Exams 2008 - part 1

I've never felt so screwed for an exam before... =(

CHINESE: Incredible fail. Paper 2 was fine, but paper 1 was like wtf compared to the other paper 1s in the IB book. I usually get 36-38 out of 40 for those in the past yr question book, but i'll be happy to take like... a 32 for this paper.

ENGLISH p1: ok this wasn't too bad. Prose was handle-able, poem looked workable but prose seemed easier. i don't think i'll do too badly, but i don't know if it'll be enough to cancel out the paper 2 crap that i wrote... hopefully i can still get a 6 (17/25). if i don't get at least 5 (14/25), i'll cry.

ECONS p1: grr screwed up the part (a) cause i didn't study 4.1 that well, got the definition of expenditure approach for 2 sector economy wrong. fortunately i still remembered how to define GDP correctly. part (b) was fine, but i only wrote about fiscal and no monetary policy, which i think is right but i'm not sure, since monetary policy is central bank and not government...

ENGLISH p2: no time. question on characterisation in Siddhartha and Huck Finn. i knew the points, but i screwed up cause i wrote for really long about plot, so in the end i had to change analysing the question from five angles to four and then to three. grrr!

ECONS p2: data response. hmm i did the questions on rising prices of oil and commodities, and the lower lea valley in the london olympics. i had trouble with the definitions, but i think other than that should be acceptable. not good, but acceptable. i hope.

PHYSICS p1: mcqs, not much to say. looks like i got 1 wrong according to bryan. but i'm not too sure also, and in any case it seems quite decent compared to a lot of other people's mcq, so...

PHYSICS p2: option G question was seriously wtf at first until some inspection and thought. then i got the common pressure question wrong, sadly. at least the copper-pot fail one i got right. and the first of the B questions, the one on the regular part of waves. THAT was ok...

MATH p1: incredibly shocking and hard. 14a was a really ??? question (i didn't even see 1st part, fortunately i did manage to achieve some progress by taking the result of area and then calculating the value of theta for which it was acceptable) so i'll at the very least get a few N marks and maybe 1 or 2 M marks for that 9 mark question. some of the questions really looked like a calculator would be nice. ah well other than jarrel i don't know of anyone who finished this paper proper... and of course, the irritating bit is that there's still p2 and we're going to have to count this crap p1 result...

anyway i need to get back into a study mood for comp science and math part 2. given how bad paper 1 went, i better get close to 100 for paper 2. comp science is a just-whack paper... see how.

disturbingly, the exam structure for me sort of has been reminding me of the subterranean animism stage 4 boss battle (jonny, herrick and i dunno who else would know). but basically you're fighting a boss that uses 3 simple patterns and then suddenly, the difficulty jumps into utter crap. granted for me i can't say its true that i find my HLs (the later 3) more complex than my SLs (the first 3) - seriously, english A1 SL is worse than math HL for me - but it feels like that in some way, because essentially the stakes are different. for SLs, the key goal is to avoid focus camp; for HLs, it's to land a spot on the dean's list. hence yeah. diff stakes.

jk.

2008中文B年终考试

9月22日 天气：晴

考试快要来了，压力越来越高。明天，年终考试就开始了，我其实认为自己还没有足够地准备。属于说：“平时不烧香，临时抱佛脚”。我幸好相当早地开始温习功课，但是这也好像是不够的。

然而，我不因该写上个周发生的事情，因为陈老师今天在华文课之中再三讲解各种问题的格式。她在谈日记时，总是强调：要写当天的事情，或昨天的事情；不应该写很久以前的事。

中文B的考试就是明天早上，我希望能得到九十分以上，因为我已经知道口试成绩相当理想，所以九十分不是不可能拿到的成绩。要是我能在理解问答和文章回应考到不错的成绩（不少于36分，满分40分），九十分的可能性就会不错。为了预备这个考试，我不但温习一些虚词，而且也记起各个文体的格式。

今天，在体育课时，我们在水里玩橄榄球。虽然我个人的运动技巧不是那么好，但是我不但发现到个人可以进步的地方，而且玩得非常快乐！幸好我没有受伤；游戏结束后，家荣的眼睛好像有一个小红点，好像眼里的血管有问题，也许是因为有人撞到他的头部。我希望以后有更多机会跟其他同学一起做这些运动，因为运动不但让我增强自己跟同学之中的友谊，而且也让我锻炼自己的身体。

wordless

i guess this is something i've been thinking about for a while, amidst the backsliding of my physics marks (from the practice papers: from 90-ish at mid years to hovering around 80 now).

