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[Oblivion]

For me, whenever I turn in an assignment or complete an exam, I usually have a good idea on how I've done. And my expectations have generally landed around the mark in nearly all instances. But there were one of those incredibly rare times where I thought I did either completely unsatisfactory, or outright horrible, only to find out that my actual grade was significantly better than expected.

Had one of those today. We had a midterm about a week ago. In-class essay on a monstrous 400 page book. Despite the massive length, this would not necessarily be a difficult task as the topic was more narrowly defined. The problem though, was that somebody didn't do the required readings up until the weekend (well, Sunday) before the exam. So I tried to make due with what I could and read a few pages from each chapter and hoped for the best.

I write my essay, and while I felt I did a good job incorporating tons of facts and examples, I thought that it was kind of a mess structurally. It seemed I was meandering and not exactly cohesive. Plus I also forgot several other arguments I was planning on making. But the biggest mark was that I didn't think I had developed a good thesis. In fact, I didn't think it was much of a thesis to begin with. Taking all this into account, I thought that I'd be lucky if I got a 70. Turns out I got a 91! 8)

A couple of years ago, I took a Medieval history class that only had 3 areas of grading, a paper assignment and two midterms. The paper assignment I turned in I felt was utterly horrible. I mean, we're talking probably the worst essay I'd ever written. That's how bad it was. If I got a D, I'd be thanking Jesus. Amazingly enough, the prof gave me a B-. That case was a bit more bizarre because she was one of those no nonsense type of professors that you see in the movies. So either I was a better writer than I thought, or she was a worse professor than she appeared.

Share your similar lucky break stories. And to be clear, we're talking about instances where you thought you were absolutely fucked or at least, significantly harmed gradewise.

 

[tearsofash]

I always did worse because I expected perfection. I'm probably a tiger mother.

 

[Neoleo2143]

Pretty much every math class I've ever taken. I'm usually scared shit about my performance on those exams and then I do fine or even excellent. And I keep doing that. I think I ended up acing all my exams in one class and that was the one I was most nervous for. And I still keep doing that. Guess its something that won't ever leave me.

 

[Tenck]

I like to wait till last minute (like my senior project in HS I started 2 days before it was due) so I'm always surprised.

 

[Philia]

I'm not a stellar student, I try really hard but I get anxious as fuck on tests and I hated testing.

Anyway, I took a Geology class (another science class of sorts) and I had a lab test. I was sick the following day and came back to find out my score because I was anxious if I've scored badly. He showed me the test strip and there wasn't anything on it. I was like omg... I've failed completely?

He said oh no, you've passed 100%.

I was like holy shit.

He knew that I was great at labs and suffered during textbook class tests. Lab testing is easier for me because I can associate with a lot of imagery instead of words.

 

[Roubjon]

I remember there was an exam in one of my difficult programming courses and I straight up bullshat probably 1/3 of the test and was iffy on the other half. And these are questions that have definitive answers, there's no partial credit. When I got the test back I got an A and apparently got all of those questions correct. That shit saved me because I did pretty poorly on some of the other exams.

 

[Team Alucard]

My last accounting test I thought I got a C walking out of the class. Ended up with a 92%, which was top score

Class average was 52%. I'm in good shape going into the final lol

 

[Two Words]

My first exam in my first semester at my university, calculus. I was not feeling prepared at all and I had been out of college for years. I was feeling like I'm probably just not cut out for college and thought I did terrible on it. I ended up getting an 85 and my experience at the university has been smooth since then.

 

[DiscoJer]

In college, in Statics class, which was engineering (and one of the harder ones), I got an 80 on a test and the next highest score was 15. Which for some reason the teacher announces to the class.

And I was like "what?" when it was me that got the 80.

However, it was the second time I took the class, so...

 

[Ambient80]

In med school our second pharmacology exam covered all chemotherapy drugs and antibiotics. Our professor said that no one had ever aced that exam, and that most people failed it because there was so much information and they didn't pay as much attention to it (it was his exam plus a Pathokogy exam combined into one). I had been warned for months that it was coming by upper classmen and that it was terrible.

I was the first to ace the exam. Clean 100%, and he knew I didn't cheat because he proctored it and where he stood in the classroom was basically right beside me. He was so happy I thought he was gonna cry haha

 

[Mr. Blonde]

The GMAT. Ended up with a 770. When I started studying for it, never expected to get that.

