Can I get a do-over?

Shite. I am wrecked and distraught. I'll get over it. But dayum. That was the worst mid-term. Evah!

[Ed. note: If you care not one lick about school, you won't find this interesting at all. So, feel free to just move along! Also, I know that getting good grades is not the most important thing but *conceit alert*... I am kind of used to them.]

So, I studied and studied and crammed my head full of terms and concepts and names and theories and memorized funky little symbols for vowel and consonant sounds for my linguistics exam last night and I - uncharacteristically, I might add - choked. C.H.O.K.E.D.

*More conceit alert* I am a good, no make that great test-taker. I sometimes think "ew, didn't do so hot on that one" but then I get the results and more often than not it's a grade that starts with an A and ends with a +. Well, not everytime. I distinctly recall an algebra quiz that I got a BIG FAT STINKING F on. Not the proudest moment in my school career, but it was algebra and I hate algebra with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. Yet, symbolic logic - I get that. Go figure. I just don't have the algebra gene.

Anyway, I apparently focused too much on the other 16 study questions and didn't remember a single, cotton-pickin' thing on 2 of the questions which, wouldn't you know it, were on the test. I basically wrote the most asinine answer ever written in linguistics history and now? My professor is going to think I am an IDIOT! Which I am clearly not. (Humor me, please!)

Actual essay question from the test: Name three contributions of de Sausurre and explain each one.

My answer: Ferdinand de Sausurre contributed the following:
Langue - all the collective knowlegede of a language.
Parole - the use of language. [this is close, but not quite right.]
The other two things he contributed I have suddenly forgotten but they go something like this - in a grammatical structure you can replace a word by doing something like this [I drew up/down arrow] and this <-->. The other one has something to do with synchronic and diachronic language study and I feel really stupid right now because I know I will remember it as soon as I walk out the door. damn. I really do know this stuff, I am just not very articulate today.

I actually wrote that. Stop laughing! That is just one example of the two questions I didn't know the answer to. You know how sometimes it's better to just say nothing but you keep talking and talking and you end up sounding more ignorant than you really are? Yeah. It was like that. As I was writing this bizarrely stupid answer, I was telling myself "Shut up! Just shut up! Stop writing!" I feel pretty humiliated. I am embarassed to actually go back to class now.

There is no possible way I could even make an 80 on this mid-term. I don't care so much about the grade, but I don't want Dr. S to think I am a 'tard, which he undoubtedly will. And this is my major, people. I DID learn something though. Those contributions of de Sausurre? They are permanently ingrained in my brain now.

Whatever, it sucked. I'm embarassed. I think I will dye my hair black and pierce my nose next week so he doesn't recognize me. I don't know what that would achieve but - crap. I want a do-over!