Having ups and downs in my whole academic life were and are still ongoing events. I suffered from demotivation a number of times, but I was managed to overcome from most of those situations fair quickly due to my encouraging and extremely loving parents (specially my mom). Out of all those events, I would like to share a very recent event that occurred during my graduate studies, which I am still trying to recover from.
Based on my supervisor’s recommendation, I was taking a course on data communication, a heavily mathematical background oriented graduate-level engineering course. Though a number of students initially warned about the toughness of the course, I was not too concerned since I was acing all the assignments with perfect grades and so I was feeling fairly confident. My confidence shattered almost completely when I literally failed the Midterm. I still tried to calm down and hoped for the best as the way I performed in my earlier courses in similar situation because I managed to ace courses in similar situation. This time my luck did not favour. Even though I worked really hard and put most of effort on the course, I performed similarly bad in other exams. However, my assignments always remained to be one of the best.
Later, I discussed with the professor about my performance with the concern. He was surprised how I managed to do ace the assignments where I kept failing the exams. Whenever I was giving the exams, I was forced to jump from the top of 553.33 meter CN Tower by the University of Toronto. At the end, I barely passed the course as a whole, but one of my friends, who was acing the course (~85%) and also tutoring me on the subject, unfortunately failed the course. The course started its first day with 40+ students and ended with 6 students in the final exam. In the course review, I mentioned with a polite tone: the brilliant professor was just being reviewed by a absolutely rubbish student.
What could have been done: To my understanding, the complexity level for the assignments and exams were absolutely misleading. It appeared to me the prof just wanted to grade us for the sake of grading, not to evaluate whether students particularly like me have learnt anything. There are not too many alternatives I can find because every alternative has some costs associated with it. If I took an alternative course, my supervisor would take a negatively, which he did to other students in the past. (Surprisingly, even though I could not perform well, he appeared not to show any dissatisfaction on me.) Another solution that I am considering is to do my follow-up graduate studies on the topic and establish my confidence from the bottom up. Well, let’s see what you guys suggest.
Thanks for reading, Alif