This is not a ship to sail, it’s the belly of a whale, and I know this time we can’t escape.
One might argue that I'm only saying this because of the overwhelming mediocrity of my KI prelim exam -
I have a new way of predicting if I'm going to do badly on a paper: you may notice that every time I think I'm going to do REALLY BADLY and actually FAIL, I ... do pretty good. Some may even yell in outrage that I am the last person to notice this. OKAY. CALM DOWN. I HAVE A NEW METHOD OF PREDICTION. I now believe that when, rather than the very energetic frenzy of terror that tends to follow an exam in which I - do pretty well - the CALM SENSE OF OVERWHELMING MEDIOCRITY is what bodes the ... illest.
Because even a frenzy of terror is a sign of life, and intellectual vigour, and the very promising awareness of how things could have been better done. Which, I suppose, is a fairly reliable recipe for doing well: where there's life there's hope? But this sense of acceptance, that nothing else can be done? Can't be good. Spending two hours on my first essay (about which I knew nothing) - remember how I can't write any "hard" philosophical analysis for KI? How I prefer to skirt the edges, dropping tantalising details, names, keywords, gobbets, quotes and so on, making for a very colourful essay that, like a KALEIDESCOPE, obscures the REAL WORLD with its PRETTY PATTERNS and COLOURS? And how for the KI March blocks I went in having studied two sets of notes ("The External World" from Nigel Warburton's Philosophy: The Basics, and the Empiricism chapter from the IB course book, if anyone wants to follow in my ill-fated footsteps), praying that either scepticism or empiricism would come out, and ... BOTH DID? And I then wrote an essay full of the HIGHEST POETRY? well ... it didn't happen this time. FAIRLY SO. Should I receive such good karma twice in a row I think I would start building pagodas like fat U Po Kyin in Burmese Days, so scared would I be of the massive karmic debt I must be accumulating.
ANYWAY. So this time the "hard" epistemology was inescapable, and I suck at it, so ... my essay sucked. It was a very LONG essay. I think the most charitable thing to be said about it was that it boasted a BROAD RANGE of ideas, as I was basically CATHARTICALLY PURGING my system of ALL THE EPISTEMOLOGY NOTES I had studied. I think more accurate things to be said about my essay are that it was ILLEGIBLE, LARGELY INCOHERENT, SUPERFICIAL and SIMPLISTIC. THAT'S NOT LIKE YOU, KAREN! In my last paragraph, nearly weeping with despair, I put like ... THREE quotes into one paragraph (having acutely felt their lack in the rest of my essay). It wasn't an awful essay? I guess it knew where it was going (even if it had to run very fast and kept falling over as it did so). But it was ... as they say ... REPETITIVE AND MECHANICAL. HAHAHA
Having taken two hours to write that - I had to keep stopping to dig shit up out of my brain, unheard of in a KI exam, the experience of which is normally akin to ... the laxative effect of whatever ... I then had like an hour to do the essay from Section B. I WOULD LIKE TO SAY that I think my karmic debt is NOT BAD considering I was so sure I wasn't going to do a question on the Social Sciences, but I had a last-minute change of heart at like half past midnight last night and actually got out of bed to read my largely incomprehensible class notes. Upon reflection this is actually pretty good karma? 'cause I might not have read up on it at all! But I just want to say I am the WORST annotator in the world. My printed class notes are filled with shit in the margins like "// KUHN?" and "EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS?" and "CF. WEBER". What the hell does that mean???
Needless to say this WENT VERY BADLY. So anything I had to say about the Social Sciences had to be pulled out of my ass quite rapidly. Seriously I think my entire essay had like. THREE POINTS, HASTILY WRITTEN. I WROTE A WHOLE KI ESSAY WITHOUT QUOTES!!! IS THIS WHAT IT FEELS TO BE MORTAL??? I felt so NAKED. SO BEREFT. I was like ... SURELY THERE IS A WAY TO SUBSTANTIATE THAT POINT WITHOUT ACTUALLY HAVING TO BACK IT UP WITH FACTS!!! ... NO??? actually I'm lying, in my very last paragraph, with -3 minutes to go, I just had enough time to squeeze in one quote. A SOP TO MY DIGNITY. Anyway kids, it's okay. Wish me luck with KI Paper 2 to save me from total ruin. I will ... think very critically for the next paper and hope this is enough to recover my ... whatever. SIGH. :(
----------
Anyway. ONE MIGHT SAY I AM ONLY SAYING THIS BECAUSE OF THE OVERWHELMING MEDIOCRITY OF MY KI PRELIM EXAM
- but I really was very happy last week. I was in school Monday to Wednesday, having stuff to study and university forms to fill in, and in a weird, life-threatening way it was just like old times. Except way better! I've been so happy here. And I'm glad that less than a week before my prelims it is still possible to just be happy where I am.
