Today I got my English essay test back, which was a 17/22 (77%). However, as low as this mark was, I actually felt quite happy about it: I could have gotten a lot worse.
For the test, I basically had to read this article, identify the thesis and the methods of developments, and answer a variety of questions such as "why does the author find the happiness of Canada's teenagers disturbing?" And although this does not sound particularly difficult, it was.
For me, it was very hard to find the thesis, and even after reading the article for about five times, I still could not be sure about what the thesis was (and I got it wrong in the end). Also, for each question— opinion-based or not— we were required to provide evidence from the text. This actually made me a lot slower because then I had to find specific lines in the article, and copy them down to my answer sheet. In addition, the last question was an opinion-based paragraph worth five marks, and I found it difficult to make my arguments clear and strong.
So when I finished the test, I knew I did terribly: I was not sure on many questions, and the teacher could easily take one or two marks off of each question. I felt so afraid that I was going to actually fail the test, to the extent where I even had trouble sleeping well!
So when I saw that my mark was a 17/22—0.5 higher than the median— I felt extremely relieved and, even, happy.
For me, it was very hard to find the thesis, and even after reading the article for about five times, I still could not be sure about what the thesis was (and I got it wrong in the end). Also, for each question— opinion-based or not— we were required to provide evidence from the text. This actually made me a lot slower because then I had to find specific lines in the article, and copy them down to my answer sheet. In addition, the last question was an opinion-based paragraph worth five marks, and I found it difficult to make my arguments clear and strong.
So when I finished the test, I knew I did terribly: I was not sure on many questions, and the teacher could easily take one or two marks off of each question. I felt so afraid that I was going to actually fail the test, to the extent where I even had trouble sleeping well!
So when I saw that my mark was a 17/22—0.5 higher than the median— I felt extremely relieved and, even, happy.