{"id":515,"date":"2008-12-17T14:40:53","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T19:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/?p=515"},"modified":"2008-12-19T14:12:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-19T19:12:00","slug":"elite-l80-chemistry-111-exam-defeated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/?p=515","title":{"rendered":"Elite L80 Chemistry 111 Exam, Defeated!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So&#8230; Exams&#8230; What a beating. For some of you who are my friends and\/or readers, you know that chemistry has been one subject I have flogged myself to death with for being a real bugger. I know at some points some of you all even observed me just being in pure panic, almost like the fear of having a razor blade about 1 millimeter from slashing my eyes. I have fought my battles and some&#8230; I did well in and at one point, I had an A in chemistry (after salvaging things) but that quickly put me back in the realm where my other peers were&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nFor the record, by the end of the semester&#8230; 80% of the class was failing. There were only 20% passing and only 3 people had high A&#8217;s. I ended up right on that cusp. The fine line that balances being a passing student and a failing one. I had meticuously fought and studied&#8230; The worst part was finding that even with everything, one class didn&#8217;t show how hard I was hitting the books and scrawling mathematical equations for hours on end.<\/p>\n<p>Then&#8230; Last week was the final showdown. I was locked in my dorm room Sunday night with no visual\/entertaining stimuli. I was hitting the books as hard as I could to comprehend my greatest enemy. Then my comrade in arms (Bryce) called and said &#8220;Let&#8217;s cram!&#8221;. The cram session would run for 2 hours and we&#8217;d cover quite a bit of ground. Eventually, the realities of my humanity became alive&#8230; I was running out of boost. My brain was like the engine running a bi-turbo set-up on a V10 engine and suffered something akin to one of the variable geometry turbos shattering. I picked up the next battle and mustered enough strength to hit to Wal-Mart across my dormitory housing. There&#8230; I picked up a 4-pack of Mountain Dew&#8217;s Amp Energy: Overdrive formula as well as a pre-iced can of Amp Energy: Elevate. The Elevate would be like a <a href=\"http:\/\/thottbot.com\/i28103\"><span style=\"color: #ffcc00;\">Adept&#8221;s Elixir<\/span><\/a> of the real world. Instead of the crash of the caffeine stack killing my brain, the L-Theanine (Levo-Theanine for you energy junkies and\/or chemistry majors out there) would help ease the intensity of the crash significantly. L-Theanine is also the &#8220;energy booster&#8221; found in green tea&#8230; A steady boost would definitely help me power through!<\/p>\n<p>While my mind was empowered&#8230; My friend Ice wanted to come and hang with me while we inspired each other to study. While she was working diligently on her English final, I was steadily drinking through my berry flavored elixir and trying to absorb what was almost akin to arcane textbooks. Eventually, she saw my strength wane and just simply said &#8220;<em>Zero, get some sleep. You have a huge battle to contend with and you need your strength.<\/em>&#8221; I listened to her concern and just cased up my book. By this point&#8230; I had portions of the Elevate elixir flowing in my blood and basically slept on it. This &#8220;caffeine nap&#8221; made my body stabilize itself with what little rest I could get&#8230; Eventually, my sleep came to an end. I had to face the music, gather my armaments, and don my battle armor.<\/p>\n<p>After dressing out in a full suit of black on black with a silver tie, I would have a modest breakfast and chase it down with a can of Amp Energy: Overdrive. This would be like running a wet shot nitrous kit to my brain&#8230; I was able to have it send the adrenaline from my heart racing to my brain from the fear of battle. I would then meet up with Ice in the Science building and resume &#8220;combat preparations&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 with my studies. Eventually&#8230; Bryce, Kirsten, and Patrick would show up to trade facts and shoot study questions. Once the flood gates opened&#8230; I bid Ice goodbye until I could escape from the battlefield. My mind had the song &#8220;Scream, Aim, Fire&#8221; from Bullet for my Valentine playing. The following strain seemed to hold the most importance:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Fuck this battlefield!<br \/>\nThe bullets shatter round me,<br \/>\nBodies falling,<br \/>\nVoices calling for me,<br \/>\nLimbs are flying,<br \/>\nMen are crying,<br \/>\nSuch a hurtful sight,<br \/>\nThe call is made,<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s one for all&#8230;<br \/>\nTake no prisoners!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Over The Top, Over The Top!<br \/>\nRight Now It&#8217;s Killing Time!<br \/>\nOver The Top, Over The Top!<br \/>\nRight Now It&#8217;s Killing Time!<br \/>\nOver The Top, Over The Top!<br \/>\nRight Now It&#8217;s Killing Time!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The Only Way Out Is To Die!!!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I would take my seat and in meticulous fashion&#8230; I&#8217;d check my mechanical pencils almost akin to a secret agent dismantling their hand gun to clean out the mechanisms to prevent a jam or other mishap compromising the mission. Once my &#8220;weapon check&#8221; was complete&#8230; I&#8217;d hear the announcement of &#8220;<em>Your test will begin. We expect nothing but silence. Any talking or cellphones ringing\/vibrating will be considered as you cheating. We will confiscate your tests and escort you in the case of you cheating.