I’m taking a class on data structures and algorithm analysis in Java, and last week I was worrying myself sick over a midterm I had on Wednesday, because the sample questions available on the web were trickier than I was expecting. It didn’t help that the day before the exam, I ran into someone who I knew was a good programmer and who had taken the class last year. I mentioned the midterm and she mentioned very casually that she’d switched out of the CS major because of this very same class. So of course I studied and worried and enjoyed the resulting tension headache, but as it turns out I managed a 100 on the exam. (What’s a weblog for, if not ego-stroking?) When I got home, I realized that the questions I had been having so much trouble before with were sample questions from the second midterm - which isn’t for over a month yet.