Rough Breathing...

..., not to be confused with heavy breathing, though rough breathing created heavy breathing for me yesterday and dominated Day 4.

In Greek, words beginning with vowels or the "r" sound MUST have one of two breathing marks over them - and there is a host of rules re exceptions and placement. Failure to add the breathing mark is equivalent to misspelling the word.

Which I learned the hard way.

On yesterday's quiz I failed to put the CORRECT breathing mark on ONE word which I had to "decline", meaning it was written in four cases - singular and plural (that's 8); masculine, feminine, and neuter (times 3). 24 times I wrote ONE word - and misspelled it every time because the breathing mark was pointing the WRONG WAY. ONE WORD, but 24 errors, each a half point.

The prof really wanted to be lenient but held his ground. Which was right.

Which meant a loss of 12 points on a 76 point test. Or 15%. Are you enjoying the math?

I calculated my overall score and got 82% and felt rather good about that. A 59 year old lady was hanging in there!!

Until I looked at it again in the afternoon - and realized I had made a HUGE error in calculating my score. I only had 68%!!!

Here is the disgusting part: I do not see myself as a 68% student. This was a blow to my ego - and to my self-confidence. It took me THREE HOURS to get my head back on straight and go over the math above. IF I had paid attention to just that ONE DETAIL I would have the 82%. Different than saying there was 15% of the test I just did not understand.

SO! First thing up today is telling the prof to readjust my quiz score. Second thing up is to take our first test. Yep, today I will learn just what I have learned. Studied until midnight, got up at 5, can't do any more.

Here's hoping and praying I will not be doing any rough breathing at the end...