Waiting to get a midterm back can be a nerve-wracking experience, but for more than 1,000 Math 148 students who failed their first midterm, the wait was nothing compared to the results. Out of 1,524 students, 1,048 students, or 69 percent, failed. Forty students got As, 89 received Bs and 139 students received Cs. Tara Lautzenheiser, a pre-dentistry freshman, scored 63 percent on the midterm.”I don’t think the homework was anything how the test was, and the word problems were tricky and difficult to solve,” she said.Sia Wong, vice chairman of the math department, said that one of the reasons students may not have done as well as expected is because they are not used to the type of problems that were on the midterm.”We are trying to de-emphasize drills in math and instead are trying to communicate to students basic skills that they can use in other sciences and social sciences,” Wong said.”These skills require time to develop and require more thought, and students may not be used to this,” he added.Wong said the midterm had fewer problems because each required more thought. He added that even though the midterm was not a repeat of the homework, it did use the same concepts. Jeff Kastner, a first-year graduate student and Math 148 TA, said that the midterm was indeed hard, but that with time and effort students could have done well.”The first question was hard, and I think a lot of students lost momentum after that. For example, there was a question that asked the students to solve for ‘a’, yet more than half of them solved for ‘x’,” Kastner said.Kastner said that he also thought many first quarter students aren’t used to taking comprehensive tests.”I don’t see how students that got a 14 percent can say that it was (due to) the way the midterm was done. TAs and lecturers always get a bad rap, but sometimes it’s not necessarily anything we did or didn’t do,” Kastner said.Wong said that there are many options available to help students. There is a learning center, office hours and evening tutors available to all math students. He added that students also should remember that homework accounts for a large portion of the quarter grade, and that the final exam grade can replace the first midterm.”We would like to see everyone get As. There is time to improve and do well,” Wong said.Kastner said attendance by itself can add 10 bonus percentage points to the final grade.