recently when finding some spare time i've read some of this book - "the race" by the bishop, dr. robert solomon. one of the images that the book painted in my mind, though somewhat cliched, is the idea of a guy climbing a ladder all through his life, only realising at the top that he'd climbed the wrong ladder, largely misguided by others around who cheered him on (probably symbolic of society in general). hence, what the book says (and what we can infer from this) is that we should be careful that we don't merely go where society wants us to go, but rather follow what we value, whether for christians this be following God, or for non-christians perhaps something else like inner peace, an ethical life, etc.

i find that in many ways i'm pushing upwards along a ladder, both in the way i do things as well as in the way i tend to neglect some other things. there've been many things external to schoolwork that i've wanted to do, yet not really considered as they're blocked out by the volume of schoolwork in the foreground. schoolwork in the sense of not only academics but also CCA related work and all. i want to spend more time with my friends, especially some of those i haven't talked to in a while, re-learn piano and guitar, finish scripting a touhou game, et cetera. the list goes on and on...

im not sure how i'll do it. even the holidays / post exam period don't look very appealing, with cas documentation, ee and what other random stuff it might bring.

then again even if i'm generally focusing on the ladder, i know i'm not climbing it properly. the physics paper i did today, or rather yesterday night, made me really unhappy:

Q12 Suppose you have a ball that rolls off a table horizontally at velocity of v. It hits the ground t seconds later at a horizontal distance x from the table. then, you have a heavier ball roll off the same table at the same velocity v. (Take air resistance to be negligible)

a) it hits the ground t seconds later, x from table
b) it hits the ground t seconds later but less than x from table
c) it hits the ground x from table but less than t seconds later
d) it hits the ground less than t seconds later and less than x from table.

i chose b. i feel *very* stupid now. (answer is a. time is same because the acceleration of free-fall, g = 9.80655ish ms^-2 is independent of mass. and then, think of it in the sense of projectile motion - horizontal velocity is equal to v in both cases, so if the ball can travel for the same time, then x must be the same.)

its not just physics. the other subjects are falling backwards as well. exams are starting in 2 days, and i haven't even done a thing for comp science! =x

but worse than that, in other, more important areas, i'm beginning to falter, if i haven't already been doing so. relationships, lateral and vertical, but most importantly, vertical......

was it something i said
or something i never did,
or was i always in the way?

heartful cry

i like that song... from persona 3 fes soundtrack.

anyway.

just figured i should write something.

as for why i don't know.

life's pretty normal now i guess... mostly back to mugging, with a bit of time carved out here and there for friends as well as relaxation, i've been playing some touhou over the holidays as well (grr almost 1cc PCB hard, fail on resurrection butterfly)... work's going not very well but still acceptably.

jk.

Breath

today was a good day; a good conclusion to a good weekend. for some reason i'm actually feeling quite happy now =)

this weekend i pushed my IOP, chinese script, physics photogates prac and TOK essay all out, as well as a... minor essay on Economics. i feel quite happy that i've cleared all that... did some scripting for touhou as well. started working on the end boss of stage 4...

this morning, i was writing up the second draft of my TOK essay. i realised i had to cut the third AOK - visual art. so i just wrote on math and medicine. still hard, cause there were just too many problems with the first one. and i don't feel as accomplished as i did when i finished up my previous TOK essays in years 3 and 4. in fact, i read my year 4 TOK, or rather POD essay. i was like o.o i can write like that?

then, i met russell for lunch at this japanese place at novena. i go there quite a lot, probably because its very good value. $8 ish for a rather full and good quality meal. after lunch, i followed him to orchard to say hi to ellius, and there i met a few of the other BB ppl too.

i came back and slept -.- and now am printing out a lot of stuff that i did over the past few days/weeks.

amazingly i still feel quite happy with today. =)

jk.

13.17

A certain event yesterday, as well as a certain post on a blog I read is the inspiration for this post.

