As you point out the surprise can seem unpleasant at first. I’m glad that with your positive attitude you turned it around.

And I hope you keep enjoying the classes.

It seems I surprise myself all the time! However the nature of my surprises don’t seem to have as pleasant and as profound an experience Ada has had with her move.

The most recent experience I had was a review class a couple weeks ago. I am taking a 2 1/2 year course and to keep us on track, during the time off between course curriculum, we have one day intensives, reviews of previous material.

The first half of the day, lecture, technical details and general review. The second half of the day, practical application, working with fellow students and a supervisor.

I thought the morning went well. I did seem to have fairly good recall, had not ‘lost’ any info in the year since I had studied this work. I felt confident the afternoon would go smoothly.

First surprise. I failed, plain and simple. I was what you might call miserable. I had work to do.

It’s now two weeks later and I got the second surprise. The best thing that could have happened was failing this review class. It took until now to realize it, however. The time to fail is while I’m still in school, address it now, find out what I could do should this happen in a real life application. Had this failure occurred while I was out on my own, I would not have been prepared or maybe even aware of this possibility. And certainly might be at a loss for a solution. Now, I have the chance to meet with my instructor and get some input.

Re-doing the review class, I guess is my third surprise, wasn’t expecting that would be on my calendar.