 

[balohna]

Final exam in a grade 12 math class I took long after HS as a pre-req for a college class. I went into the final with a B, assumed I'd miss a couple marks and finish with a B+ maybe. It ended up being only about 20 questions and worth a huge part of my mark. I got one question wrong, which I think was worth 2% of my overall grade. A question I made a stupid mistake on - I knew the subject well enough that I should have got it.

Ended up missing an A by like half a percent.

I'm more surprised I didn't get any other questions wrong, though. I hadn't done serious math for like 7 years before this class, and struggled a bit along the way. I studied pretty hard but assumed I was bound to get a few things wrong. I didn't expect to be basically a hair's breadth away from 100%.

 

[FZZ]

not in years

 

[Hero Prinny]

little story to go along with it, i was taking advance c++ and i bombed the first major exam, i got like a 50 something while the class avg was pretty high. I was thinking of just dropping the class and taking it again next semester but being the brute that I am i decided to stay in it and tough it out, second exam comes around and I thought the test was hard af, my palms were sweating cause this one test determined if i still had a chance of even passing the class or not.

The day when we got our papers back the professor told us how he was really disappointed since the avg this time around was low, and since I failed the first test i automatically think to myself "shit, the first one was easy for a majority of the class and i didn't pass that one so I obviously failed this one." I got called up to get my paper and at this point I've already accepted defeat, it was too late to withdraw and at best I'm going to have a D on my transcript. While being in that mindset when i finally got my paper my brain only registered the number 7 and i just couldn't believe it... a fucking 7...? i got a motherfucking SEVEN!?! I mean shit ok i did bad but god dammit, not even another 50?? it took a few seconds for me to realize that my grade was actually a 97, my jaw legit dropped on my walk back to my seat. I was able to pass the class cause of that test

 

[Sai-kun]

I took a class in my final quarter of school about death and the afterlife in Islam, Christianity, and Native American religions, and for my final paper I wrote like 7-8 pages of feminist shit about how it's more important to give people the means to be happy while they're alive rather than living so they can be happy in a theoretical "afterlife".

I didn't think it was bullshit, but it was 3 pages shorter than the requirement, was only tangetically related to the topics at hand, I used maybe ONE source from the list of readings (which was a requirement), and it was a lot of feminist mumbo jumbo. I really liked the paper, but being in my final quarter of school, I would have been happy with the lowest grade possible to pass the class.

I got a 98%. Shit was next level.

 

[broncobuster]

I loaded my final semester with courses to graduate early mid year. Naturally I gave certain classes attention over others. The course I cared least about, for the final I prepared least for, I somehow managed to get the top grade. Wasn't confident I'd do well so I spent time on the bonus questions and got over 100. But I didn't do as well in a course I wanted to.

 

[N.Domixis]

I always get the grade I want, A. Always study more than I need to.

 

[lucebuce12]

I remember there was an exam in one of my difficult programming courses and I straight up bullshat probably 1/3 of the test and was iffy on the other half. And these are questions that have definitive answers, there's no partial credit. When I got the test back I got an A and apparently got all of those questions correct. That shit saved me because I did pretty poorly on some of the other exams.

Similar situation with my Database Systems lab mid-term. Logic was sound but the syntax was completely wrong. Ended up getting the 3rd highest marks.

 

[TickleMeElbow]

I thought I totally failed one of my intro to programming logic tests, and ended up with an 80%. That was like a month ago.

 

[FUME5]

I was still tripping off some acid I'd taken the night before when I sat my maths exam for university placement.

I still managed to score

 

[Alienfan]

I had an essay that I never did, I had more important exams on during that week and decided it wasn't worth investing the time as it was only a 5% assignment. The markers fucked up and I ended up getting an A for something I never handed in

 

[SwiftDeath]

So it's not really like a positive trait but I always complete tests extremely fast. In a class of 100 or less I'm usually first 2 finished. Had a class of I think 600 students where I'd finish in the first 10 or so.

Had a final in a graduate level econ course with one of my closest friends who was also a econ/stat major and who I studied with. He was an exceptional student, not a genius but studied enough to do as well as geniuses across a range of subjects. Great guy too

Anyways this econ class was a lot of macro theory which tended to fall more to the subjective style of answering which played more to my strengths econ wise.

Test consisted of about 5 long essay style questions where you'd write out a page or page and a half in response.

TA proctored the exam for the first half of the testing period, then the Professor showed up and took over.

