Mid-term exams - A catastrophe

Hi
From my childhood I was good at some things and terrible at others. For example I was terrible at sports. But I was good at quizzing. And as time went on I became good at debating. There was one constant thread that ran across my life - I was good at academics. I always stood within the top 10% of the class. My gmat score was an extension of the same. When I joined NUS and saw the profile of the incoming batch, I knew that it would be tough to maintain my academic record. But my mid-term exams, by any measure, were a catastrophe.

The culprit was my laziness. I had taken things too easy on the academic front. I had allowed all the networking and extra-curricular activities to swallow my academics. I knew that I was woefully underprepared when I went for the Indonesia study trip. That one week was supposed to be the ideal time to prepare for the mid-terms. But I decided to make the trade-off. I have no regrets about going on the study trip. But I deeply regret my laziness prior to that.

I did average in Accounting. The paper was long and I ran short of time. As usual, my Balance Sheet did not match. I could never validate Accounting's cardinal rule: Assets = Liabilities + Owner's Capital. My Financial Management wasn't too bad. I had studied well for that subject. And the portions was also limited. I was middle of the pack for Marketing. Based on the results, the Marketing prof segregated the class into five groups - From 'Heroes' to 'Lost'. I was an 'Apprentice'. This wasn't too bad because I had a huge amount of portions to cover on the eve of the exam. The other two subjects killed me. I had not clue about what was asked in my Economics exam. Statistics was a nightmare. I found the exam as confusing as the professor's accent during his lectures.

The results filtered in within the next few weeks. And I stood middle of the pack. It was something that I was not used to. And I was confident that I was capable of better. So, I trained my focus on the final exams. I promised myself that "Never again would I slide so low"

Cheers
Suraj