In which the term is over and I’m on Christmas break!

I barely left the house. I declined three different social invitations. I studied and studied and studied. Then I studied some more.

I powered through the Windows Client practice tests and the rest of the Linux + class. It took several tries to pass the final, but I managed it. Then I opened my Cisco Certified Network Associate course and realized that there was no way I could get through it and study for my other CCNA final too, so I emailed my instructor and told him that I was totally freaking out.

Several days later he replied, and I quote: “The labsim isn’t due until end of spring quarter. Only the Cisco curriculum is due Thurday (actually Mon when I get grades in)”.

Um, wait. This course I’ve been freaking out about isn’t due? What does that even mean? If it’s not due, then why am I registered for it and why did I spend so much money on this software?! Okay, fine, whatever, you’re the teacher and the one submitting my grades: I’ll study for the other one.

So I dropped the LabSim course with four chapters to go and worked on the other one exclusively. I went over every chapter summary, I took all of the practice quizzes, and when all that was done I spent hours doing subnetting exercises in freakin’ binary.

And then last Thursday I went to sit for the final.

I walked into the lab and went over my notes for half an hour while the other students drifted in. (I’d only ever seen two other students during the labs, but apparently seven or eight people were enrolled in the course. Who knew.) The instructor activated the final, and we all logged in.

There were fifty-two questions and two and a half hours to answer them. There were four questions I was truly unsure about – I had to guess the answers, basically – but I felt really good about the rest of the test. An hour later when I clicked the “SCORE” button, I was certain I’d be in the 90% range.

I wasn’t. I got 80%. WTF.

And the four questions I wasn’t sure about? I got them right! So all my mistakes were on questions I felt good about. ARRRRGGGHHHHH!

The course had ten chapter tests; my scores on those ranged widely from low Cs to high As. I think there might also have been a lab component, which I didn’t really do (I didn’t even know about this course until several weeks into the term, and until a few weeks ago I thought it was ancillary to my CCNA LabSim course, plus it’s not like I’ve never plugged a fucking router in before or pinged or tracerouted so the labs seemed lame to me). All things considered, it seems that I could possible get as low as a C out of the class.

Which would piss me off. I don’t want a C. I want an A!

I have no idea how the LabSim courses are graded. I received no feedback or acknowledgement from my instructor, the tests can be taken multiple times, and there were no finals. If one gets an A for going through the course and completing it on time, I should be fine. If there’s some algorithm based on how many times one has to take a test before she passes it, well, then I’ll get Cs. But, as I said, my instructor has never once discussed my LabSim classes with me.

Anyway, it gets awesomer. Check this out: today I pulled out my records from September, and guess what? I wasn’t signed up for the CCNA Exploration course. The class I went to on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the one with the final I sat for? I don’t think I was even registered for it.

The good news is that I got an entire CCNA prep class for free. The bad news is that I didn’t finish the class I (think I) was actually registered for, because my instructor told me it wasn’t due until Spring! (I had the same instructor for all my courses.)

So, in conclusion: I have absolutely no guess as to what my GPA will be, and I don’t know what my instructor is going to do when he’s submitting grades today and realizes he made me take a class I wasn’t registered for. If in fact that’s what happened. The other alternative is that the bookstore sold me software in error. Either way, I’ve emailed my instructor my class schedule and my concerns about my grade.

In other news, it’s Christmas break and I’m not subnetting anything until January.