can you hear that sound?

What? You can't hear it? You can't hear the stunned silence that never, or at least rarely, surrounds me right now? Yes, that stunned silence is me, trying to overcome my disappointment in my first math test score--

If you must know it was 51.8% out of 100%, which is mathematically speaking, a big failing F except my school doesn't give lower than a failing E, which is what I have so far in the class when you average my homework scores with my sucky test score--an overall grade of 61.something-not-high-enough-to-even-be-a-D+, which is a dee plus, not a dee plus something else like we say in math when we type the + key, aka the shift = key.

You know how when you start a class, at the beginning of the semester and there are so many kids in the class--bright, smiling, hopeful faces of kids? And then after a week or two, there are less smiling faces and more faces that seem to be beaten down or ground up and after the first test, the class size is somehow reduced to maybe 3/4 of its first day size? And by the midterm, the class is half of its original size?

I could never understand how that happened. I often wondered what could make a kid decide after a week or two or after a single test that a class was going so badly that she would stop coming to class (but I always hoped she had dropped the class at least so her mom wouldn't have to pay for the E she would get).

Now I know. For the first time ever, I thought about dropping a class after the first test. I wondered who I thought I was, taking--no begging--my way into a Math 1050 class when clearly I was not prepared for such a difficult class. And even more clearly, who did I think I was, supposing I could get through this and successfully finish the class in December with at least a B? And who are those smarty-math kids who are doing so well that they keep going back to their computers everyday, keep visiting the MathLab online and keep getting way higher scores than me?

But just that quick, I thought, I am Gilian. Gardener of the web. Blogger of tales long and short, funny and sad, good and bad. (And perhaps a bit of a poet--I mean, that did rhyme, right? Okay, well, let's not go that far.)

But I am an adult with a mind and a brain and I like a challenge and really what's the worst that could happen?

Hmm. I could fail the class and retake it.

Ohhhhh-- so painful.

NOT!