And sometimes I forget it, and sometimes it is easy to forget - fifteen sets of History notes to do in a day? sometimes I forget to EAT. But equally, sometimes even when we are sitting in the smelly Reading Room, and I am wondering if it is possible to study Aesthetics, Ethics, Science, Social Science and Language all in one day (it wasn't), barefoot and crosslegged because my socks were wet from the rain, it is still possible to look up in wonder at the vile conversations we can have, and how easy it is to laugh. And how sin is behovely, but ... all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Everyone around me having delayed-time conversations because they keep having to take their iPods out of their ears to hear anything, freaking right out over the ethics and aesthetics of phoning someone just to find if they're competing for the same college, elaborate Harry Potter parallels, no work done.
Despite the ... sense of impending doom that underscored the last week ... life was almost giddily lighthearted now that school is officially over. It rained a lot. I'd wake up in the morning with the nine o' clock sun coming through the window, pack my bag and eat breakfast, and by the time I got to the bus stop it'd be pouring with rain. Continuing my pestilential existence I spent more time bumming inside the staffroom than outside of it studying, which I hope I will not have occasion to regret, e.g. in the middle of my prelims. But it would take a lot to make me regret this. There is a sense of lunatic irresponsibility in the air. I should be sorry to forget how good this last week has been - like a gift of time, wild and flying and surreal.
It rained every day, dramatically and without warning, which always lends a particular anarchic glee to any proceedings. Sloshing cursing up stairs made waterfalls with rain, studying barefoot crosslegged and drenched, shivering under the air conditioning, everyone racing Mr Miles up to LT5 with the sky dark and rain pouring off the eaves outside, running to and from the staffroom barely under cover with the rain blowing in the open corridors, trapped in class with the water beating against the windowpanes - I hope not to have cause to regret this weather, far from ideal for studying but perfect for all other conceivable purposes, heart mind and pancreas. We were hunched over our notes and entangled in our iPods in the Reading Room one day when we heard that the glass door of the Fishtank had shattered and rushed downstairs (lamentable lack of focus) to pick up souvenir pieces, fleeing with them flaking tiny shards in our pockets before the teachers came to stop the looting. Mine is a paperweight on my table now. Come out o' the storm!
We had to re-take our class photo on the day of our KI exam, which was pretty funny. I have a thing for group photos and how difficult they are to organise - how dependent on chance it is that all these separate chaotic individuals should be frozen in exactly that split-second position, grinning or distracted or openmouthed and gormless. All the things out of the frame or prior to that split-second capture or else completely random - everyone's uncharacteristically law-abiding collarpins, hastily tied hair, half the group staring off into the distance instead of at the camera, the animatronic monkey head carefully brought out of the staffroom and upstairs for this express purpose. (I'ma miss the monkey head) We gonna look back on these days and weep, kids.
I remember the days (last year!) when I was - when we were all - too scared to go into the Humanz staffroom. We'd grab a bodyguard, move in packs, tiptoe in, hand in whatever we needed to, and get the hell out praying not to be noticed. I was arguing with Mr Miles about this: the days when I was too shy to ask any questions about work or anything else (arguably the source of my unparalleled talent for reading his handwriting. self-reliance!) He was like ... yes those golden days of peace when you wouldn't say boo to a goose! but since reversed his opinion and asserted those days never existed, which is a damn lie. Ha ha. I remember going into the staffroom and casting quick frightened sidelong glances at the list of Oxbridge candidates on the whiteboard and feeling sharp shooting pangs of fear, then retreating to the safety of the outside world. Even when we made brief raids to talk nonsense we moved in packs to escape individual notice! I remember I'd see the seniors lounging casually on the settee reading magazines and my awe of them would increase about tenfold. Like looking into the fiery furnace and seeing Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego tripping about merrily unscathed.
OH WELL. THOSE GOLDEN DAYS ARE PAST. Now I am a senior and my name is on the board (though it still causes me sharp shooting pangs of fear to see it, I say spotting continuity) and I am the one lounging on the settee and holding inappropriate conversations in the staffroom. Something in your brain breaks, I guess, when you enter your A level year. Faced with this monstrous foe, YOU ARE PURGED OF ALL MINOR FEARS. But ... what kind of life is Humanz without the tutors?
