Category / final exams

by Kelly Mattei

Finishing Freshman Year of College

Finishing freshman year of college.

My daughter attended an independent school in Charlotte from Transitional Kindergarten through 12th grade, and the former head of the school often had wise words to share. One of his favorite phrases? “Finish well.” As the end of each school year approached, I would remind our daughter, “Finish well!” Did she always hear me? She always finished pretty well, so maybe.

Now, the end of her freshman year of college is rapidly approaching. Like a train out of control, freshman year is moving forward at lightning speed. She will be home in less than a week. Less than a week! I find myself saying, “Finish well!”

We moved her into her dorm at the beginning of August. It was an exciting time. It was a scary time. Like lots of moms out there, I was excited for her to experience college, but I was nervous about leaving her 450 miles away. However, I remembered something I had read before:

Put the basket in the water.

I got that sentence from a piece written by Ashlei Woods. You can read it here. “Put the basket in the water” is a reference to the time of Moses, when midwives were ordered by Pharaoh to kill baby boys born to Israelites by drowning them in the Nile. Moses’s mother, in an effort to save her baby, placed him in a basket and placed the basket in the river, in hopes that he would live. I’m no Biblical scholar, but even I remember the story from Sunday School lessons. Moses did live, obviously, and went on to become a great prophet. I certainly don’t expect my daughter to become a great prophet, but I want her to live and become the best person she can be. I want her to live life. And by placing her proverbial basket in that proverbial river (college), I sent her on her way.

Has she learned things in college that will help her in her future endeavors? In short, yes. She has learned something in each class she has taken. She has learned about music, public relations, writing…so much. More importantly, she has learned more about who she is. She has learned how to make friends from lots of different places. She has learned how to handle medical emergencies and automobile situations. She has learned how to make doctor appointments and pick up her own prescriptions. And even though I always tried to expose her to as many new experiences as possible, she has been exposed to even more new experiences. She has learned to manage on her own. Sure, she still gets advice (sometimes wanted, sometimes not) from me, but she is doing it! We still support her financially, but she is doing it! We put the basket in the water, and we trusted God and trusted her.

Have there been hiccups along the way? Yes, but she has learned from each one. Last week, SpaceX launched a test rocket…the most powerful one ever launched. There was excitement surrounding it, but it failed. And afterward, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, seemed happy in spite of the failure, saying they (the engineers, the company) would learn a lot from the failure. He was excited about what they would learn! Those words stuck with me, because this very successful man was reminding the world that we learn from failure. Don’t get me wrong. Our daughter’s hiccups, so far, haven’t been in the classroom. But any hiccups she has experienced along the way have been opportunities for learning. Learning what doesn’t work is how she will learn what does work.

In a few days, we will move our daughter out of her freshman dorm. As she finishes her freshman year, I will remind her several times, “Finish well.” I am already reminding her to start packing things up and cleaning out her room. And after we get her home for the summer, I feel sure we will notice she is a different girl than the one we sent to college in August. She is older. She is more confident. She is more independent. She is more knowledgable. As my own parents said when I came home after my freshman year, “We sent our daughter off to college and got a different person back.” They often joked that I was “switched at college.”

We are excited to have our girl home soon.

by Kelly Mattei

Final Exam Nightmares

Final exam nightmares.

It’s the first week of December, which means college students everywhere are either preparing for or taking final exams. Our daughter is among those students preparing. Her first college final exam is Monday. Oh, how I remember the days leading up to those first college finals my freshman year.

I was a different person then. I carried more anxiety. I had not yet learned that worrying about something doesn’t change it. My parents used to tell me 98% of the things we worry about never happen. They also used to tell me that worrying won’t change things. Aside from that, they would tell me, if we prepare properly and turn the rest over to God, we are in good hands. Does it always mean we will succeed? No, but don’t we learn a lot more from our failures than from our successes?

It was after that first semester that I relaxed a little. I stopped worrying so much. Over time, I have become a non-worrier, except where our daughter’s safety is concerned. That’s a whole different level of worry that will likely never change.

Every now and then, though, my brain finds a way to remind me of the stress of college finals. I go to bed perfectly happy, but I wake up in a sweat, with an elevated pulse rate. No, it’s not about our daughter. It’s about me. I wake up in an absolute panic, because I am dreaming that I have just slept through a college final, or that I forgot to take one altogether. I think it’s a pretty common recurring nightmare for people who went to college, but 33 years after graduating? Doesn’t that seem like a long time to still be having that nightmare? No matter how much time passes, it’s still a painful nightmare.

Here’s the funny thing: when I was a junior in college, I actually did sleep through a final. It was my Spanish oral final. I had been up late studying the night before and knew I had the Spanish oral exam at 10:00am. Every student in the class had signed up for a 10-minute time slot, and that was mine. I feel sure I had set my clock, but I guess I set it wrong, or maybe I turned it off without really waking up. Whatever happened, I slept through the exam. I woke up at 10:30, when a friend came into my room, and I immediately realized what had happened. I had slept in a sweatshirt. I have no idea what kind of pants I slept in, but probably lightweight sweats. I jumped up, put on shoes as quickly as I could, and ran out the door without even brushing my teeth or my hair. I just ran.

Of course, the exam was about as far from my room as it could possibly be, but I ran. I ran as fast as I could and said a prayer that my teacher would still be in the room when I arrived. Additionally, the testing was taking place on the third floor of the building, so after running all the way to the building, I had to run up the stairs to the third floor…and all the way to the end of the hall. When I arrived, there were a couple of students sitting on the floor outside the classroom, waiting their turns, I suppose. I hardly noticed them as I pushed the door open and saw my professor sitting with another professor in front of the student who was testing at the time. Yes, it was rude for me to burst in, and frankly, I was out of breath…huffing and puffing…probably trying to hold back tears. Fortunately, I’d had both professors as teachers, one the first semester of junior year and one second semester, and I was on good terms with them. My professor paused the exam and said to me, “It’s OK. Go outside and catch your breath. We will call you in shortly.” Thank the Lord I had a forgiving professor. And thank the Lord I had developed good relationships with both the professors. I had been in their classes in back-to-back semesters. After waiting for a little while, they called me in, and I took my oral exam, passing it with an A. Afterward, hen I returned to my room, my friends who had witnessed my wild departure came in, wide-eyed, and asked how it had gone. I told them to let me brush my teeth and hair first, and I would be happy to give them the details!

Yes, I’m that person who actually slept through a final and lived to tell about it.

That’s not my only recurring nightmare about college, though. I also have a recurring nightmare in which it’s the end of the semester, and I have forgotten to attend a class for the whole semester! Again, I wake up in a sweat after this one too, but this one never actually happened in real life. Sure, I missed some classes here and there, but never a whole semester of class.

Sunday night, I will remind my daughter to set multiple alarms to wake up for her 8:30am exam. I don’t want her to live the nightmare of missing the exam.

And even though I don’t consider myself a worrier anymore, I’m sure I will go to bed Sunday night worried that she will sleep through her exam.

Because I’ll go to bed worried, chances are, I will have my exam nightmare again.