Apparently about 3/4 of the way in the professor added specific clarifications to 1 of the questions, something like 10 minutes of fine-tuning what the question he was actually asking was. Supposedly made a notable number of students re-write large swaths of their answers for that question.

I didn't hear any of that as I had finished my test and left before the professor had ever arrived.

Ironically, I did better on the test and that question than my super studious friend and the other 3 guys in our study group who are all pretty bright. To this day that friend still reminds me about that test. He ended college with a 3.96 GPA out of 4 so suffice to say he thought it was pretty funny too.

Think I got in the top 3 highest scores of the 60 or so person class having missed what most considered to be significant guidance on how to correctly complete the test.

Again I don't think finishing a test faster makes me a better student and certainly leaving before the end of the testing period doesn't but I can't stay in an environment like that, drives me nuts.

 

[Anon67]

I was having a mini panic attack towards the end of my freshmen spring semester because I wasn't sure if I was going to get a single A in my science classes. Ending up getting A's except for a 1 credit bio lab. Felt really good after seeing my final grades. Almost the exact same thing happened in the spring semester of my sophomore year.

 

[momshotdad]

It happens to me from time to time in my math classes. I'll feel like I bombed and got back a B or C or sometimes I feel like I did alright and end up getting a C.

 

[chadtwo]

I tend to be hypercritical of my performance on these sorts of things after the fact (while, weirdly enough, being generally pretty confident and composed during the exam itself), so this is often the case for me.

 

[chrisPjelly]

Bell curved Math exams the thread

 

[cryptosporidium]

Everything I write.

Fuck, Im taking this class on the history of western political thought this semester, and apparently its known that this is the class you take last in your BA. So it was full of people in their last semester, and me who is the youngest in the class. Its the day were getting back our comparative essays on Plato and Aristotle and the Prof gives a 45min lecture on how bad we all did. Said he's never marked a class this low before. Now I am a shitty fucking writer, like garbage tier, so im like shitting myself. He begins to hand out papers at break by calling names. The guy he calls before me hes like "see me after class" and then he calls my name. "This was an incredible paper, a diamond in the rough, if you revised and worked on it some more it would be perfect". My only expression was astonishment

 

[theecakee]

Pretty much this entire semester has been this. Compared to last semester (Databases, Algorithms, GIS II, and Physical Geography) where I studied very hard, and still got a D in one class and Bs in everything else.

This semester (Game Programming, Linear Algebra, Biology I, and Transportation Geography) I have like 3 As and 1 B, I've barely studied much especially recently with the idea "well I can afford a C on this exam" then end up getting a 96.

I have no idea what I'm doing in Linear Algebra, besides like get something into RREF, and I have an A.

 

[Crimson_Echidna]

Back when I had an African American History class in college the Professor actually started the class talking about how majority of the class failed the exam and only two students actually managed to get an A on the first exam so I was shitting bricks.

I ended up getting a 96 on that test.

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

My mid-term test for Art. I thought I was going to be terrible but I got a B on it.

 

[Shmuppers]

I had an almost-perfect SAT when I thought I bombed it.

 

[drtomoe123]

Back when I took AP Bio, our school was really poor and didn't have block scheduling so we never even got to do many of the labs for the course. When we had to take the actual AP test, our teacher pretty much told us to do our best on the multiple choice and hope for the best on the lab section. I don't remember too much but I tried pretty hard on a 2-3 of the lab questions but totally flaked on the other ones. Wrote a little poem about one of my teachers for one, maybe some song lyrics for another, drew a blocky sad face for my gel electrophoresis answer. So I really freaked when I found out that I got a 4 on the test and only ended up having to take one science course in undergrad (and that course ended up being a cryptozoology class lol).

I was still tripping off some acid I'd taken the night before when I sat my maths exam for university placement.

I still managed to score

I had an almost-perfect SAT when I thought I bombed it.

Legendary stuff right here. Crazy how life works out sometimes.

 

[Al-ibn Kermit]

On the GRE there's an analytical writing section where you get the average of two scores: One score by a human who has 45 seconds per test to see if you aren't writing gibberish and another score by a computer that just scans it for level of vocabulary usage and sentence variation. Since I want to apply to bio programs, I just aimed for 50th percentile by absolutely maximizing the ever loving fucking hell out of my word usage and proceeded to write the worst, fastest essay of my life. Like I was almost ashamed to expose a human being to it and time ran out in the second sentence of one of my conclusions so I knew I didn't do well but who cares? Right. I got in the high 80's in the other sections so I did good enough for grad school.

