Friday, June 06, 2008

Lithuanian exams

Yet again my do-not-procrastinate-to-blog plan didn't work out. But now I'm full of stuff to tell anyone who dares to read this blog.
As you know, I haven't been admitted to any of the US schools that I applied. One possible reason is that I didn't send then the TOEFL instead of SAT reasoning, which was awful. At the beginning I thought that TOEFL wasn't necessary and it costs so I decided not to take it. But then I tried to apply to Richmond American International University in London, I needed the TOEFL and I made it on March 1. You can see the results on your right. I got into Richmond, but for some financial reasons I'm not going there. So here I am, worrying about my final high school exams in Lithuania because they're the only thing that can get me into a school in Lithuania (there are no interviews, no teacher recommendations, just plain old sorting by test scores).
The first exam I took was Lithuanian. I don't think it was a very tough one but there's the thing that it really depends on somebody who checks my work. I actually went to the exam pretty relaxed and was kinda relaxed all the time while sitting there, but the thrill got to me just after I left. It's the only exam in Lithuania that you MUST take and if you fail, you're in a terrible position.
The second exam was IT. A bunch of MS Office knowledge + Pascal coding. There's an interesting story about my IT exam. During the first part(the test) I was OK. But there's always the second part which was one of the worst nightmares I have ever seen. So, there we had to write two Pascal programs according to the task(it tells where to use a procedure or a function, what data types to use, you just have to put it up to a working program). We had 1.5h for the task. So there I was, writing my first program, debugging it and writing proper comments(they rate these too, as the part of the coding style, or smth.). Ok, so I completely finished the program. Then I noticed that I had a typo in my filename(and you couldn't have a typo), so I decided to rename it. I went to the program folder and saw a bunch of files, the debug data for compiler. Well, who am I to keep then, so I deleted them. And along with them I DELETED MY PROGRAM. And you konw, since I'm a computer wizzard, I don't delete regularly, like when the files go to recycle bin. NO, I had to delete it by pressing Shift+Delete, which deletes the files completely. So there I was in the exam place after an hour without any program. My hands began to shake. For a minute of something I had lost hope. I had various thoughts, like should I leave the exam and come again next time(which wouldn't be the national level, but a school level and school level sucks when you're applying) or should I go to google and quickly find a file recovery program. But with my experience with looking for free software I knew that I wouldn't find anything. So I calmed myself and just thought about it. It was still in my head, so I quickly rewrote the program just from my head, tested it and it worked like it supposed to. I didn't comment it properly, but just went to another program. I read it, didn't understand it in the beginning. I read it again and the teacher told that there are 15minutes left untill the end. And I was one program short. So who needs understanding a task, right? Those 15 minutes were one of the ugliest in my life, but then again I probably broke my typing speed record because the guy that was sitting next to me was staring his eyes at my keyboard. I wrote the whole algorithm, it was syntax error free, it compiled and didn't work. It was in a neverending loop. I tried to debug it, but couldn't make it on time. The old "5 more minutes" would have worked out for me, but it was the end. So I hope that people will at least go throught the algorithm and give me some points for it. As I spoke to other guys, nobody actually wrote the second program in my test center or it was someone to whom I didn't talk, so I might have some chances compared to others :D.
The third exam was Math. Hell yeah! It was the only exam yet that I didn't suck much and I'm not worried about it at all. I solved all the tasks and that very same night I checked my answers with some other people and they were almost the same (there's one problem of probabilities that I got wrong, but it's not a major mistake). So now I'm at least cool about my math results.
And there I have, one last exam that's going to be on Monday. Physics! I'm not that confident about it as I was in math, but I still have the whole weekend to prepare and I think I'll make it.

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