First grade indications

Last week I got my first paper back from Women's Studies. I got a B. I wanted better, of course, but it was within my expected range for the first assignment back, and better than the average grade. I have some comments, and the instructor posted a document online describing the characteristics of A/B/C/DF essays. So, I have something to work with for the next one.

I turned in my first paper for chem lab last week, but it wasn't a formal lab report like we'll usually be doing so I won't be able to take much from the score. I'm not sure when I'll get it back anyway - probably today. But today the first lab report is due, and I submitted it yesterday. I feel like I did a good job editing it because I shortened a lot of things - condensing phrases into single words, deleting unnecessary descriptions, and making sentences less complex. I am probably most worried about my grade in chem lab because the class is curved, and I simply have no idea how good my competition is.

Incidentally, there's this program called SafeAssign intended to prevent plagiarism, where students submit their work electronically and it compares the papers to each other and to some repository of other publications. You can look at your "matching percentage" shortly after submitting your paper, and I was amused to see that my lab report matches 11% with the rest of the class. It also tells you specifically what parts match, and I found it even funnier that one of the matching parts was a sentence stating the mean and standard deviation of my data.

My first midterm exams are on Friday, in math and chemistry. I have some reason to be worried about math, simply because I keep making silly calculational errors - usually dropping minus signs. But, since it is a 50 minute exam as opposed to the 20 minute quizzes we've had, I think I will do better, and I definitely have the concepts. In chemistry, I pretty much feel like I'm on top of everything.

Because of these exams, I think, there has been hardly any homework this week. Theoretically I should use that extra time to study for said exams, but the way I see it, doing that in the middle of the week is a waste of time. I've already learned the material in class (my homework proves it), so all studying will do is make things fresh in my mind - and that "refresher" quality only works within about the same day, or better yet an hour or two.

I have a date to practice waltz and foxtrot with someone from my dance class. It is kind of funny because I chose to learn lead parts, while most of the class split lead/follow along gender lines. So, I am shorter than almost all the other leads and many of the follows I've danced with. When the instructor gives us an opportunity to switch, I'd like to learn some follow parts, but I don't want to switch unless I know a few people will switch to lead because there's already fewer of us. I can think of a few following girls who should be leads.