A Prelim Exam Post-Mortem

HELLO!

Shall start the entry right with the right mood and attitude! I believe this entry will end up being gloomy and pessimistic. We shall see to that!

Lets start from my preparations for this Prelim exams ba! (I feel so weird blogging about myself) Snail-paced revisions began under JJ de revision programme which after so long really made me feel that it is rather inefficient to people like me. More often than not, I need to choose between either Chemistry or Biology revision to prepare for next day's lessons because either one will take up a night (I am snail-paced myself). On the other hand, the tutors expect us to have almost covered all the topics if we follow closely with their programme, which i agree we will.

After the 10-week revision programme by the college, we are thrown into the unanimously-agreed-upon study period which i find it more effective under the companionship with 93.3 FM. This made me think of an alternative for JJ. Give us all the revision packages c/w answers. Free up excess curriculum time. = more self revision. We can approach our tutors if in doubt. This is further due to certain ineffective tutors who waste precious time which we can convert into self study. So in the 1 week of self study, I would say i only managed to cover a quarter of the entire syllabuses. By that Sunday, I was truly a regretful kid.

Being so used to having 8 hours of sleep during the one week, the actual exam week is torturous. I was deeply in need of some beauty sleep. I wonder what happened to me during the GP paper. Essay argument was written in a very weihong style with a handwriting that I never saw before. but being obsessed with that, I forgot to constantly remind myself to input the redundant but still-very-important examples, examples that I only remember after the paper itself. Worse of all, I chose an expectedly popular question. With an absence of examples to strengthen the dumb essay, I can expect my tutor face. For the first week, I was very unfamiliar with the exam conditions which I don't know why. Perhaps its the insufficient sleep. Out of 5 papers that week, I only managed to finish 1 or arguably 2 papers on time. The second week was better, unsure if its due to easier papers of familiarity with the exam conditions. Chemistry MCQs are as usual a rush for life. Plus, I will never forget that conversation that remarked my work as 'got no depth/substance'.

I shall save all results prediction to myself because I am rather uncertain about what come may. Though many say that there is nothing much to worry about because this is only the Prelims, I keep in mind that I am not as intelligent as those who can succeed with minimal hard work, nor I had put in much hard work in the past. I am those who need to put in that extra ounce of hard work in order not to get mediocre results. Thus I need to put in that extra extra ounce of sheer determination to get above mediocre results. PSLE by my standard is good, O level by my standard is disastrous.

The redundancy of the A level system is that we are still using up time to study on subjects that will be rarely of use in time to come for university work. That's precious time. The advantage of the system is that when we put up 1 best student from 2 countries, student from Singapore will most likely shine in terms of our breadth of knowledge.

I have always felt that I only need to pass this stage to do what I like to do in the future, so I should not let this be a tripping stone to my journey nor let it distribute my share of comeuppance. Now I am motivated, please let me fight on.

Anyway, I shall dish out my new overhauled blog layout ASAP. Negative public comments on new blog layout are to be ignored entirely.

TML IS JUDGEMENT DAY!