Test Number One: Basic Skills

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEPHANIE GATES! (her actual birthday day was today)

The thought of my first test this year at Uni hadn’t dawned on my mind until last night when I realised how much I still had left to revise. Although the topic of the test was “Basic Skills”, there wasn’t a lot that looked very basic to me when I went through the practice questions online. Feeling unprepared I decided to do some good ol’ last minute cramming. Fortunately enough, some stuff started coming back to me from last year as I was reading through the notes, namely things like Gaussian Elimination and matrix multiplication. By the end of the night I felt like I had a lot of it downpacked, though some of the integration questions still looked a bit dodgy.

This morning the plan was to get up early and study the rest of the topics for the test tonight. Well, that plan kind of fizzled. I did wake up and stagger to the lounge, but then I thought I’d take a “short rest” on the sofa. Which turned into another half an hour. There wasn’t much time for study by the time I had a shower and got my gear ready; I had to walk to the bus stop myself. Rose was on the bus when I hopped on at Te Atatu Road. I told her about my test tonight and got out some practice questions I had printed earlier. Luckily for me, Rose is the whiz kid at maths and she talked me through some of the integration questions I had question-marked. Phew! That was a relief, thanks Rose

It was the first time this year I had caught up with Rose on the bus today, but the reunions didn’t stop there. While I was studying at the Engineering cafe after my lecture, Ethan and Emily (from Robotics) spotted me at the table and came to join me. It’s been ages since I’ve seen Emily and it was great to find out she’s studying Engineering and Commerce. While I’m on the topic, I must also mention that I bumped into Toni (from Robotics) yesterday on the staircase too! She’s ALSO doing Engineering this year, so hopefully I’ll be bumping into them a lot more often this year.

Also today I met up with a guy from Student Life called Chris. Student Life is “a movement of university students who believe that every student at uni in New Zealand should have at least one opportunity to hear and respond to Jesus Christ”. During Orientation Week I indicated on a survey that I’d like to hear more about their group, so today’s meeting was about getting to know what they do around campus and seeing how I can get involved. Chris talked me through one of their magazine/booklets which had articles about God, successful studying, life’s big questions, etc. He told me about the weekly meetings they have and it was quite a good chat. It’s a pity their meetings are on at the same time as my lecture on Friday, but I’m sure there’ll be other ways I can meet other Christians on campus.

I attended my last two lectures for the day but I was thinking about the test the whole time. When my lectures finished at 5pm, I went to join Luke and Jesse who were studying up on level 5 in the Engineering building. It’s always great studying with those two before an Engineering test or exam, because I always learn heaps in such a short amount of time. I mentioned it to them while I was with them and I was saying how we’d be soo much smarter if we crammed hard like that every day!

Luke was in the same room as me for the test, 060-298 in the OGG Building. Not knowing if I was fully prepared or not, I was a bit weary at first going into the exam room. To my surprise however, the test turned out to be easier than I thought. There were a couple of questions there that were a bit iffy, but overall I reckon it wasn’t too bad. Luke’s mum took me home afterwards and I managed to make it home before anyone else. It was such a lonely place with nobody at home for an hour; only the TV and the cat were there to keep me company. I’m glad the first test is done and dusted, but when I think about the cramming that went on before the test tonight, I have to remind myself again that it was just Basic Skills. Please let the rest of the year not get too much harder!