All throughout high school, teachers claimed that they were “preparing us for college”. Unfortunately, nothing I experienced in high school prepared me for what I have faced during my first semester here at Ohio State. Since the time I arrived on campus, my life has been a series of trial and error. This has been most prevalent in my academics. My first round of midterms hit me like a brick wall, especially in Math 1151. Although I had taken AP Calculus in high school, I was still struggling in the course. While I still believe I was well prepared for the first exam, I did not have the correct mindset while taking it. I was used to breezing through my exams and turning them in. I entered my first exam extremely nervous, but confident. Similar to high school, I rushed through the exam and felt confident in all of my answers. Even though I still had about 20 minutes left before I had to turn in my exam, I was so eager to get it over with that I turned it in without looking back over it. As I walked home, I felt great. I honestly believed there was no way that I did not receive an A. This feeling quickly faded when I got my score back the next day and got a B. Although a B is not a failing grade, I had wondered what I missed because I knew how to do every problem. When I received my exam back later that week, I realized every point I missed was easily avoidable. All of the questions I missed were due to avoidable math mistakes that could have been caught if I would have gone back through and checked my answers with that remaining 20 minutes. As the second exam approached, I promised myself not to make this mistake again. I once again finished the second exam with around 15 minutes left, but this time I used all of those 15 minutes to carefully check back over my answers. While checking over, I caught two mistakes that I had made. After the 15 minutes were up, I turned in my exam and eagerly awaited my grade. Two days later, I found out that I got a 96/100 on my exam! I felt so relieved. Through the experience of rushing through my first exam and not getting the grade I hoped for, I learned a valuable lesson for exams: always take the remaining time to check over the exam for errors. I hope to continue this and hopefully continue to receive As on my exams.