We were basically forced to listen to a lecture on library techniques, how to construct effective search statements and the like. Naturally, given the content of the lecture, especially one going beyond the dismissal time of 1640, it was sort of expected that there would be much disappointment...

The effectiveness of having such lectures would be something I would probably question, given that I'd think that in general, the people who are actually listening and/or not being disruptive are probably those who already know most of the content. It's not the fault of the lecturer; rather, it's just that those who are (somewhat) attentive are probably those who know, and that those who are the ones who need to be taught are most probably not listening. (I know, I lack evidence for this claim. It's just a hypothesis.)

Of course, there are reasons why such lectures have and will continue to take place. Firstly, if said lectures were made voluntary, I don't think many people would go, and the message would most definitely not reach the people who need to be told. Also, from a pragmatist point of view, making such lectures compulsory is probably an easy way to occupy the students during the EE period where they are supposed to be in school (since the school is accountable for what goes on during school hours...). Furthermore, holding such lectures reflects positively on the accountability of the school in that it contributes towards the school developing students holistically. Hence, I guess I don't have much against the idea of holding such lectures; even though I don't really like them, I don't see much of a better alternative, as detailed above.

Essentially, what happened was that due to said disappointment leading to noise especially beyond 1640, the students were held back till about 1730. The choice of punishment was certainly not an easy one to make; while I would indeed agree that the students concerned including myself should have been punished in some way, and the structure of the punishment is, in my opinion, generally acceptable (probably better if it was shifted to staying back the next day, since keeping parents waiting = bad idea), the justification provided for the punishment seems to fail under logical scrutiny. This "justification" - lack of respect.

Now the problem is, you cannot (or at least, I believe people cannot) force respect out of other people. Was it the students' choice to attend the talk? You could argue yes (ponning as an alternative), but given the nature of the alternative I think a 'no' fits this question better. Hence I don't believe that expecting "respect" out of the students is reasonable, since I disagree with the notion of forcing respect, and there does not seem to be a reasonable argument that the attempted establishment of said respect was not forced - unless you wish to encourage students to skip said lectures.

In my opinion, what I find questionable about this judgment is exacerbated by the fact that no attendance was taken, further increasing the incentive to skip such talks completely in the future, in anticipation of both not spending the time of the talk in an efficient manner, as well as not spending some of the time after that in an efficient manner.

That said, I think I can understand, to some extent, the intentions of the person who meted out said punishment described above. Naturally, the choice of what punishment to issue would not have been easy. Still, I would be inclined to maintain that the justification for said punishment seems somewhat off.

More accurately, I think the appropriate reason for punishment is really failure to APPEAR respectful, since after all that's what (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you see it) others see, and I think it's also what's important. I don't know if I would personally consider myself innocent or guilty, but I was there in body, physically doing little and speaking little, but very far away in mind. For some reason, this reminds me of a certain legal case I read about, where the "contents of one's mind" can be locked away securely from others; in that situation, a subpoena for the accused to reveal his password for a drive on his computer was quashed because revealing the password was believed as equivalent to self-incrimination, which is not something one is allowed to force.

jk.

End of Night ~ Border Distortion

Yesterday was one of the most draining parades I think I'll go through in my life as a BB Primer.

As a Primer, on one hand I do bear some kind of responsibility to my peers, in the sense that I'm supposed to be an example to them. It was this reasoning, coupled with the fact that I believe that elementary levels of character in certain respects should be consistently demonstrated, that made me carry out the course of action I selected in the end. However, I do know the risks inherent in following this path; namely, possibly risking relationships with several of the other Primers, as well as creating an increased level of workload (yet, I believe this remains necessary). Hence making this decision, and following the course of action that I took was not easy; but somehow, before parade started, I really felt compelled, for some reason or another, to pursue these actions.

In the declaration that the Primers made during the Enrolment Service, the phrase "be shining examples to the Boys" was mentioned. Personally, I believe that this idea of "shining examples" shouldn't only be shown to those under us, year 2 or not, but also among ourselves and even to our officers. Naturally irresponsibility plays little of a role if we try and act as "shining examples"... Of course, we can't be serious all of the time, something which I'm trying to learn. However, I do believe that there are some elements of responsibility and discipline that should not be compromised.

I think I've really had enough of the headaches for now. Had a good talk with Mr Allan Lee today on this. I'll try and think through some of these issues, but not now.