If there's only two things I learned today, those would be to never buy anything from Best Buy and don't study for a test. Ever. This seems like a stupid thing to not do, right? Wrong.
My started off in Astronomy class. I had my laptop out, taking notes. Class had only been going ten minutes when my screen froze up. Then it blacked out, and rebooted itself. The first ten minutes of notes were gone when I tried to recover what I'd lost.
"You have got to be kidding me..."
This had already happened a few times before in the 3 weeks I'd had this laptop. My brother in law said that it was probably a poor corrupted download of iTunes, and to just uninstall it, then download it again. So I did. And it seemed, for a few days, that that was the problem. But then, once again, it started to shut down. I ignored it though, thinking it wouldn't be very frustrating. Until now, when it killed my notes. I was sure I was going to scream.
I shut down the computer and pulled out some paper. Going old school. And that's how I was for the rest of the day as I went to my next two psychology classes. At least I could get this fixed by Best Buy's Geek Squad.
Right as I came up the stairs from the basement of the building since there is no service down there, I got a text. "Hey, want to go out to lunch? I haven't seen you in a few weeks..." Every couple weeks it was the same. I'd get almost the same text, asking to go for lunch. What, does this girl think I'm made of money or something?
"Sorry, Lexie, I have to study. I have a test for World Civ. I have to do today. I haven't really studied much. Not that I normally do, but I'm trying to break that habit. Maybe I'll get good grades for once this semester. :P"
She always assumed I was just blowing her off. And, all right, sometimes I was. But honestly, today was the last day to take the test in the testing center and I needed to get it done. And I had made a goal to actually do some studying this year in hopes of raising my GPA.
I walked away from the building and plopped myself out on the grass, basking in the sun. If I was going to do this necessary evil, I was going to at least try to enjoy it.
"Study guide, study guide..." I muttered, filing through old emails to find the one from my professor and other student in the class. One of the students had the brilliant idea of making a google doc for the exam for everyone and let us all pitch in so we could do our best. This meant I had to use my laptop to study, but I was willing to risk it.
"There we go!"
I opened up the attachment and went off on a study spree. I felt like I knew most of the material as it was; I had planned on majoring in history at one point, after all. But studying was in no way going to be detrimental to what I already knew.
After an hour of slaving away, I had gotten through all the material and felt pretty good about taking this test.
"I'll at least get an 90% and honestly that's more than enough," I kept telling myself. It's not like this was one of my major classes and I needed to get a good grade. As long as I passed, I would be fine, but a good grade would be nice.
When I walked into the testing center, I gave them my ID card and they got my bubble sheet. "This is not a timed test. You can't use a calculator, but you can write on the test. Good luck," the girl said and sent me on my way. Very personable people, those test workers.
I glanced at the test. 70 questions huh? Not too bad. Only 3 short answer questions, this should be a piece of cake.
Boy, was I ever wrong.
All throughout the test, I thought I was doing fantastically. Sure, there were a few questions here and there that I hadn't a clue what the answer was, but for the most part, I was feeling pretty good. When I finally finished, I turned it in so it could be scanned. Walking out the door and down the stairs, I took a deep breath in anticipation of seeing my score on the TV screen at the bottom.
I opened the door and searched the screen for my ID number. Then I gasped. Frantically I pulled out my ID card. Maybe I had memorized my number wrong; but I was 2267, wasn't I? Or maybe I really was 2265 like the screen said. There was no 2267 up there. Or maybe because you could write on the test they didn't electronically correct the bubble sheet and my score just wasn't up there at all. When I finally got my ID out, I huffed. 2267. That was definitely my score. All 53% of it.
It took all I had to slowly meander to my car down the hill. If that wasn't a mood killer, I didn't know what would be.
Note to self, never, ever, study for another test again.
"Well, at least this day can't get any worse. Unless I fail my next test too..."
I still had another test to take later that night on Blackboard. As soon as I got home, I pulled out my laptop and studied some more, hoping beyond hope that maybe if I just read the material, and didn't really "study" it, I would do better. It took hours to read the material he had for us online, but my computer was doing fine. I assumed that whatever glitch was going on would be safe to ignore for the next while.
My professor specifically told us not to use Internet Explorer 8, because it made Blackboard crash every time. I pulled up Google Chrome and logged in istead.
The test was pretty simple, much easier than the history test. But that didn't really say much, I decided. However, there were only 33 questions, so if nothing else, it wouldn't take nearly as long.
As I got to question 30, it was a list of people we had to list with their description.
"Laman... D, took wine to the Lamanites at night."
I was just about to submit this answer and move on to the next question when my mouse stopped working. I touched the pad again, hoping it would move. Ten seconds later, the screen went black, then blue.
"System error... shut down do preserve data... software download..."
I let my head fall back and it smacked against the wall. "Ow!" I yelped, now rubbing my head as my laptop started to reboot itself again.
"This would happen. The test I can only take once online. The one that is due in 3 1/2 hours. The one I can't even try to retake. F the system. I hate Best Buy."
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