Last week would have been a poorer week without my pestiliential staffroom existence, having to take back my Oxford form and resubmit it about five times because I am some kind of walking applications disaster (misspelled "Mathematics", got my own name wrong, forgot to fill in my SAT scores, overestimated my own cleverness and tried to write directly on the original form instead of practising on a photocopy, glued my personal statement on crooked ...) This may be a subtle hint from the universe that if I am too dumb to even fill my form in right, then I may not be the ideal candidate ... BUT NO. I learn fast!!! I work hard!!! aaaaaa.
Continuing my pestilential existence I spent more time bumming in the staffroom than outside of it mugging. Came to school Tuesday to find Fish slumped over a desk in class moaning. What's the matter with you? I said. Fish was all, moop boop, Miles zhammed my personal statement. I went to hand in my own form and told Mr Miles that Fish was a broken man and why did he zham him and he giggled happily. Tell Mr Fish I love him anyway, he called as I left, a sentiment that would have pleased me very well but did little to alleviate Fish's pain.
Later we went back to the staffroom. Fish stuck his head in, seeing Mr Burge. -- Is Mr Miles in, he said plaintively. -- Oh no, Burge said in his godly way, he's gone home! From the other end of the staffroom Mr Miles yells in outrage. Fish is like ... [weeping] -- I ... don't know how to write my personal statement. -- Get Karen to help you! says Mr Miles. She did a good personal statement. [yay!] Though I suppose she's not around. Karen pokes her head around the filing cabinet to assert virtuously that she's not going to help Fish, she has to study for KI. ("Good!" Mr Burge interjects). -- DO YOU NOTICE, I said to Fish, how all I get is praise and all you get is abuse? -- Mr Fish is like a donkey, Mr Miles says sternly, who needs to be beaten with a stick. I have chosen my motivation strategy accordingly. (So is he like a fish or a donkey? enquires Mr Burge). Exeunt Karen (gleeful) and Mr Fish (disconsolate) to finish his personal statement.
And then, which is becoming a recurring motif in both our lives, I did no work but did write mean things all over Fish's personal statement. And later we were bummingggg waiting for Fish to finish his last magnificent paragraph on his many artistic achievements and arguing about whether I had, in fact, ever been cripplingly shy; and stripey shirts, and learning about valuable Chinese High slang words ("dao") and the stock market and ... and ... I'ma bomb my KI essay paper. SHIT.
But ... see right. I remember when I got my 'O' level results. I got exactly 6 A1 grades - which is exactly what anyone needs for any practical purposes, any extra A1s are entirely superfluous and for pure prestige and the purposes of enlarging one's academic dick. But I got a ridiculous number of A2s - and I was reflecting deeply and not without bitterness on how an A2 is the stupidest grade to get for anything, not being an A1, but just close enough to it (less than five marks) that with just minimal extra effort one could probably have got an A1. But I was thinking ... what was I doing at that exact moment when I could, possibly, have knocked those other A2 grades up to an A1, with attendant benefits for my future prospects and so on? Sec 4 was also a pretty vile and partysome year in its own way, full of marauds and frolics and other unwholesome ventures and adventures. And I like to think that I spent those crucial moments doing something fun.
----------
ANYWAY. NOW IT IS THE HOLIDAYS. Prelims start in earnest next week. IT KIND OF SUCKS. I LIKE IT BETTER WHEN I'M IN SCHOOL ACTUALLY. I am about a MILLION topics behind on History AND Economics, all the things I swore wouldn't happen for my prelims ... are happening. All the lessons I should have learnt from my previous block tests? WERE NOT LEARNT. I mean both academically and spiritually, I guess. FOCUS could be improved. Thursday evening I was idly chopping nuts and tying ribbons and reading my ASEAN notes out the corner of my eye. I'm not sure what I was doing this weekend but IT WASN'T VERY IMPRESSIVE. Now I am doing the Cold War. WHAT. IT'S DAMN BAD.
