Things are getting hard

I'm sitting here in the health sciences library with my friend Pam trying to finish a set of review question for my numerical methods class that are supposed to be representative of the exam on Thursday. Actually, we're trying to get started. We've had a week to do them, and neither of us has managed to finish even one of them. I'm not sure anyone else in the class has either. Maybe a couple of the applied math majors.

Thursday we won't have a week, and we won't have the book or other references. We'll have an hour, a pencil and a pad of paper.

Pam has had this professor before, and hated him, but had no choice but to take this class. A week or two ago I asked her if he failed people. She said she didn't think there was much chance of failing. But today I asked her again and she added "Oh, well unless you don't have enough points to pass. Then he'd probably fail you." Uh, yeah.

I did have my committee meeting last week, and their take on it was that all graduate students feel overwhelmed at some point. I'm sure that's true, but all of them don't have this guy for numerical methods.