I have AB-solutely no idea why this is so

When I turned in the coding part of my C++ programming final, which counted for seventy percent of the final-exam grade, I knew my code sucked.  Even with several real-life C++ programmers helping me, it sucked.  I didn’t complete all the assignment, I didn’t get the hundred bugs ironed out . . . I just got something that would compile without the compiler throwing back a couple of dozen errors, and that approximated the solution to the problem, and that’s what I turned in.  (I’ve been heading toward medium crash mode ever since I ran out of anti-depressants in early November, and the problems I had with this class only exacerbated my depressed feelings, making it even harder to write acceptable code.)

Last night the instructor emailed me to let me know that he’d given me a final grade of A for the semester.  No way did I earn an A for the semester.  Only in an alternate reality could I even have contemplated it.  Had I been handing out grades, I’d say my final was worth about a D—perhaps—and a fairer semester grade, giving the maximum allowable for class participation, ought to have been about a C+ or B-.  Never, ever did I earn an A.

“The heathen instructor is peculiar
Which the same I would rise to explain.”