Stuff yet undone? Economics: all of Macroeconomics. HAHAHA how did we come to this. That's Inflation, Unemployment, Growth, Trade, Balance of Payments, by the way. THIS IS GOING TO BE GREAT. History: the rest of the Cold War, the End of the Cold War, the Global Economy, the Arab-Israeli conflict; Southeast Asian Nationbuilding, Southeast Asian Regional Conflicts. OK. I'M GOING I'M GOING. PRAY FOR US SINNERS NOW AND AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH
I have a new way of predicting if I'm going to do badly on a paper: you may notice that every time I think I'm going to do REALLY BADLY and actually FAIL, I ... do pretty good. Some may even yell in outrage that I am the last person to notice this. OKAY. CALM DOWN. I HAVE A NEW METHOD OF PREDICTION. I now believe that when, rather than the very energetic frenzy of terror that tends to follow an exam in which I - do pretty well - the CALM SENSE OF OVERWHELMING MEDIOCRITY is what bodes the ... illest.
Because even a frenzy of terror is a sign of life, and intellectual vigour, and the very promising awareness of how things could have been better done. Which, I suppose, is a fairly reliable recipe for doing well: where there's life there's hope? But this sense of acceptance, that nothing else can be done? Can't be good. Spending two hours on my first essay (about which I knew nothing) - remember how I can't write any "hard" philosophical analysis for KI? How I prefer to skirt the edges, dropping tantalising details, names, keywords, gobbets, quotes and so on, making for a very colourful essay that, like a KALEIDESCOPE, obscures the REAL WORLD with its PRETTY PATTERNS and COLOURS? And how for the KI March blocks I went in having studied two sets of notes ("The External World" from Nigel Warburton's Philosophy: The Basics, and the Empiricism chapter from the IB course book, if anyone wants to follow in my ill-fated footsteps), praying that either scepticism or empiricism would come out, and ... BOTH DID? And I then wrote an essay full of the HIGHEST POETRY? well ... it didn't happen this time. FAIRLY SO. Should I receive such good karma twice in a row I think I would start building pagodas like fat U Po Kyin in Burmese Days, so scared would I be of the massive karmic debt I must be accumulating.
ANYWAY. So this time the "hard" epistemology was inescapable, and I suck at it, so ... my essay sucked. It was a very LONG essay. I think the most charitable thing to be said about it was that it boasted a BROAD RANGE of ideas, as I was basically CATHARTICALLY PURGING my system of ALL THE EPISTEMOLOGY NOTES I had studied. I think more accurate things to be said about my essay are that it was ILLEGIBLE, LARGELY INCOHERENT, SUPERFICIAL and SIMPLISTIC. THAT'S NOT LIKE YOU, KAREN! In my last paragraph, nearly weeping with despair, I put like ... THREE quotes into one paragraph (having acutely felt their lack in the rest of my essay). It wasn't an awful essay? I guess it knew where it was going (even if it had to run very fast and kept falling over as it did so). But it was ... as they say ... REPETITIVE AND MECHANICAL. HAHAHA
Having taken two hours to write that - I had to keep stopping to dig shit up out of my brain, unheard of in a KI exam, the experience of which is normally akin to ... the laxative effect of whatever ... I then had like an hour to do the essay from Section B. I WOULD LIKE TO SAY that I think my karmic debt is NOT BAD considering I was so sure I wasn't going to do a question on the Social Sciences, but I had a last-minute change of heart at like half past midnight last night and actually got out of bed to read my largely incomprehensible class notes. Upon reflection this is actually pretty good karma? 'cause I might not have read up on it at all! But I just want to say I am the WORST annotator in the world. My printed class notes are filled with shit in the margins like "// KUHN?" and "EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS?" and "CF. WEBER". What the hell does that mean???
Needless to say this WENT VERY BADLY. So anything I had to say about the Social Sciences had to be pulled out of my ass quite rapidly. Seriously I think my entire essay had like. THREE POINTS, HASTILY WRITTEN. I WROTE A WHOLE KI ESSAY WITHOUT QUOTES!!! IS THIS WHAT IT FEELS TO BE MORTAL??? I felt so NAKED. SO BEREFT. I was like ... SURELY THERE IS A WAY TO SUBSTANTIATE THAT POINT WITHOUT ACTUALLY HAVING TO BACK IT UP WITH FACTS!!! ... NO??? actually I'm lying, in my very last paragraph, with -3 minutes to go, I just had enough time to squeeze in one quote. A SOP TO MY DIGNITY. Anyway kids, it's okay. Wish me luck with KI Paper 2 to save me from total ruin. I will ... think very critically for the next paper and hope this is enough to recover my ... whatever. SIGH. :(
----------
Anyway. ONE MIGHT SAY I AM ONLY SAYING THIS BECAUSE OF THE OVERWHELMING MEDIOCRITY OF MY KI PRELIM EXAM
- but I really was very happy last week. I was in school Monday to Wednesday, having stuff to study and university forms to fill in, and in a weird, life-threatening way it was just like old times. Except way better! I've been so happy here. And I'm glad that less than a week before my prelims it is still possible to just be happy where I am.
