I told myself I’d work hard these holidays, but as usual, I’ve left it to the very last week to start on my studying. Before, I never even TOUCHED my worksheets.
I guess I was in come kind of denial phase, telling myself that I deserved at least a week’s break. Then after that, I told myself that I still had so much more time to study, and even if I did then, I wouldn’t be able to remember anything from 3 weeks ago. So I continued with my lazy, procrastinating habits. In truth, I knew that I just didn’t want to face the reality of exams and that I’d have to start mugging my *ss off again. On Monday, I took out my worksheets to try to understand the main idea of what I was studying and get a brief glimpse of the syllabus. And it was then that, I quote HM, I realised the ‘enormity of the emergency at hand’.
The concepts and ideas of Geography were easily understandable. The syllabus and the amount of content I am supposed to study was not. I realised that the lcture topics did not follow the sequence of the syllabus, leaving me puzzling over the organisation of the main topic. Tutorials, which I initially thought was to supplement the content we learnt in lectures and hone our answering skills, were in fact teaching us an area of the syllabus that lectures did not cover. And it was then that I realised I never really copied anything down during tutorials because I thought they were just teaching us how to apply the concepts we learnt in lectures to examples and graphs. And that is why I am doomed. It’s not that I don’t comprehend what was taught in tutorials, but that I didn’t take down much of the content, or rather, I didn’t take down properly, adding bits of information to whatever piece of paper was at hand.
Also, because the lectures for Lithospheric Processes were taught so fast and so quickly, we didn’t have enough time to copy down all that the lecturer said. I initially thought this was OK, since they record the lectures and post the videos on the Geography website. I figured that I could just rewatch the lectures to grasp the content and pause the videos to copy information down. But when I went to check the site, the videos for the previous topic(where we didn’t need to copy much since all was pritned for us) were uploaded, but not the ones for Lithospheric Processes. So I guess I’m studying incomplete content, but it can’t be helped. I just hope that all the knowledge I’ve retained from secondary school Geography will be helpful.
China Studies is also being a huge pain. We were given so much notes, about half of which was information on pre-1978 China that we just need to know for general knowledge, and not study in detail for the exams. Yet sometimes the information overlaps that time period and I’m not sure what to study and what not to. Plus, it’s so difficult to organise the content, even within sub topics, that I’m at a loss on where to start studying and how. I usually compartmentalise the information so that it’s easy for me to study, but we’re not supposed to do that for CSE, since questions can be cross-themed. I’m seriously wondering if I should have taken Literature instead.
Before they announced to us that the exams were pushed back by a week(HUZZAH!!!), I was panicking round the clock, and I think the panic’s still here even though I now know that I have more time. For the past 2 hours while I tried to do up my Geography notes, my hand was constantly trembling as I wrote, and I felt that I was driven to write faster by my state of nervosity. In the end, I came here to blog to release my inner stress lest it consumes me.
Studying makes me hungry too. I don’t usually get hungry so quickly while lazing around on FB and MSN, but just 3 hours after breakfast, my stomach is usually already grumbling for food, and I keep dreaming of food all day just to satisfy my gluttonous desires.
To make myself look on the positive side of things:
1. My aunts are possibly taking me out for High Tea soon, on the day that I have my next dental appointment to take off the top braces(I’ve already taken off the bottom braces yay!)
2. My german exchange buddy is arriving 
And in addition to the excitement of hosting, it also means lots of trips around Singapore to bring her around.
3. Angela is coming back to Singapore for a short stay on 7th August. And aside from being able to spend hours talking and meeting her again, it also means that we will be having lots of yummy meals with her, since she insists on good food, and also on paying. That sounds like I’m her friend just for the free food. Hmm… But she told us that that was part of the reason why she’s coming back as well, to treat us to food. And I’m happy to oblige, as long as I can get her a present secretly this time without her objecting to it.
