Lots of things i wanted to talk about since my last real post, and by last real post i meant those that were so long that you probably didn't even read, (you bastard). The last 2 were really posts, there were more like tweets, my thoughts in 4 lines or less to show my readers, all 5 of you, that i'm still (somewhat) alive.
Anyway, like i said, lots of stuff i wanted to talk about since, some issues important, some even more important.
with less than 120 hours left on the clock til the A levels officially start (for me at least), its quite terrifying going to a national exam when you cant friggin do half the questions on a mock paper. i don't know why i came off the prelim 2s feeling so confident when i needed to refer to the answers for 80% of the question on a math paper i did yesterday. and the truly terrifying thing is not knowing whether the paper will actually be that difficult or other schools are over exaggerating the difficulty of the paper. Either way it's scary. right now i have to contend with the fact that i may actually have to end up repeating JC2, something which i haven't discussed with my parents, but the most expected reaction would be SEE LAH PLAY SOMEMORE.
but you know the worst part about my revision. knowing that i can't ever feel confident about my economics paper. for the poly people who read my blog, yes, i'm talking about you, i'd like to think of econs as the "social studies" of A level syllabus. it's the essay paper that most people take because trying to avoid would mean jumping through so many loopholes that just friggin doing it would save us all the time and energy. it's also similar in the sense that while they do teach you the whole syllabus, you just end up studying a little more than half of it and hope that it comes up.
economics is the kind of subject where i have no idea how good i am at it. it's not like math where i know i don't know how to do this particular topic like quotient rule in differentiation. Nor is it like General Paper where you see how bad at it you truly are, no matter how hard you try. No, economics takes all of your expectations and screws with it like a sick twisted plaything. i'm not saying economics is bad because i suck at it, i'm saying i have no idea how i got my score. everytime i think i may score well on 1 essay, i end up failing or when i feel like i wrote something wrongly, i end up getting great scores. and i can't even learn from my mistakes or successes because they always feel so random and "out of place", like when you wrote something intuitively, which you thought everyone else would too, but end up being heavily praised for that one single sentence. in fact i almost always/never really know why or what i did to deserve really good marks when i do get them. when i score well, i feel good about myself, and think "hey i've improved and that must means i'm doing something right." then the next paper comes to bite me in the ass and i end up failing.
the worst instance of this is after the common test. basically after a year and a quarter of studying the subject i thought to myself " hey, i know how this subject works and what i need to do to do well" and then come Mid-Year, all the questions are so ridiculously difficult that the textbooks don't even have the answers. one example. Explain the importance of resource allocation [25 marks]. i would usually answer that in 3 sentences. but unfortunately you must write all the stuff that just tangentially has any little (if not completely unnecessary) relation to resource allocation. typically the teacher would "expect" you to write about pretty much everything, from the definition, to the policies, to where the policies should apply, tow what the policy maker had for lunch to the time on the giant clock. essentially all that in 45 minutes or less. and the worst part( yes i know i used the worst part more than once) is the spill-over effect. in a span of 2 hrs and 15 minutes, we need to look at 6 different question and do 3 of them, not to mention choosing the questions, planning each essay and actually putting pen to paper. just picking the questions alone takes more than 5 minutes. everytime i read all 6 questions one time through, 3 minutes passed and then i go more in-depth to actually start picking the questions, more than 7 has passed. and then there's the actual planning of the essay where you write down roughly what to write in each paragraph of the individaul essay, which in itself takes time. so even though teachers say you have 45 minutes per essay, you really only have 35 odd minutes to write 4 pages, and yes that is without leaving any lines. that's basically why when i write, i don't think, which sounds surprising, until you realise that i'm not the only one. so when you exceed the time you give yourself, that eats away what ever time you have of the other essasys, and assuming that you hit exactly 45 minutes on the 2nd one (which doesn't always happen, usually you end up 5 minutes over) you end up with approximately 30 minutes to bang out an essay that is supposed to be of equal quality with the other 2 which you probably has the least confidence in since you did it last. this usually results in the last essay being short of a few paragraphs. all that for 20 friggin points.
and that about sums up my thoughts on economics, i love it why i score, even though i don't know why, and i hate it when i don't, because i should have thought about what i missed out in my paper when i was doing it, but hey, i wasn't thinking.
In other news, President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize,in other words, he won the Nobel "I-Am-Not-George-Bush-Award", according to Stephen Colbert. while i do find it odd that the committee gave him the prize before he accomplished anything, i find it ridiculous that there are people vehemently contesting the decision in the media. this is just good old sensationalism. i mean yeah, it''s odd, but it's not going up to a camera and looking all angry. he didn't even offend you, and if they gave the prize to someone else, you would have gone on with your life not caring about what he did to deserve his prize.
i have also been watching Gluttony For Punishment. great show on Discovery travel and living on sundays at 6pm or 630, i can't remember. bob blumer is a great host, optimistic and fun. and the fact that he regularly challenges experts in international competition with only 5 days of training. i think this show is so great in that it basically emphasizes the only real reason people should travel to strange lands, no not take photos wth buildings, but to try new things. most holidays just involve going to one place and eating and taking photos. while that in itself is not a bad idea in the first place, i think the "experience" part of the trip has been left out and the tourist loses out a the great culture and activity of the host nation.
Also, The Men Who Stare At Goats, great premise, great actors, hopes are high for this one.
Modern warfare 2 is also coming in 2 days, so if i fail A levels, it's totally Infinite Ward's fault
Also, brutal legend,
and Assassin's creed 2
and Arkham Asylum,
and NFS Shift,
and shadow Complex, i still can't believe i haven't played it yet.
last year's actual A Level papers were so friggin difficult. i can't believe it. *pout
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