At 5am Wednesday morning, I woke up feeling like I'd been hit by a truck. My thoughts were speeding wildly through my mind, darting around so fast they could have broken out of my brain. Then one thought managed to fight its way out of the chaotic whirlwind and rise to the forefront of my mind. And that thought was, "I am going to puke."

I spent some time groggily staring at my toilet, but I never did actually throw up. Just in case, I grabbed a little trash can, put a bag in it and set it by my bedside. For the next 40 minutes I drifted in and out of very light sleep, jerking awake at vivid dreams involving eating. It was so nauseating to even dream of food! Eventually, I fell back into a state of deep sleep and got some more rest.

I wasn't sick. I was just overwhelmed by anxiety. Breathing deeply helped, but I was too wound up to actually meditate for more than a minute at a time. I kept reminding myself, "It's only a test, I can always drop the class, it's not a big deal." My body seemed to doubt these thoughts, instead apparently believing that the world might come to an end at any moment. My brain and stomach argued all the way to class.

Once seated, Tom, Desiree and I all discussed our apprehension about finding out our scores and our frustration at not seeing them online yet.

Soon, my professor walked in and asked how we were feeling. "It's good to see you're all here," she said. "I haven't lost any of you."

We haven't seen our scores yet, I thought.

She explained the scoring, that we'd all been given 5 extra points, to make up for things like badly worded questions, etc. Both our scores (the original and adjusted scores) were listed on the overhead next to our student IDs (we had given her permission on our tests to post them, just to be clear; students could opt not to have their grades posted, too, and just email her later).

My eyes ran down the list, and soon I found my student ID and my test score: 23 out of 50 points. That was the adjusted score. It was originally 18.

I knew it was bad, but I thought, Well, 23 out of 50 is close to 50%. That's failing, but that's not quite as horrible as I thought it would be.

However, my professor then brought up another point...

"So, you should all be able to calculate your z standard scores now to see how you did relative to the rest of the class." She gave us the mean of our test scores and the standard deviation. I quickly got to work, using my new super special statistics skills to find my z score. I drew a little graph to assist me, too. Soon enough, I found my percentile: 4.63%. That means that 95.37% of the class scored higher than I did. NINETY-FIVE PER CENT. 4.63% is the percentage of people who scored lower than me. There are only about 95 students in the class. That's like three students who did worse than I did!

Okay, so it was as bad as I'd feared.

I still wasn't sure what to do. I had said I would talk to her, and her office hours weren't until after the discussion session. I stayed through class and exchanged notes back and forth with Tom, something I haven't done in years! It was just as well. Nothing my professor talked about made any sense whatsoever. After class, discussion began and I stayed, because the plan was for the TA to go over the whole test. I got to see what I'd done wrong, and what (little) I'd done right.

After discussion, I wandered the hallways of the building next door searching for my professor's office. It was like a maze! The building reminded me of the campus where Heather worked, where I felt so cool, because I was related to a faculty member. I was a stress-free non-student then, exploring campus without having to worry about anything. I'd walk by students who wandered around lost, worried, confused, searching for their professor's or TA's office, like I was doing now. It was weird being in that position all of a sudden.

When my professor saw me, she smiled, waved me into her office and asked for my last name so she could hand me my test to look over. Two other students were sitting in her office, and four guys from my class were standing outside the door, discussing their test results together. I took my test and looked it over, awaiting my turn to talk to her. After the two girls left, the four guys were still comparing answers, so I wandered in, and sat down in front of my professor. "How you doing?" she asked.

"Um. Okay, I guess," I told her honestly.

We discussed my score and the possibility of me completing the course with at least a C. "I'll be honest with you and say I think it would be really, really hard at this point," she told me. "I think you could do it, but it would be very hard. And since you're all being graded relative to each other, I can't promise that if you got a 100% on your next quizzes and the final that you'd necessarily get a C in the class. Because if everyone else does that well, you'll still be in the same percentile as you are now. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah. I think I'm going to go ahead and drop, then," I told her.

I felt more relaxed than I had in a while as I headed home. Defeated, and a little sad, but relieved. Soon enough, I'm sure the defeated/sad feelings will fade. I've decided I might as well enjoy this little break I now have from school, now! Fall quarter doesn't start until September 30. Until then, I'm on vacation!