Aira Lorenzo

ENGL11-SS

Is it possible to cram half a semester’s worth of readings into one night of caffeine-fueled

studying? My younger, more naïve, 2019 self thought it was. My older self would sincerely

recommend against it, especially when studying for a midterm exam that is worth 20% of your grade,

on one of your majors as well. Feeling nervous as I stepped into the examination room was already a

given, because for one, the exam was purely essay type, with only two questions worth 50 points

each, and two, my brain was exhausted. When I did get the exam paper, I found the questions simple

enough; they were synthesis questions on what we learned. What I did find hard to understand was the

second question, which could have been read two ways because of its strange structure: “Give an

example of an existing problem in the country and explain it through theories we discussed in class.

Choosing between federalism and charter change, what would be a viable solution?” Going with my

gut, I wrote down “endo” as my issue, sprinkled some Marxist concepts discussed in class, explained

that neither of the choices would solve the problem, and went on to discuss other solutions to give

what was asked by the question – an application of classroom knowledge to real world situations.

As tradition “dictates” after every student exam, I asked my classmates about their answers. I

had then come to the horrible realization that everyone else read that second question differently.

Apparently, the question asked us to choose between federalism and charter change as the problems to

discuss solutions for in the essay, which is essentially the opposite of how I understood it. What I

once thought was a solid enough essay came crumbling down. Thankfully, one of my friends in the

block read the question the same way as I did. She used the lack of genuine agrarian reform as the

problem to solve in her essay and used the same concepts as I did. Knowing that I was not alone in

misunderstanding that question was enough to quell my worries.

Lo and behold, that friend of mine got the highest score on the exam with a 75/100. When I

got my blue book however, I was confused. It said 35/100, a far cry from the passing score. Out of

mild curiosity – and intense panic – I asked my friend about her scores for both questions. We both
got 30 points for the first question, but with the second question, she got 40; I got a mere 5. Upon

closer inspection, we used almost the same structure and arguments in our essays, just with different

topics. Even more confused, we both asked our teacher what exactly went wrong in my essay— my

friend went out of concern, I went out of fear of failing the class. The instant I showed her my blue

book with the big black 35 in the corner, she immediately said that “I didn’t answer the question”. I

told her how I misunderstood the question, hoping my answer at least had some merit considering I

was able to apply the concepts from class, but she insisted that it was still wrong. My friend calmly

explained how we essentially had the same answer. Weirdly enough, the teacher told us she read my

friend’s second essay over and over again and found nothing wrong with the score she gave.

Flustered, I asked why we had different scores if we had the same arguments, and she asked, “bakit

nga ba ganon?” Before she could answer her own question, the bell rang. She left us with the promise

that she would recheck both our exams and get back to us on the next meeting.

That day however, she told us she was too busy for the recheck and said she would give our

exams back next time. “Next time” turned into “next month”, until probably never. We would go up

to her after class, email, consult— all to no effect. Even during the last weeks of the first semester, we

kept going to her office, but she somehow always managed to evade our visits. She probably forgot

about our problem at that point. In the end, I went from a midterm grade of a hellishly low D to a B in

the final grade. That B felt like it was mocking me. The time and effort I put into studying for her tests

and writing copious amounts of bonus papers felt all hopelessly futile – not because I got a

disappointing grade, but because I got a grade that I was not sure I deserved. Never mind the fact that

she, for all intents and purposes, “ghosted” the two of us; what hurt was not knowing if there was

something fundamentally wrong in my answer, and if there was, what I could improve on. With the

first semester over, there was nothing we could ever do to find out.

I remember breaking down over that midterm grade in my room. It sounds like a petty thing, I

know, but as a person who has built their self-confidence on the ability to get and maintain high

grades for the past decade of their life, those numbers are soul-crushing. The notion of a failing grade

automatically merits the question, “what went wrong?”, and when I cannot find a real answer to
explain that, the question I ask myself becomes, “what did I do wrong?”, which is again, something I

cannot answer without unearthing old feelings of frustration and utter dislike of myself with my

perceived inability to just do things correctly. Those feelings always come rushing back in times like

this, and now when I remember those feelings, I think back to this little moment of injustice. Here is

to hoping this memory, like all of the others, gets pushed back into the recesses of my mind, not

haunting me every exam season in college. Here is to knowing it probably will.