- #1
JonnyG
- 233
- 30
I keep making stupid mistakes on exams, despite knowing the material very well and being very good at these subjects. For example, on a math midterm I had a couple of months ago, I accidentally wrote 4 times 2 is 12, then used that 12 throughout the rest of the calculation. That cost me major marks and I ended up with an 85 instead of a 90-something, which I would have gotten had I not made that stupid mistake.
I wrote another math midterm recently. My final mark was a 29/49 which is approximately a 59%. I could have sworn I aced it. What mistakes did I make? I misread two questions. One question indicated that continuous maps were from a metric space [itex] M [/itex] into [itex] \mathbb{R}^n [/itex]. I proved the proposition assuming that the maps carried the metric space into the reals! On another question on that same midterm I was to prove, or disprove by counter example, something about a certain collection of functions being uniformly convergent. However, I was supposed to assume that the functions converged point-wise to [itex] 0 [/itex]. I completely missed that part, which made me provide a completely false counter example, rather than proving the proposition. My mark would have been a 44/49, which is about an 90%, had this not happened.
I don't know why this keeps happening, but it's unacceptable. This is my second academic career, so to speak. I went to school a few years ago, did very well in some math classes, but then dropped out. I returned to school this past September and I simply cannot afford to screw up, as I really want to go to graduate school. I never used to have this problem in my previous academic career. Perhaps I wasn't as serious about school back then, so I didn't put so much pressure on myself? I don't know.
I guess my question is, what can I do about this? What exam strategies should I start employing? I'd really appreciate your help. Thanks.
I wrote another math midterm recently. My final mark was a 29/49 which is approximately a 59%. I could have sworn I aced it. What mistakes did I make? I misread two questions. One question indicated that continuous maps were from a metric space [itex] M [/itex] into [itex] \mathbb{R}^n [/itex]. I proved the proposition assuming that the maps carried the metric space into the reals! On another question on that same midterm I was to prove, or disprove by counter example, something about a certain collection of functions being uniformly convergent. However, I was supposed to assume that the functions converged point-wise to [itex] 0 [/itex]. I completely missed that part, which made me provide a completely false counter example, rather than proving the proposition. My mark would have been a 44/49, which is about an 90%, had this not happened.
I don't know why this keeps happening, but it's unacceptable. This is my second academic career, so to speak. I went to school a few years ago, did very well in some math classes, but then dropped out. I returned to school this past September and I simply cannot afford to screw up, as I really want to go to graduate school. I never used to have this problem in my previous academic career. Perhaps I wasn't as serious about school back then, so I didn't put so much pressure on myself? I don't know.
I guess my question is, what can I do about this? What exam strategies should I start employing? I'd really appreciate your help. Thanks.
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