away with no reason to complain so I was a bit happier about the whole thing, although as the day went on I was getting more and more panicked - what if they do what they usually do an *ask* all the things that I don't know?  What if using a scribe turns out to be an epic fail? Argh!

My scribe cut it a bit fine and turned up just a couple of minutes before the start time, but that was OK.  1630 came so off we went.  I whizzed through the questions.  Tripped up by one (about isotopic scrambling), but I came back to it at the end and put down something which should get a few marks.

Dictating turned out to be OK, it means that my answers read a bit funny 'cos apparently I don't talk in the same way that I write, but hey it's a chemistry exam not English so that shouldn't matter!

Section C of the paper (worth 33%) was initially very confusing. It bore a very strong resemblance to one of the examples in the lecture notes, but was slightly different, and the difference meant that the electron counts and things all worked out a bit strangely too.  I did consider that it might be an error on the paper but it seemed like a strange thing to get wrong to I continued, assuming that he'd just tried to throw in a curveball. Just as I was checking through my answers to the rest of the paper someone came in and said that there was a mistake (I was right!) and I had to do that question *again*.

But, despite the repeating of that question, and the fact that dictating is bound to be slower than writing, I still finished before the end of "normal time", leaving with an hour and a half to go...  I'm hoping this is a good thing and I haven't really messed it up!

This means that I officially have a new lucky watch (to be confirmed with the title when we get results if all has gone well).  Up until this point I hadn't worn it, but today I thought I would...

With that out of the way I have until next Wednesday to get ready for my next (and last) exam.  And some coursework to do before Monday.  

Back to work for me then!