I got 91th percentile while my fanfiction writer friend bombed that section because he took it very seriously. I was only almost ashamed in the process.

 

[TheBowen]

Thought i absolutely botched an english exam, two of them infact that were on the same day and i revised incorrectly basically and didnt know anything

Got 2 B's from sheer luck

 

[Weckum]

We had an Art/Drawing class in high school. Final assignment was a big drawing or somet other big project.

I was lazy and made a quick comic book in Photoshop in a couple of hours... My grades were higher than one of my best friends who had been drawing all her life and was going to go to Art School to study this. She was pissed off at me because of it, and probably still is a bit

 

[Cow Mengde]

This is from 5th grade, so my memory is a little hazy.

For some reason, our teacher was pissed off at us, so she gave us an exam. It was a math exam, but I THINK it involved definitions of math terms. Again, details are hazy. We had 1 day to study for the surprise exam.

I didn't study. I looked at the math book 5 minutes before the exam.

When we finally got the results back, only 5 people in the class passed the exam. I was one of the 5. People who failed had to study all day and take the exam again. Those that passed were allowed to play or some such.

 

[brickarts295]

Any test, involving writing assignments. I always have great things to write about but my grammar and spelling is mediocre at best (I would not be surprise if you find some in this post). And yet I almost always get high 80s even a 90 just recently. I don't know, maybe my teachers barely read them XD

Oh yeah, getting a C- on my Political Science was like Christmas morning for me, I hated that class with a passion and could not imagine myself taking again. Half of the class dropped out and more than half got an F.

 

[Dart]

I'm the last minute type. Always been and I find it works best for me. I've always done great on exams: A's sometimes B's, obviously depends on the how dense the exam is. An hour or two of study the night or right before exams. I won't lie sometimes I'll wing it and expect the worst, but somehow I always pull through with at least a low B. No stealth brag intended.

In fact I think that is one of my big flaws; I am super lazy. It quite embarrassing actually, coming to mere minutes late to class every other day. Something I'd like to change. Maybe that will be my New Years' resolution

 

[AGoodODST]

I took a criminology module last year as there wasn't really anything more I wanted to do and needed one more module.

It was fucking shit so I just never went to any lectures and like two seminars over the whole year. The exam was some crap where it wasn't questions but 12 words and you had to just write notes about each word.

Studied for about 30 minutes the night before. Got like 77% in the exam.

 

[Jubern]

Last minute type guy.

In 2011 I applied for Japanese Language Proficiency Test N1 after barely getting N2 the year before, just to see how much harder it was and expecting to do terribly.

I promptly forgot about all of it and didn't study at all for the test.
Comes December, a friend asked me if I was ready for "next Sunday's JLPT".
"Oh."
Went in, thought I did terribly, yet lo and behold, I got it with a better score than N2.

There was a LOT of salt among my friends lol

 

[Simmins]

My English 102 Research paper, I studied for it the whole term but I could not for the life of me put the ideas I was trying to present into writing. It was a 12 page paper and I had to get interviews which I did from the head of the anthropology department (my research paper was on ecotourism and it's effects on environmental conservation especially in regards to local populations and wildlife.). I worked on it piecemeal through the whole term and every time I would read it the paper came across as complete nonsense to me.
It was a lot of this, therefore that kind of language. I hated it and tried to revise it but in the end got lazy and finished it with only one edit. It required something like 10 sources and I think I got 8 and bs'd the other two sources only including a throw away quote or two to meet the minimum. Either way I still don't feel I argued my point very well. I was pretty sure I was going to get a C or D given my past with English, however I received the highest grade in the class and got above a 100% on the paper because of an actual interview which I guess some people didn't do or it wasn't really required to be an actual in person interview. Anyway I was pretty amazed and proud of myself to have written a professional academic paper considering I barely passed English 101 and failed all my high school English classes.

 

[themagicalkitsune]

Sophomore year, my Topology final was brutal. Like, leagues harder than anything we ever did on the class. I couldn't even comprehend most of the problems and thought I had (pretty confidently) solved 3 out of the 10 problems and just bullshitted the rest, I wanted to curve into a ball and cry afterwards. Ended up with a 70.5%, hit exactly the median of the class lol.

 

[studyguy]

Early in college I had a stats class I was supposed to present on a model we had created and studied all semester. My fucking laptop got jacked before class and my backup was back at home. I had a USB with some slides and I winged it so fucking hard I was literally drawing on the board just numbers and graphs I recalled with facts I knew about the model.