And sometimes I forget it, and sometimes it is easy to forget - fifteen sets of History notes to do in a day? sometimes I forget to EAT. But equally, sometimes even when we are sitting in the smelly Reading Room, and I am wondering if it is possible to study Aesthetics, Ethics, Science, Social Science and Language all in one day (it wasn't), barefoot and crosslegged because my socks were wet from the rain, it is still possible to look up in wonder at the vile conversations we can have, and how easy it is to laugh. And how sin is behovely, but ... all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Everyone around me having delayed-time conversations because they keep having to take their iPods out of their ears to hear anything, freaking right out over the ethics and aesthetics of phoning someone just to find if they're competing for the same college, elaborate Harry Potter parallels, no work done.
Despite the ... sense of impending doom that underscored the last week ... life was almost giddily lighthearted now that school is officially over. It rained a lot. I'd wake up in the morning with the nine o' clock sun coming through the window, pack my bag and eat breakfast, and by the time I got to the bus stop it'd be pouring with rain. Continuing my pestilential existence I spent more time bumming inside the staffroom than outside of it studying, which I hope I will not have occasion to regret, e.g. in the middle of my prelims. But it would take a lot to make me regret this. There is a sense of lunatic irresponsibility in the air. I should be sorry to forget how good this last week has been - like a gift of time, wild and flying and surreal.
It rained every day, dramatically and without warning, which always lends a particular anarchic glee to any proceedings. Sloshing cursing up stairs made waterfalls with rain, studying barefoot crosslegged and drenched, shivering under the air conditioning, everyone racing Mr Miles up to LT5 with the sky dark and rain pouring off the eaves outside, running to and from the staffroom barely under cover with the rain blowing in the open corridors, trapped in class with the water beating against the windowpanes - I hope not to have cause to regret this weather, far from ideal for studying but perfect for all other conceivable purposes, heart mind and pancreas. We were hunched over our notes and entangled in our iPods in the Reading Room one day when we heard that the glass door of the Fishtank had shattered and rushed downstairs (lamentable lack of focus) to pick up souvenir pieces, fleeing with them flaking tiny shards in our pockets before the teachers came to stop the looting. Mine is a paperweight on my table now. Come out o' the storm!
We had to re-take our class photo on the day of our KI exam, which was pretty funny. I have a thing for group photos and how difficult they are to organise - how dependent on chance it is that all these separate chaotic individuals should be frozen in exactly that split-second position, grinning or distracted or openmouthed and gormless. All the things out of the frame or prior to that split-second capture or else completely random - everyone's uncharacteristically law-abiding collarpins, hastily tied hair, half the group staring off into the distance instead of at the camera, the animatronic monkey head carefully brought out of the staffroom and upstairs for this express purpose. (I'ma miss the monkey head) We gonna look back on these days and weep, kids.
I remember the days (last year!) when I was - when we were all - too scared to go into the Humanz staffroom. We'd grab a bodyguard, move in packs, tiptoe in, hand in whatever we needed to, and get the hell out praying not to be noticed. I was arguing with Mr Miles about this: the days when I was too shy to ask any questions about work or anything else (arguably the source of my unparalleled talent for reading his handwriting. self-reliance!) He was like ... yes those golden days of peace when you wouldn't say boo to a goose! but since reversed his opinion and asserted those days never existed, which is a damn lie. Ha ha. I remember going into the staffroom and casting quick frightened sidelong glances at the list of Oxbridge candidates on the whiteboard and feeling sharp shooting pangs of fear, then retreating to the safety of the outside world. Even when we made brief raids to talk nonsense we moved in packs to escape individual notice! I remember I'd see the seniors lounging casually on the settee reading magazines and my awe of them would increase about tenfold. Like looking into the fiery furnace and seeing Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego tripping about merrily unscathed.
OH WELL. THOSE GOLDEN DAYS ARE PAST. Now I am a senior and my name is on the board (though it still causes me sharp shooting pangs of fear to see it, I say spotting continuity) and I am the one lounging on the settee and holding inappropriate conversations in the staffroom. Something in your brain breaks, I guess, when you enter your A level year. Faced with this monstrous foe, YOU ARE PURGED OF ALL MINOR FEARS. But ... what kind of life is Humanz without the tutors?
