more exam crap. yay.
written: 6:06 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2004

Uh, yeah, the above is supposed to be a reply to Bob's note. At least, a part of it. I haven't formulated the rest.

So yeah contrary to popular belief, the truth is, I suck at Lit. Yep. I expect a mediocre grade for Paper 4, which basically means that the A has, once again, flown out of the bloody window.

Okay. Tubby is an ass. Who the hell would willingly read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, let alone pseudo-analyse a shit-boring extract from it in which NOTHING happens except two old farts talking to each other for a rather crucial exam? What the hell was I supposed to say beyond my rather ineffectual criticisms of Bradbury's style? For half my shitty esasy I was off about how didactic Bradbury is, how he uses Faber or whatever the guy's name is as a mouthpiece with which to express his viewpoint on the opulence of books.

Like, how absolutely banal. And I totally did not adhere to the 70%-passage-30%-other-texts rule. It was more like 50-50. But how else was I supposed to go about answering the question? It specifically asked for me to show how Bradbury's presentation of his themes is "characteristic" of the approaches of other writers I've studied.

The word 'characteristic' threw me off, so in the end I substituted it with 'similar feature' in the beginning and proceeded to copy down the question in my concluding statements after that.

Once again, it was an elaborate exercise in How To Dispell Misconceptions And Prove To Everyone That One Is Actually An Illiterate, Stupid Fool Who Cannot Do Lit For Shit. Fun times. Absolutely lovely. This is GP Paper One revisited, and I don't really care what the teacher who marked my GP said; I still think that it's a crap essay and that I'm not gonna get beyond a 70%.

Ah fuck I really suck at this. Halfway through the redundant opening paragraph of my esasy, the second one, I decided that it was crap and that I really felt like doing the other question instead, but it was an hour before the end of the paper and I was already semi-panicking so I forced myself to continue writing my stupid crap answer and in the end it was a stupid crap answer that I handed in which will get me a stupid crap grade.

It took me a while to realise that 'irony' and 'paradox' are two different things. Which was exactly why I chose the stupid question on how anti-utopian narratives depend on the power to shock and provoke.

Like, to do what, exactly? Reached my own stupid conclusion, purported that the power to shock and provoke makes an anti-utopian narrative successful, blah blah fucking blah. The point is, it was crap.

And because I was writing my last point five minutes before the end of the paper, I couldn't think of another way to phrase 'the concept of perfection'. So I brilliantly wrote, 'the base of perfection'.

Dude, ever heard of the word 'essence'? Evidently not. What an absolutely genius way to display your so-called writing prowess that is actually non-existent.

One of the worst feelings in the world is the sense of dread that one gets in the middle of writing an important exam, when one is absolutely positive and sure that what one is writing is nothing but stupid and lousy bullshit, but one can't do anything about it except to push on because to start over would mean that one would not have the time to finish the whole blasted thing. It's like continuing to walk into a forest filled with landmines despite knowing that you're gonna step on one every other half a step.

Did that even make sense? Ah whatever.

Econs MCQ and DRQ/case study tomorrow. Spent an hour reading my first three months notes after discovering that I miraculously still have them, filed up nicely in one of my many Econs files. Yeah. That was brilliant studying strategy, considering the fact that the likelihood of a question being asked on things like 'what are the features of a command/market/mixed economy' is close to zero.

Should've done elasticity instead, since I have no idea what is going on beyond the whole 'assuming Singapore's demand for US's exports to be elastic, a rise in the price of US's exports will lead to a more than proportionate fall in Singapore's quantity demanded for US's exports, and hence the value of US's exports falls, causing a balance of trade deficit' thingy.

I'm sure such insightful analysis of the effects of a rise in the price of US's exports on its balance of trade accout is so totally going to help me calculate cross elasticity or whatever the hell they've got in there, waiting for me to peruse them and hence kill myself through and through.

And I still have to figure out how to get from Gross National Product to Net National Product and all that lovely and boring national income accounting nonsense, and market failure still makes no sense to me, and the only topics of which I am relatively confident are the ones towards the end. Like, the whole monetary/fiscal policy, international trade, blah blah blah, thingies.

Then again, the only things that I know about unemployment is that there are different types of unemployment, a fact which an average person with some semblance to intelligence would figure out without any economics background. That's about it.

On the up side, I finally get what the heck the whole production possibility curve thing is on about.

On the down side, the probability that it would come out is about 1/30, and the probability that I would know the right answer is not 1/4 or anything more than that, so yeah. Still screwed anyway.

I'm just bloody sore and sorry that I did not mention my beloved England, England more in today's crap. If only I had chosen the other question.

Ah, lovely. The grammar of tragedy. I hate it.

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010