<\/em>&#8221; It would be like the &#8220;<strong>-Aggro-<\/strong>&#8221; warning or a &#8220;<strong>Mission Start!<\/strong>&#8221; message in one of my games. In the early portions of the exam, I would just fight without restraint. Most of the battle was short answer, so I would hit hard. The only thing was&#8230; from consuming the Amp Energy: Overdrive, it was like drinking an <a href=\"http:\/\/thottbot.com\/i32067\"><span style=\"color: #ffcc00;\">Elixir of Draenic Wisdom<\/span><\/a> as I could jog my mind with facts and concepts I totally forgot about. Eventually, I hit a road block. There were concepts that I know my professor didn&#8217;t go into too much detail&#8230; but some of these questions weighed heavily. I would fight in vain, but eventually&#8230; I collapsed. It wasn&#8217;t a grandiose collapse of death like a game of Halo&#8230; Think of it as a lethargic faint like Young Link from The Legend of Zelda series collapsing cause some damn enemy knocked out the last heart on the meter. I walked out of the exam room feeling terribly defeated. It was like dying right before slaying a boss but to see on your game&#8217;s GUI that the boss only had 5HP left! Ice was waiting of me at the exit, she gave me the comforting hug and said &#8220;<em>You probably did fine, take it easy on yourself<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>From that&#8230; The rest of exam week was in worry. I was only thinking &#8220;<em>Fuck&#8230; I failed the test&#8230; DAMN IT!!!<\/em>&#8221; Friends of mine would try reassuring me&#8230; but the worry wouldn&#8217;t go away. Here I was thinking: &#8220;<em>I had to take chemistry with a professor who&#8217;s a researcher and teaches this like an engineering course&#8230; How the fuck did I land myself in that situation?! I am so not gonna pass&#8230;<\/em>&#8221; I witnessed classmates early in the course dropping like flies. My friends all around both local and distant had said &#8220;You&#8217;ll be fine.&#8221; That&#8217;s all I was left with&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>That was until yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>My friend Kristen had basically told me her elation over her passing her classes. Then there was also Sol a few days before who was worried over organic chemistry but found he passed. There was only one thing for me to do&#8230; Ice was on the phone with me and even egged me on to check my grades. (&#8220;<em>C&#8217;mon Zero! Check your grades! I need to know what you made in math!<\/em>&#8221; &#8211; Ice) So I loaded it all up and braced myself to cry like a defeated hero. Finally on the &#8220;Final Grades&#8221; page loading, I saw&#8230; &#8220;Chemistry &#8211; Rank: C&#8221; I began to hyperventilate&#8230; my excitement became frantic and well&#8230; I just completely lost the turbo-charged hampsters in my brain. Ice would have a grand laugh over it, express her pride and then&#8230; for comedic reason added &#8220;<em>Dork!<\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The elation that went over me was impossibly great. It was like having that battle rewind and instead of the boss landing the crushing blow&#8230; It was like someone either gave me reinforcements with big guns or a caster throwing a bunch of &#8220;buff spells&#8221;. After those beneficial things&#8230; I&#8217;d land the crushing blow, the one that would have garnered the &#8220;HEADSHOT!!!&#8221; announcement ala Unreal Tournament or the &#8220;CRITICAL!&#8221; hit notification in World of Warcraft.<\/p>\n<p>I would like to have one of those Oscar or Academy Award moments now&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ladies and Gentlemen&#8230; Loyal readers and esteemed fans! I am glad to have the honor and priviledge to have passed my chemistry course! I thank you all for the support you have given! I&#8217;d like to thank Sol, Rei, my classmates, and&#8230; oh gosh&#8230; the list goes on forever! The biggest thanks goes to Ice for supporting me through it all and encouraging me to my best! I am so gonna drink to night people cause this is too awesome!!!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-154\" title=\"zeroxr_sig\" src=\"http:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/zeroxr_sig.png\" alt=\"zeroxr_sig\" width=\"167\" height=\"54\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So&#8230; Exams&#8230; What a beating. For some of you who are my friends and\/or readers, you know that chemistry has been one subject I have flogged myself to death with for being a real bugger. I know at some points some of you all even observed me just being in pure panic, almost like the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/?p=515\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Elite L80 Chemistry 111 Exam, Defeated!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[270,366,365,369,362,364,367,586,245,29,368],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-by-zero","tag-chemistry","tag-classmates","tag-gamer-humor","tag-hooray","tag-ice","tag-irl","tag-personal","tag-thank-you","tag-thanks","tag-world-of-offline-gaming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdVBT-8j","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":517,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions\/517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeroxr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}