the usual school shit.
written: 6:17 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 07, 2004

And it's high enough for me to get an A right on the dot when the marks are added together with the Paper 4 marks.

On the downside, the paper which I haven't got back is the one that I am absolutely, undoubtedly, extremely sure that I screwed up. And of course, it's the infamous Paper 8, also known as practical criticism.

Okay. So I am going to fail Paper 8, or get a very marginal pass. Even though I failed my Maths it doesn't keep me from doing the simple calculation and arrive at the conclusion that my grade will definitely be dragged through horse shit by it. (Why horse shit? Because it's the first thing that came to mind.) What is (50+70)/2? 50+70=120. 120/2=60.

Or worse: 40+70=110. 110/2=55.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

I hereby announce that I hate Paper 8. Something simply prevents me from doing well in it. I cannot understand, for the life of me, why it is that I like and mostly understand the poem but I just cannot write about it. There seems to be a dam of sorts stuck permanently in my mind that trips me over whenever I attempt to write a good Prac Crit essay. And needless to say, I never succeed.

I'm fucking scared, and I should be, considering the fact that I have no idea what I'm supposed to do when they say "also show how one poem illuminates your understanding of the other". The question was phrased in the same way during the practice test for comparison questions but luck would have it that the post-mortem for that test was cancelled and never re-scheduled (which I am not at all surprised at) and hence I never got to know what I'm supposed to do exactly before the stupid prelim.

So the stupid prelim came out with the stupid question and this time round, I didn't even attempt to address it. Hahahahahahahaha. And the essay that I handed in was only half of what I thought of writing. It took me forever to write out all my points of comparison on a separate sheet of paper and the most horrifying thing was how a large part of me was just waiting for the time to pass so that I could be put out of my misery.

You know what? I usually don't blame teachers for my bad results, but I have to say this. The Bulldog is largely culpable for the Paper 8 quagmire in which I'm stuck right now. I mean, seriously lah. Thanks for showing up for only a quarter at best of all periods designated for Paper 8; thanks for cancelling holiday lessons and failing to re-schedule them; thanks for killing my interest in Lit, if only temporary; and most importantly, thanks for sticking around, killing me further, instead of handing the reigns over to the other teacher so that damage control could've been done way earlier on.

But yeah. Whatever. I'm not going to let her rob me of my well-deserved A, and neither am I going to give in to the apparent conundrum that is prac crit. So.

I'm not concentrating right now. I'm concurrently doing some climate survey for the school. Ha. Time to blast it senseless.

Someone complained in his blog that Tubby is biased towards me, Mel and Pei (we're "celebrity students" apparently; yeah, whatever, I have nothing to say to tthat), hence implicitly suggesting that we don't deserve our better-than-average marks.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I don't know whether to take offence to that or just laugh it off, or agree, or go off on another rant about how stupid the people in my school are. To some degree, I'm rather convinced that my marks have been inflated -- for GP especially -- exactly because everyone else sucks. So I guess a lot of it is relative, which basically means that I may not be getting such results if I were in a better school.

Still, the fact still stands that Tubby does not award high marks to students that he likes. Case in point: the girl about whom I've bitched at length previously. She failed badly, apparently, so badly that he didn't want to read out her marks when he was in the process of announcing everyone's marks. And it's not like he has a problem against her; in fact, one could even say that she's one of his more likable students (from his point of view anyway).

And if you really want to make a comparison between Pei and Tong: all I can say is, look who is attending classes and who is studying and who is not. I like Tong; he rocks, he's funny, and he's a smart guy. But you cannot expect to get good results in Lit if you don't attend 99.99% of the lessons and if you don't even bother to prepare for the paper. We're not geniuses here; if we were, none of us would be in JJC. I mean, geniuses don't even have to study for the stupid O Levels to get a single digit aggregate. Everyone says that they didn't study for the O Levels, and hence they were stuck with a shitty aggregate, and hence they had no choice but to relegate themselves to one of the bottom 5 JCs.

Hahahahahaha. Whatever, okay? Say what you want. But the fact still remains that there were people who didn't study for the O Levels as well and got way better results.

My point is, Pei deserves praises from Tubby because she's good, and that's just an understatement. She attends classes and her attendance rate is, I'm sure, way better than Tong's.

So don't go off about how Tubby is biased, because he's only giving credit where credit's due.

And I think I deserved (mostly, anyway) to get the marks that I got too. I make a point to write topic sentences as well as concluding sentences, so that the examiner will not have the opportunity to accuse me of being irrelevant. And it's got to a point where my writing style is jeopardised as a result. I mean, how absolutely banal is it to end every single bloody paragraph with things like, "Hence, utopian narratives depend upon their ability to shock and provoke blah blah blah" anyway? It's not only that; it's highly unsophisticated and JJ-like.

Counter-argument: I deserved to get a mere B for Paper 4 because I was stupid enough to choose the wrong question, and I was also stupid enough to be utterly incoherent for the passage-based. And uh... well, I don't know what else went wrong. I can't remember anyway. But yeah. Point taken.

One last thing: I'm relatively pleased with myself today, and it's not just because of the Lit. I finally mustered up the courage to ask my Econs teacher about the degree of leniency of her marking. I was wondering if my marks were inflated because, again, everyone else sucks, and if my marks aren't really a real indicator of my capabilities.

So I was like, "Can I ask you a stupid question? Were you lenient when you were marking my script? Like, if I wrote that for the A Levels would my marks still be the same?"

She started to reply, "I wouldn't say that you'd get the same marks", but then, she paused; other classmates have gathered. She thought for a while, and finally answered, "Your three essays were clear A scripts."

Considering she's Miss Chin, that's the highest compliment an Econs student can ever hope to be paid.

That, in itself, was motivation enough to make me forget my hatred for Econs MCQ and do them until I die.

And guess what? I'm not nearly dead yet.

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