After the first test was failed for not showing my work I dropped the class. My grades in every other class went up after that (next class was closer to 11am) and I never took another 8am class during college.
Luckily the professor let me take the final on my own later in the library, though he'd thought I had skipped it because I had a near-zero on the quizzes that were worth a few percentage points going into the final. However, there was a section on Taylor series which I hadn't seen before on the final, so I was certain that I had bombed it.
I wrote a long email talking about possible summer projects or something, so that I'd have the prerequisites for the next year. I got back a cheery email, "don't worry about it, you got an A, enjoy your summer!", and explaining that the Taylor series was kind of an extra to see if anyone could figure out the material that wasn't part of the course while taking the exam.
Obviously, I'd taken a lot of unwise risks, but I guess I got lucky with a professor who identified with an immature student who knew the material but had only taken a course because it was technically a prerequisite for something else.
Made a similar mistake. I showed up to an Astronomy final... 2 hours late by mistake! Prof hands me the test and says you have 20 mins to finish. Somehow I scored an A. Pure miracle.
So I'm up all night before the final trying to get through this material. Then I hit the Taylor and Maclaurin method of turning every function into a polynomial. It was difficult to learn, but at least it was straightforward once you got the trick of it.
Due to coffee related stomach sickness the final was rescheduled anyway so I learned a good deal of the patterns for the integration but what I ended up doing was using Taylor series if I got stuck since I could just convert it to polynomials, do the integration, then try to convert the infinite series back into a reasonable looking function. If not, no worries, it's still technically the same function so maybe I lose a few points here or there, better than nothing.
Oh and there was a bomb threat during that retake. I made sure to walk right next to the prof while the other 8 people writing with me held back and essentially cheated. I asked the prof why he was letting them do it and he said "Oh, I'm just going to deduct 15% from everyone's exam but yours".
Really dodged a bullet there, lol. Kinda miss university at times.
Also, you got an A in the most efficient way possible in that class, in my opinion. THAT is intelligence in a nutshell! At least on my IQ ruler, lol
Too many side projects means I wasn't really focused enough to get a graduate degree, but hey, you have to live life as you want, and go after the things that make you happy.
At some point (I think a few years before 2008?), Cornell also renumbered the courses by adding an extra zero to convert them to four digits (as required by the new PeopleSoft course management system).
I started with a B- after the first prelim (which was the median grade), had to go to tutoring at the Math Support Center in Mallott and go to office hours, and after all that, I managed to somehow bring up my grade to an A- by the end of semester. Even still, it was VERY stressful.
I wonder how you must have handled having to retake the class. I would've been losing my mind from anxiety if that happened.
Painful memories :'(
There was a box for homework at the front of the large lecture hall that 10 minutes after class began the professor would place the lid on the box and tape it shut. If your homework wasn't in it before then you got a 0 with no recourse.
Total nonsense, but it was a required class for engineers. I barely passed and did not give a fuck about that.
Take 8AM classes only if you expect to have no social life to speak of.
Years later I got diagnosed with sleep apnea (apparently had since birth) so the odds were stacked against me from the beginning