There's a certain kind of feeling you get when you just know that you have rocked an exam. And that's the feeling that I am currently enjoying.


It was an exam for English 307, which is a class that spans American literature from the beginning (the likes of Columbus, Bartolome de las Casas, Bernal Diaz and Cabeza de Vaca) to 1865. Our test covered Columbus to Edgar Allan Poe. And I was terrified.


Most of ya'll know this by now, but last semester and I did not get along so well, as it marked the first time in my life that I failed an English exam (before that point I had never gotten less than an A on a test, so imagine my surprise). However, this semester is turning out to be infinitely better. The professor handed out "mock midterms" in order to prepare us for the layout of the test: 5 short answer questions (a single word to answer would suffice), 5 discussion questions (6-8 sentences of explication), an essay question, and finally a "pop" interpretation and analyzation question. And by "pop" I mean, we had to analyze a piece of prose or poetry that we had never gone over in class or for the class, discuss it, and try to identify it.


I was up until 4 AM this morning studying. I wanted to: remind myself of the finer details of the captive narrative of Mary Rowlandson; easily be able to recall at least two images Jonathan Edwards (of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" fame) uses in his sermons; figure out why Sarah Kemble Knight wrote that diary on her way to Connecticutt; and figure out typological functions served in James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers.


My studying paid off. I went back and re-read key passages, and I was extremely well prepared. I feel like this might have been one of the best tests I've ever taken.


And that's a mighty good feeling.

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