Ramblings About My Life..

I'm Back!

First and foremost, I would like to apologize for the long delay in adding new entries to this blog. The reason why I delayed adding new entries? I’m mortified. Mortified at myself for not beginning preparations earlier for the A2 trial exams. Mortified at myself for even thinking that I could cope with the new chapters in each and every subject without any meticulous preparation. Mortified at myself for having squandered precious time before the exams instead of revising for the exams. And finally, mortified at myself for being overconfident and allowing myself to think that these exams were to be taken lightly. As you can guess, the exams didn’t exactly go smoothly for me. I won’t make any excuses nor will I hide behind explanations as to why I found the A2 trials so difficult. I just didn’t study enough. Period. And that explains all that is needed to be explained. I could probably throw you a billion examples to illustrate how screwed-up my papers were, but I digress. In doing that, therein lies the risk of the poor reader falling asleep on the keyboard and waking up only to find that his or her unfortunate keyboard has become a receptacle for the sleep-drool of the sleeping reader. Hence, I will only briefly gloss through some of the more…interesting examples of my experiences prior to, and before papers.

First and foremost (and seriously, this is the best example!), I boiled my bloody Biuret test during the Biology practical paper. I have a very good idea of what might be running through your mind now, and most likely, it’ll be what the hell? or whaddafuk?, followed by how on Earth did this idiot forget how to do the Biuret test…it’s like, first grade! or something to that effect. Well, let this idiot answer those questions for you – I don’t bloody know! When I saw the biochemical tests to be carried out, what ran through my mind was Benedict’s test and Biuret test – boil the shit outta them! and with a mental woohoo! I went on to carry out those tests happily – with no inkling that I was making a big, big mistake. No wonder my “faithful lab partner” (yes, guys, tease me all you want) was giving me funny looks. To compound matters and to highlight the fact that yes, I am indeed an idiot, I was reading on how to carry out biochemical tests just the night before! I knew how to do it. I could have done it. But somehow, in those few fateful seconds, my reading on biochemical tests the night before failed me. To put it succinctly – I failed myself, for, how can an action fail a person? With the results looking a tad funny, my results and hence conclusion would definitely be even funnier, but somehow I suspect that Ms Ho would probably die laughing while marking my paper. Now, wouldn’t that be nice? Hahaha… And it goes without saying that I’ll be expecting very, very low marks from this paper. The only consolation I can get from this experience is that I’ll probably know how to do a Biuret test for the rest of my life. But maybe I shouldn’t speak so soon.

Secondly, there was this Chemistry practical test. The Chemistry practical paper was rather straightforward - a question on titration and a qualitative analysis question. All of us have probably done these questions over and over again until the knowledge of how to do questions like these are probably ingrained in us by now, so these questions weren’t much of a head-scratcher. The only possible problem that we might have faced during this paper could have been the ‘design experiment’ as we didn’t really have much exposure to those kind of questions. Personally, I found the paper rather straightforward, and everything seemed doable, but (you somehow knew that this ‘but’ was coming, didn’t you?) as usual, something went wrong. This time, it was my apparatus that caused all the problems. While cleaning up and rinsing the apparatus used in the experiment, I didn’t notice that the tap on my burette was rather loose since I was more concerned that no air bubbles formed in the tap instead and that the burette felt and looked alright to me. I didn’t notice anything was amiss about the burette until I carried out my second titration, when I suddenly discovered that my fingers were rather wet. To my utmost dismay, I discovered that the solution in my burette was flowing out by the side of the tap even though the tap was closed! I made a quick situation assessment, and my final conclusion was you’re screwed since you won’t have time to do everything all over again. Giving up, I took the mean of the two readings, and moved on to the next part. My worst fears were confirmed the next day when Ms Chan told me that my readings were way off the mark. Another lesson learnt – check your burette thoroughly (especially the tap!), don’t assume that since it’s an exam, all the apparatus will be in perfect order. My only source of disappointment was that I couldn’t show Ms Chan better results than my last exam since she put in effort to make sure that I knew how to do titration properly when I scored a D for my AS practical.

Thirdly, there was the Chemistry Option paper, or Paper 6. This paper is the perfect example of why last-minute revision isn’t good for your academic results. Having done the Core chapters early, I thought I could focus purely on the Option chapters when the exam was drawing close. However, I discovered that some of my knowledge of Core chapters had decided to take a hiatus indefinitely to wherever-knowledge-about-Chemistry-goes-when-it-leaves-one’s-brain a few days before the Chemistry written papers. As a result, I found myself studying Core chapters as well as the two Option chapters a few days before the papers, which wasn’t in my plan at all (assuming that I had a revision plan to start with). And although it might sound like a walk in a park when I say “two Option chapters”, believe me, the notes of the two Option chapters are thicker than the entire A2 Physics syllabus put together. Trying to cram everything from the countless Laws by someone or the other in Phase Equilibria to the bazillion equations found in Transition Elements in the space of a few days is futile. I’ve had more success trying to coax my pet tortoises to do a 100m dash. The end result? Blank. Blank. Blank. All over my Option paper. Well, I guess I made marking my paper a lot easier for Ms Chan, although she probably won’t be too thrilled at my marks.

Blame in on my laziness that I didn’t begin revising any earlier when I should have. Blame it on my lack of discipline that I still managed to go for DotA sessions when the exams were just around the corner. Blame it on me for thinking that I could finish revising everything last-minute and yet understand and remember everything. But at one point the blaming must stop, and I’ve decided that it is now. Enough moping. Time to put the past behind me, and focus on the future bearing in mind the lessons I have learned this time around. Easier said than done. But I’ll do my best anyway.

And getting my results is going to be so, so fun.

posted by yong chen @ 5:36 PM