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Pleasantly surprised, but don't feel that I deserve it

Hi all, first of all, I would like to thank the founders and every contributing members of the GMATclub community. Though I rarely post anything, I have relied heavily on this forum for various resources starting on the very first day of my studying. I had never, ever, thought that i would one day be writing a post about my GMAT experience, just because I thought it wouldn't be worth talking about. But here I am, writing my first real "debrief". In fact, calling it a debrief is quite a stretch. I feel that the way i "studied" should not be followed by anyone who wants to get a great score.

Back in November, 2012, I took a in-class GMAT course with Kaplan. However, I put in minimal effort in the course (all i did was showing up to the class twice a week)and actually did not touch any of the study materials for a few months after completing the course. I guess I was not mentally ready to really take or study for the GMAT.

Fast forward to August 2013, somehow, I picked up the studying again and began studying for about 1 hour a day. My routine was studying/doing practice problems before getting to work, and doing a mock test on the weekends. I briefly went through the MGMAT foundation of Math book, but rarely touched the other 15 GMAT books I had purchased (they still look brand new as of today). I have never even used a error log to track what concepts I was missing. In fact, I didn't even review my mock tests and a lot of times, i just made the same errors over and over again. In the end, i think i had spent around 70 (VERY SCATTERED AND DISTRACTED) hours on the studying. Initially, I was only aiming to get around 600+, which i seemed to have been able to achieve during my various practice tests. However, I gave the official GMAT at the end of October, and got a devastating 590.

Feeling broken and beaten, I picked myself up again and told myself to just study harder and attempt again. So I went online to schedule my next GMAT appointment for 12/30/2013. This time, I enrolled in the Economist GMAT Tutor course, and I told myself "Since I am spending even more money in this exam, I need to get at least 700 to make it all worthwhile". The course itself is also computer adaptive and forces you to learn each concept before you can move on. This has helped tremendously because I never had the motivation to go through the books and did not know that I was missing some of the most basic quant/verbal concepts i needed. I studied a lot more this time than I did the first time around, but still, my studying strategy was far from systematic, and most of the time, i just studied here and there and never concentrated my efforts in anything.

Then, before i knew it, December 30th was around the corner, I still felt that I was not ready (i was not getting 700s in any of my practice tests). But I struggled to reschedule my exam this time because I was going to be out of the country for over one month in Jan 2014. Finally, I decided to postpone the exam to the end of March (3/29) and said to myself that I would still study while I was abroad.

Of course, I NEVER touched my notes once when I was away. In fact, when I got back in Feb, I had already lost the momentum of my studying. For the entire month of Feb and partially March, all I did was three more practice exams and a brief review of the incorrect questions. (But I did notice that I was making many careless mistakes, and that half of the questions i answered incorrectly stemmed from these silly mistakes)

Today, I walked into the Pearson center feeling that I was not at all prepared, but with a "i just want to get over it, i will never get a 700 anyway" attitude. I wrote on top of my notepad "Careful, Careful, Careful" and began my exam. Then, after four hours, magically, i scored a 700. 700! I could not believe what I saw on the screen, and almost teared up instantly. After staring at the unofficial report for 10 minutes, i finally believed what I was seeing, and I got 48 in Q and 38 in V.

Needless to say, this was an EXTREMELY surprising score, and while I am really happy with this score, a part of me inevitably feels that I do not deserve such score and that i got a good score only because I was lucky. (maybe I picked the right answer when i was guessing?)

Below are my practice exam scores to date (and yes, i really took this many practice tests, and rarely reviewed any of them, and you will see why i was so surprised by my score today):

8/10/13 – 580 (repeat GMATPrep 1 - Q42/V28)
8/17/13 – 390 (Manhattan GMAT, didn’t finish)
8/24/13 – 670 (Veritas Prep)
9/7/13 - 600 (Kaplan)
9/14/13 – 600 (Kaplan)
9/21/13 - 560 (Kaplan)
9/28/13 - 630 (Kaplan)
10/5/13 - 660 (Kaplan)
10/12/13 - 630 (GMATPrep 2 - Q44/V32)
10/19/13 – 600 (Kaplan)
10/25/13 – Actual GMAT – 590 (Q36/V34)
11/17/13 - 690 (Kaplan)
11/24/13 - 670 (Manhattan GMAT Q43/V38)
11/30/13 - 600 (Economist)
12/7/13 - 690 (Kaplan)
12/14/13 - 600 (Manhattan GMAT, Q41/V32)
12/15/13 - 640 (Manhattan GMAT, Q40/V37)
12/22/13 - 660 (GMATPrep 3 - Q48/V32)
3/1/14 - 670 (Manhattan GMAT, Q45/V36)
3/15/14 - 590 (Manhattan GMAT Q38/V33)
3/22/14 - 640 (GMATPrep 4 - Q44/V34)
3/29/14 - 700 (Actual GMAT Q48/V38)

Anyway, the question I need to think about now is whether i should retake it again to get an even better score, but what if i run out of luck next time? It's very strange, but I truly feel even less confident than I did before.