Pulled a fucking B+ and was like holy shit what? The teacher said he was impressed despite the fact that he thought I was bullshitting an excuse originally. Took the grade and said fuck it.

 

[Zyrox]

Back in high school my final German exam was like this. It was about a book we read in class. Well, the "we" did not include me lol. I didn't read or even own the book because at this point I didn't care about my German grade anymore and just wanted to focus on the subjects I would write my graduation exams in.
So when it was time to write the exam I just borrowed the book from a classmate in a parallel class for the time of the exam. To answer the questions posed by the exam, I basically opened the book at a random page, read a bit and wrote down what I found and tried to somehow relate it to the exam question (since time was of the essence, couldn't spend ages searching through the book).
So after time was up and I handed the exam in I thought to myself "Well, this one didn't work out, but eh, who cares, never gonna write German exams ever again"
A few weeks later we got them back. We got summoned each individually to the teacher's room to get our exams back and get a few words from the teacher about our work. When I was called, I thought to myself, "welp, time to get my 3 points (out of 15)". So I went into the room, sat down, and my teacher said: "Well, what do you think?"
I was like "Well, it probably wasn't my best work, but I'm glad it's now over."
Teacher: "Your exam was definitely short. In fact, it was the shortest of them all."
Me: "Yea well to be honest, I wasn't really into the subject matter, in fact, I haven't even re-"
*teacher hands me the exam, I see a "3" and thought "well there it is"*
Teacher:" It was short and on point. You've nailed it. Congrats."
I was like "What?" and then I noticed the "1" next to the "3", making it 13/15 points, best in class.
I thought to myself "Teacher, you sure this is my exam? You sure you counted those points right? I mean I haven't even read the damn thing"
But my teacher seemed very happy with me and impressed, so I took my exam, stood up and went out of the room. A stupid grin started to form on my face as I went back to my classmates, who were curious what I scored (I didn't exactly make it a secret that I didn't read or own the book). As I told them my score they were just as perplexed as I was when I got it back. The look on their faces and almost unanimous expression of "WAT" was priceless lol.

 

[Persona7]

I expected to fail but got the highest score. Pretty cool.

 

[KHlover]

I've had exams where I got an A after expecting to fail, I've failed exams which I expected to pass. Fun stuff can happen in exams. Once I passed an exam in IT where we were expected to write a small program, GUI and all. 50% of the grade was the GUI, 50% the VB code behind it. I can't program worth shit, so I just created the GUI. It looked like it was supposed to, buttons, text fields and shortcuts were all in place - but literally nothing happened whenever something was klicked. Passed with 50%

 

[mo60]

I have multiple instances where something like this happened and they were mostly all in junior or senior level Earth science courses.

1.I thought I did terrible or okay on some final for a junior level Earth science class because I thought I did really terrible on one or two long answer questions but I ended up getting a 76℅ on the final which was a percent higher then what I got on the second midterm.

2. In a senior level Earth science class on every major exam I wrote I kept on underestimatimg the grade I would get on that exam by 10 to 20 percent.I averaged in the low 80's on all the exams and ended up getting an A- in the course

3.In another senior level Earth science my grade dropped slightly under 60% briefly after the second midterm.I thought it would be impossible to get my grade up to a B- until I got my grade for some paper I wrote. I got an 95 percent on that paper and my grade went up more then 15% because my prof for that class also gave everyone two free bonus marks for that midterm. I ended up getting a B- in the course because I got slightly under 70% on the final.The sane thing happened with some senior level sociology course I took in a spring semester but I got 110 percent on the paper for that class.

 

[Fahzgoolin]

My self adopted motto of "C's get degrees" often lands me A's and B's. lol

 

[Oblivion]

Shit, just had another one of these.

I had a research paper where we could pick any topic that we want but had to use two primary sources as a base. I fucked up royally initially because we had to specifically use our library's special collections, which I was planning on spending the entire day in on the day it was due (paper was due at 5 PM). What I didn't foresee coming in a particularly bad case of shitty timing was that same day was Veteran's day so the whole school would be closed. Which meant that I only had about an hour the previous day (because that's all I had left when I was done with classes that day) and I just grabbed whatever the fuck I could find.

I got two (imo) shitty sources that wouldn't give me much to write about, so I had to BS on a massive scale AND I turned it in 3 days late (which she says she would deduct a half grade per day).

....I got a goddamned 83.