Last week would have been a poorer week without my pestiliential staffroom existence, having to take back my Oxford form and resubmit it about five times because I am some kind of walking applications disaster (misspelled "Mathematics", got my own name wrong, forgot to fill in my SAT scores, overestimated my own cleverness and tried to write directly on the original form instead of practising on a photocopy, glued my personal statement on crooked ...) This may be a subtle hint from the universe that if I am too dumb to even fill my form in right, then I may not be the ideal candidate ... BUT NO. I learn fast!!! I work hard!!! aaaaaa.
Continuing my pestilential existence I spent more time bumming in the staffroom than outside of it mugging. Came to school Tuesday to find Fish slumped over a desk in class moaning. What's the matter with you? I said. Fish was all, moop boop, Miles zhammed my personal statement. I went to hand in my own form and told Mr Miles that Fish was a broken man and why did he zham him and he giggled happily. Tell Mr Fish I love him anyway, he called as I left, a sentiment that would have pleased me very well but did little to alleviate Fish's pain.
Later we went back to the staffroom. Fish stuck his head in, seeing Mr Burge. -- Is Mr Miles in, he said plaintively. -- Oh no, Burge said in his godly way, he's gone home! From the other end of the staffroom Mr Miles yells in outrage. Fish is like ... [weeping] -- I ... don't know how to write my personal statement. -- Get Karen to help you! says Mr Miles. She did a good personal statement. [yay!] Though I suppose she's not around. Karen pokes her head around the filing cabinet to assert virtuously that she's not going to help Fish, she has to study for KI. ("Good!" Mr Burge interjects). -- DO YOU NOTICE, I said to Fish, how all I get is praise and all you get is abuse? -- Mr Fish is like a donkey, Mr Miles says sternly, who needs to be beaten with a stick. I have chosen my motivation strategy accordingly. (So is he like a fish or a donkey? enquires Mr Burge). Exeunt Karen (gleeful) and Mr Fish (disconsolate) to finish his personal statement.
And then, which is becoming a recurring motif in both our lives, I did no work but did write mean things all over Fish's personal statement. And later we were bummingggg waiting for Fish to finish his last magnificent paragraph on his many artistic achievements and arguing about whether I had, in fact, ever been cripplingly shy; and stripey shirts, and learning about valuable Chinese High slang words ("dao") and the stock market and ... and ... I'ma bomb my KI essay paper. SHIT.
But ... see right. I remember when I got my 'O' level results. I got exactly 6 A1 grades - which is exactly what anyone needs for any practical purposes, any extra A1s are entirely superfluous and for pure prestige and the purposes of enlarging one's academic dick. But I got a ridiculous number of A2s - and I was reflecting deeply and not without bitterness on how an A2 is the stupidest grade to get for anything, not being an A1, but just close enough to it (less than five marks) that with just minimal extra effort one could probably have got an A1. But I was thinking ... what was I doing at that exact moment when I could, possibly, have knocked those other A2 grades up to an A1, with attendant benefits for my future prospects and so on? Sec 4 was also a pretty vile and partysome year in its own way, full of marauds and frolics and other unwholesome ventures and adventures. And I like to think that I spent those crucial moments doing something fun.
----------
ANYWAY. NOW IT IS THE HOLIDAYS. Prelims start in earnest next week. IT KIND OF SUCKS. I LIKE IT BETTER WHEN I'M IN SCHOOL ACTUALLY. I am about a MILLION topics behind on History AND Economics, all the things I swore wouldn't happen for my prelims ... are happening. All the lessons I should have learnt from my previous block tests? WERE NOT LEARNT. I mean both academically and spiritually, I guess. FOCUS could be improved. Thursday evening I was idly chopping nuts and tying ribbons and reading my ASEAN notes out the corner of my eye. I'm not sure what I was doing this weekend but IT WASN'T VERY IMPRESSIVE. Now I am doing the Cold War. WHAT. IT'S DAMN BAD.
Stuff yet undone? Economics: all of Macroeconomics. HAHAHA how did we come to this. That's Inflation, Unemployment, Growth, Trade, Balance of Payments, by the way. THIS IS GOING TO BE GREAT. History: the rest of the Cold War, the End of the Cold War, the Global Economy, the Arab-Israeli conflict; Southeast Asian Nationbuilding, Southeast Asian Regional Conflicts. OK. I'M GOING I'M GOING. PRAY FOR US SINNERS NOW AND AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH