Do you sometimes surprise yourself?

Well, yeah today I surprised myself.

I am taking a Mechanics course under Engineering which is considerably tough, full of maths and logic and indeed a real engineering course and the first one in true sense. (I have taken others but they were not 'truly' engineering. This one is.)

One of the junior and sophomore had confided in me that the student to excel in this course would be awarded with some sort of a little prize. I wanted to give my best try and see if I can be the one among all talented students. I'll tell you, there's a whole bunch of talented students in Engineering this year at Trinity. I have taken courses in non-sciences such as economics, politics, seminar, writing workshop, ancient science and technology (do not doubt your senses, it is in fact ancient sci tech) and what I can tell is it seems all of the talented students of class of 2012 are doing Engineering.

We had a test a week ago. There were 3 problems to be solved. Yeah, just 3. But the last one freaked us out. It just made no sense to me, at least. Just 5 minutes before the allocated time, I realized I had chosen the wrong directions for the tensions. 5 minutes is just not enough to change everything. I had not solved that question either. I was struggling. I tried my best to change everything. But I still had no idea how to solve the final equation to get the answer. I don't remember what I did but I knew I was not right. As time ended, I was asked to submit the paper. I was the last one to exit. I was still trying to figure out if it was possible to solve the problem. I did not realize I had forgotten to write my name until the professor returned the paper asking me to write it.

I did talk to some people and expressed my sadness over not being able to solve the final problem. Of course, they said what I always hate to hear: sympathetic words; they consoled me saying I would receive partial credit.

Today, he gave away our exam papers back. But before he did so, he entered those marks in ranges of points using tally marks. There was only ONE 100, some between 90-99, some between 80-89 and so on. There were a few below 69. I did not know if I wanted to see more tallies lesser than 69 so that I would have company or hope he would enter the next tally mark in 80-89 range which would mean more people have done better, hinting some leniency, which could gain mean(a chain analoy) I scored pretty well. With every tally, our patience and anxiety spiked. The average was 82. He then distributed the papers. All of the people around me were receiving scores above 90s. I just did not know what to expect. He called my name and there was the paper right before my eyes. I squinted my eyes, pretending not to look but then when I saw the score, my eyes were wide open. It was a perfect three digit. A perfect square. A perfect 100. I could not have been more shocked. He knew I was single and so decided to give a perfect 100 as my valentine gift. Thank You Dr. Leifer.