Everything seems to be going ok in the Anthropology course I am taking. Blackboard is actually cooperating for once, and I’ve had no major issues from the system. The first exam becomes available in Anthropology, and I am feeling pretty good about it all, that is I open the exam and the question is completely foreign to me. So of course I begin to immediately panic. Dr. McDonald is coming back from her trip to Europe at this current point and time so we have the TA to fall back on. Although they were both out of my reach (even through email) until I finished the exam. I try my best to calm myself down but that is not very easy when I already have such high test anxieties in the first place.

My son comes up to me and asks, “Mommy, are you going to be ok? Because I will help you, would you like for me to rub your feet?” I couldn’t help but smile and realize that I was becoming so frantic that my kids were picking up on it. So thanks to my 5 year old son I was able to calm down enough. All I could do is keep answering the questions that I knew, and attempt the ones that I didn’t know. However, I would be sending a frantic email to the TA and Dr. McDonald. We were able to be re-take the exam this past weekend, with the correct set of questions, and at least on my end, everything went well.

I will have to say that I am sure Dr. McDonald received a lot of emails concerning this problem. I felt bad that she was fighting jet lag and was just coming home from her trip to Europe; but I was a wreck. When Dr. McDonald first told the class in the beginning that she was overseas I thought that it was really neat! She had ample access to the internet and to the course, but she still had our TA help out with things here. Through our email conversations though she said that she would not start another class out like this one; and I can completely understand why. The online courses are demanding enough for the students and I can only imagine how they would be for the professors teaching the courses.