I remember way back when during a math exam that I was determined to ace it.

I did not do well throughout the year as I lazed off ... but on this one particular occasion, I was wanted to ace it!

I spent the great portion of the night and into the early morning going over and over math problems to 'understand' the basic's of what need to be known.

Went to bed for two hours, up and off to the exams.

Considering the lack of sleep, I was rather relaxed and calm ... probably because my brain did know any better.

Well, the exam began, the race was on. During the exam, the question seemed all to easy and familiar, well, they should have been, I only went over them hours before!

Midway during the exam, I put up my hand to get the attention of the professor, he walks over and says 'yes'. I say, this question cannot be done. He says 'what'. I say 'yes' this question cannot be done because of a mistake in the questioning. He looks at it and say's ... your correct! Thanks for bring that to my attention and for your troubles - remind me to add an additional 10% to your exam mark. In my head I'm saying 'yeah' I could use all the help I can get.

Well, what seemed like an eternity actually turned out to be I was the first to leave the exam.

A few weeks later I get the exam results - a score of 110%!

I learned alot from that experience ...

1. Ensure you only get 1 or 2 hours of sleep before any important exam. Kidding!

2. If you put your mind to anything ... you CAN do it!

3. Relaxation and confidence in yourself is critical.

4. When it comes down to math, ya have to pay the pipper and literally DO the questions on paper. Heres why. When you take a math problem and put in on paper you literally engage several senses when it comes to learning. This is the best form of learning. When several senses get involved in the learning process.

5. There is a univeral law that everything happens for a reason ... you may not know it yet but remember that everything in life has a reason and a lesson for us to learn. Sometimes the lesson is not so apparent, but it's there.

6. Do not look at this one incident as an idication of your ability. We ALL have off days ... this was one of them for you. More times than not, when it comes to math, from what you have said ... you got it in the bag!

LLL

Michael Saikali