When that happens, sometimes you have to improvise.
I finished taking my final exam for Quantitative Decision-Making for Managers earlier tonight and I’m burned out. That’s what happens when you sit in front of a computer and stare at spreadsheets for 3 1/2 hours straight, although I’m pretty sure it could have been a lot less in my case.
The exam had seven questions with multiple parts and we were allowed to omit one of the seven. I went through them in order, got started on all of them, but when I hit the wall on one question, I’d move on to the next. There were a few times when I knew how to get certain parts right because I remembered screwing them up on an earlier quiz. Knowing what to look for and how to solve it was… sort of a good feeling, but not entirely.
Eventually, I finished five and had the last part left on the final two. I could not figure them out.
Perhaps the worst part was that it was an open-book exam. We could look at our textbooks, PowerPoint files, spreadsheets with equations on them… the works. This professor felt the same way as my Business Stats teacher: if you’re not sure what the answer is, you can go look it up. Obviously, it was good to remember how to use some equations properly in a spreadsheet, but you always had reference materials available.
The reference materials weren’t helping. I was completely stuck. The monitors in the computer lab don’t have clocks on them—there’s only one up on the wall—so I don’t know how much time passed while I was staring at them. I finally decided to focus on one partly because it seemed easier and partly because it was only worth 3 points instead of 4. If I couldn’t come up with an answer, I wouldn’t lose as many points.
So I tried writing out this equation, but when that didn’t work, I’d try another equation, but that wasn’t the right answer either, so let’s try to figure it out this way… nada. Nothing was working.
When I looked up at the clock for the last time, it was about 9:30 and we had until 10:00 to finish the exam. That’s when I said “Screw it” and started punching in numbers. I had part of an equation written out, so as I changed one number, another would get closer and closer to the result I needed. I changed the number again and again and finally got it accurate to two decimal points—the required amount for the problem—then punched that result into another equation and it worked.
I saved the spreadsheet, uploaded it into the class database, then left. That was it. I was done. No more staring at the screen for me. Now I’m at home… using my computer. (Yes, there’s just a tiny bit of irony there.) But at least I’m not just sitting here, staring blankly at the screen with a confused look on my face.
This blog entry? Doesn’t have an answer. Doesn’t need an answer. Thank God.
