I woke up at 4:45 this morning to leave Sandy by 5:15 to make it to work by 5:45 where I worked until 11:45, and then proceeded to shop at Old Navy for an hour before studying all day where I bought a darling white eyelet skirt {$15!}-- my other one is too small and bordering immodest-- it was most necessary, and then I drove with the windows down blasting OneRepublic, which really isn't music you blast but I'm no Cholo so I blasted it away-- because I don't care about Provo boys with their windows half down staring at me belting out OneRepublic with my hair whipping wildly in the wind. Whew.
That was perhaps the world's longest run-on sentence, except maybe in the scriptures because I swear there is nearly a full page without any punctuation to signify the ending of a sentence. I suppose that's what happens when you're too tired to sleep and you write to unwind-- long run-on sentences. Regardless, the real purpose in my run-on sentence was to lead into Statistics.
I'm in Psych 301-- Psychological Statistics. Yes, it's just as gross as it sounds. Perhaps my most un-favorite class of all time. Keyboarding with Miss. Graham was better than this; Career choices with Mr. Stark might even have been better. Why do I hate Stats? Because I feel dumb, in a very depressing give-up-now there's-no-point kind of way.
I am not a math girl-- I have accepted that fact of my life and moved on. Obviously I am not a math major. BUT for my major of psychology I'm forced to endure statistics. And it's not my professor that makes the class terrible-- if anything he makes it less putrid and almost bearable with his jokes and random tangents-- it is the subject itself + the impossibility of my mind to comprehend linear regression and binomial whatevers and understanding the "sign test"-- which, by the way, can we please stop the use of double negatives, dear statisticians? It just complicates matters worse.
So today... I studied stats for-EV-er. I had a minor freak-out about Type 1 and Type 2 errors, so I called my Papa. As I'm telling my dad that I don't get it, this Asian boy next to me laughs. At me. The nerve. I wanted so badly to say,
"Hey! Not only am I not Asian, I'm a girl too! If you do the math the odds of me being a brilliant mathematician are stacked WAY up against me-- so stop laughing".
But I didn't say that. Because that little outburst would result in being shunned by library personnel and students, and it would require energy that I did not have, energy that was being supplied by the slowly dwindling effect of Diet Coke in my system.
Well long story short after hours and hours of studying I felt quite prepared and confident marching to the testing center... until I got my exam-- then I realized that I cannot regurgitate a math textbook on paper. Let alone reason which is the correct answer out of A, B, C, D, E (A & C), N (all of the above), P (none of the above), or Z {let's just make designs with the scantron bubbles and blow this joint-- this test cannot be worth all the tears and torment and torture}.
And computations-- ooooh don't even get me started! This test has been a source of much stress and 3, count them, 3 major break-downs Sunday alone. Some computations I totally owned-- I even knew which equation to use out of the 15 in the formula bank! Some meaning like 5 out of 20. The rest I just stared blankly at the page or wrote Ross, my professor, notes of how I was really trying but after attempting 3 equations on one problem and still coming out with the Correlation equaling well above 1, as in the ballpark of 250, I was giving up. I also left him a note on the next problem, where I was suppose to use the answer from the previous question-- guess I'm going to miss those points too. Then at the end there was a glorious BONUS question! But... as luck would have it, the bonus question related to the two problems I knew I missed earlier and had left notes on-- to keep with the trend I wrote him another note -- "My mind is not made to understand statistics, I'm sorry."
Maybe he'll give me points for trying hard and being witty. I did show my work, even if it was wrong.
Disgruntled and near tears I trudged downstairs fully expecting to see a 18% next to my student I.D number... and by some miracle I still can't fathom {most likely due to my fervent prayer and pleading, or the wild possibility the computer is dyslexic} the screen flashed an 81%!
There I stood with my head cocked to the side, oblivious to others coming and going as I stared at that screen, trying to process that, "yes that is my ID number. And yes, that does say 81%, not 18%".
After the long, excruciating, nearly-tearful but ultimately surprising test I felt incredibly incredibly relieved.
In a little over a month I will never again need to compute Z scores or determine when to use the addition or multiplication rule regarding probability- not ever ever again! {I'm crossing my fingers!} So although there is a 100% probability I detest statistics, one day when I'm in grad school I'll look back and laugh at my gigantic anxiety over stats and sigh with a smile that that is one phase of my life past and gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment