Last fall, I took IEOR 151, Service Operations Design and Analysis. The class had one midterm, smack in the middle of the semester. About a week or two before the exam, the professor posted the previous year's midterm to help us study. The previous midterm was very straightforward and very similar to the homework for the class. I was put at ease about the exam. As long as I wrote the appropriate notes on my cheat sheet, I would be good to go.
That's what I thought.
I walked into class on the day of the midterm. The professor passed out the exams. 4 questions, one hour--shouldn't be too bad. But one hour is not a lot of time. I started to feel the pressure--a relatively light amount, but it was there. I flipped through the exam.
Question 1 was on the composite Gaussian process and the minimax hypothesis test. Ok, so I just plug these values into the formula and find an optimal gamma, and then answer some follow up questions. I got started working on it. Then part of the way through...
Hmmm...this is a bit harder than I thought it would be. I'll skip it and come back to it.
Question 2 was on the newsvendor model. Part a was simple; just solving the optimal order quantity for a given demand distribution function. Part b...oh shit. The non-parametric newsvendor model. The one thing that I didn't write on my cheat sheet. Let's skip that and come back to it.
Question 3 was on the optimal kidney exchange matching market problem. Ok, simple, I can do this. Done.
Question 4 was on the principal-agent model. That's fine, I can do that too. After a little bit of work, done. Now back to Questions 1 and 2.
I look up. We have 25 minutes left. Shit, I'd better get moving. I feel my body get a little bit more tense. I sit there and stare at question 1 some more. I still have not found an optimal gamma. The computations of the Normal distribution's CDF are really throwing me off, and I start doubting what I have written already. I stare some more. I read the other two parts to the question. I flip to question 2 to see if it suddenly makes sense to me. My anxiety is climbing.
"20 minutes left," the professor announces.
Suddenly I cannot focus. I am seeing words on the paper in front of me, but I am not comprehending. My heart is pounding. My leg twitches fast. The only thought cycling through my brain is, "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit." I feel the anxiety starting to take over me, and I am shutting down. I sit paralyzed for at least 15 seconds, and then I stare some more.
We now have 15 minutes left. I have not written anything new down in the last 5 minutes; I have had no new thoughts. The "oh shit oh shit oh shit" gets even faster in my mind, disabling me from coming up with solutions.
When I can, I frantically try some solution methods for the unsolved portions. I doubt every single stroke of my own pen. The cyclic "oh shit" really slows down my thought process.
10 minutes left. I am without hope now. I am now trying to accept the fact that I will not finish this exam, and that everyone else is probably doing fine. They probably all wrote the non-parametric newsvendor method down on their paper.
The final 10 minutes pass, and I have scribbled out and written down a few more things. My exam is not finished. I get up, dizzy and light-headed, hand in my exam, and walk out. No one is talking about the exam. In my experience, that usually means that people found it to be straightforward and there is nothing to discuss.
Yes, I survived an anxiety attack. But I don't see myself as a survivor. I see myself as weak for being overtaken by my anxiety. I see myself as stupid for not knowing how to solve a really hard exam, and for not writing something down on my cheat sheet. I am supposed to meet my friend at the gym, but all I want to do is lay down. I am exhausted beyond belief.
We cancel the gym. I go home and sleep for an hour.
My brother's wedding is that weekend. The midterm has put me in such a low state that my family notices that I am not myself.
It turns out that other students also thought the exam was a shit show. I learned that 5 days too late.
Only at Berkeley can you score 27/48 and still have it be a B+. Yes, I earned a B+. But at what cost to my mental health?
No comments:
Post a Comment