Hansen's Revenge

Happy Tuesday evening. It's 10:16, and I'm nearly ready to start wrapping stuff up for tonight. Sleep's kind of a big deal, I need some of it.

I'm feeling a bit stressed and conflicted right now. The AP Calculus test is in 29 days. I'm taking the BC test, for a lot of reasons. This means that I have four weeks to learn parametric, vector, and polar coordinates. Series, convergence and divergence, and the million tests to figure that out. Integration by parts and by simple fractions. Improper integrals too, whatever those are.

It's a pretty big deal. I really want to five this test, and I really think that it's possible. Tonight I sat down and scheduled out the next week or so of work. The plan is to study one section a night for the next five nights, basically giving myself a quick run-through of all the topics I've never seen before. On the sixth day, I think that's Monday, I'm going to take the first practice BC test. I'll do it under the actual time limits and all that, making it as accurate and realistic as possible. That's the day before we leave for tour, but I'll take a good look at what I did well and what I did poorly, and then make a game plan for tour. I'm not sure how much studying I'm actually going to commit myself to doing in California, but if it's necessary, I'll pull it off. Once we're home from tour, I'll take another good look through all the new BC material, focusing especially on things I did poorly on in the practice test. Once that review is done, I'll spend a few days really hitting the regular calculus tricks. I'll make sure I've got all the trig differentiation and integration memorized, shell method, all the mean new integration, any formula I'll ever need. I'll take the second BC practice test. I'll check those answers, see where I'm suffering, and make sure that I'm competent on them. Once all that's through, it'll be May seventh, and I'll walk in and take me a BC calculus test.

It's fairly daunting, I'll be honest. I've never undertaken something like this before. I know the people who did it last year did really well, so it's not impossible. It's probably not half as big of a deal as I'm making it out to be. It reminds me a lot of chemistry last year, except that we had at least mentioned all of that stuff in class once.

So, I'm a bit stressed about it. But I can do it. I'm excited to learn all this new stuff and prove that I can actually pull this off.

The most important part of this next month for me, I think, is going to be to remember that BC Calc isn't the most important thing. Whether or not I five the test will affect me in the future, certainly, but it's still not the most important thing. I'm going to need to make a concerted effort to make sure I don't forget everything else. Specifically, I can't forget to be happy and social. I need to make time for people. That was the moral of the story for March, or at least one of them. Ends up that April will be the big test of my ability to actually learn those morals that I keep being given.

So I think that's where I'll need some help. If I'm being a butthead, remind me what's important, please. I really do want to five this test, but not at the expense of my own happiness or my ability to help out those people around me.

My parents are going to Mexico tomorrow for a five-day vacation. Me and Michael will be okay, but life's a lot easier when they're around. It'll be an interesting experience. If I don't show up to the first period, it's because I'm still asleep.

So here I go, working to five this test that really isn't even that big of a deal. I'm ready and willing to put forth the effort. I'm going to do my best to make sure it remains exactly where it should on my priorities list, though.

I'm glad I've got friends. They're cool. You're cool. I hope you're doing well. I'm out~