Distracting

I find myself being distracted by all the notes and all the MCQs and all the past year papers. I need to go to sleep.

Good luck everyone. It begins.

Reset

It’s a bit late, in terms of the time and in terms of how near the exams are. I didn’t manage to stay away from coffee for a week, but at least I’ll sleep early enough to reset my circadian rhythm. The exams are two days away. Good luck to everyone and hope you’ve finished mugging!(I haven’t)

A stroke of brilliance

One month and thirteen days.

At times I think I am so talented nobody can beat me. At times I wonder how I really pull it off. At times I wonder…

HOW I PUT OFF STARTING STUDYING FOR ONE MONTH AND THIRTEEN DAYS.

If I don’t do well, it’ll be another one of those all too familiar, “I didn’t put it everything. I’m actually capable of more.”

Literature

Written in a first person narrative, the author has depicted the persona as a “weary soul” whose sole objective is to “try [his] best” in the “less than perfect” circumstances.

In this narrative, we can clearly see a build up of tension. The author has made use of listing in addition to alliteration when portraying the “challenges” the persona had gone through to make it to where he was. The preparation the persona goes through before his “final challenge” is described in a very detailed manner which is almost monotonous and boring to show how the persona was trying his best to work “towards perfection”.

As the passage progresses, the sentences get significantly shorter and shorter seemingly showing the speed of the passage increasing. The author makes use of visual imagery at this point to show how the persona was getting increasing nervous and to enhance the effect of the rising tension.

I feel the ending of the passage was particularly effective as it was one sentence in one paragraph, projected as a punchline. The tension built up through the various devices from the first few paragraphs of the passage accentuate this final statement that the persona “lost the battle against IOP”.

An Organisation.

Well, so I fell into the same trap, tripped over the same branch, got stuck in the same crevice, and made the same wrong turn. Yes, I remember the famous words of Albert Einstein, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Yes, I quite remember this blog post. Yet this time it’s totally different.

What I’ve come to realise and perhaps subconsciously known for a long time is that the reason why I have never done particularly well in Literature or any humanity subject requiring extensive writing is because I have been unable to organise my thoughts and weave them into a coherent and cogent argument. Doubtlessly, there are other problems such as my notoriously hopeless English and my inability to spell so many of the words I use.  Essentially, I think the problem resides in my organisational skills.

The problem with creating a detailed and focussed argument is that it requires me to decide on the important details which I need to keep and it also requires me to organise around a central idea. Well, I never want to throw anything away and I never was able to locate the central theme or idea that all my points are building up too. So what results when I write my essay is this list of points which are not shown to be related at all.

You may already have realised this from my blogging style but blogging is a lot more arbitrary. It does not require any particular form of organisation and neither does it require me to cover any topic comprehensively. Hence I can just say what I want to and keep each blog post to a short point.

So what I need to do now is to find someway to fix the way I organise my essay and ensure I don’t screw up in exactly the same way in World Lit, in the real ToK essay, in Economics IAs, in the real ToK presentation and in my upcoming IOP.

Any ideas?

Epiphanies

Possibly the most enjoyable part about learning and studying in school is the moments of epiphany when we suddenly understand and all the dots connect to form an impossibly brilliant and beautiful picture. At times, I think I live for such moments. The feeling of exhilaration as we understand and comprehend is indescribable.

Ideally, we come to school to learn to discover these brilliant connections and to experience these epiphanies for ourselves, to have a taste of how Archimedes felt when he shouted “Eureka!”. It is with such a mindset that I stroll through the wrought iron gates of our school every morning. It is with such a strong desire to learn and to discover that I walk up the ramp every morning.

It is never disappointing when it comes. All the pain, the anguish, the homework, the unremarkable lessons; it makes up for all of it. When we finally experience the epiphany, it is worth savouring every moment and taking a moment to pause, awe inspired.

I clearly remember the very math lesson before our holidays. As the teacher furiously scribbled on the board, and the students stared at his elegant solution materialising before us. He had, through a series of simple yet powerful steps, simplified an extremely complex equation into one that was impossibly simple. The whole class broke into applause.

I am afraid I have never had a tradition of giving teachers’ day gifts on teachers’ day. It is not because I do not appreciate them, I do, I truly do, and for each teacher who has brought me such a moment of brilliance, I sincerely thank you for having given me such a beautiful thing. It is not teachers’ day today, in fact I had not missed it by that much, but all the same, I thank all of you.

Pause, let’s go running.

It has been a long term. 10 weeks of horror, pain, anguish, exams, tests, IAs, Grey’s Anatomy and all those other things I wouldn’t care to mention.

Most unfortunately, the greatest achievement I have made in this term involves having watched two seasons of Grey’s Anatomy within one month. It is embarrassingly little and unless I am intending to become a professional couch potato, I reckon none of my future employers would be impressed with “Watched two seasons of Grey’s Anatomy in one month!” on my curriculum vitae. So, after this long hiatus from blogging, where am I?

The final year examinations are but a few weeks away and I have just had some new responsibilities piled on me. Math portfolio is another major headache. Yet today, I literally made my first step towards solving all my problems. I got home, did some work and instead of acquiring the next season of Grey’s Anatomy, I put on my sports shoes and went for a run.

It was refreshing, at least until I got onto Bukit Timah Road, at which point I was not really running anymore. It has admittedly been a rather long time since I last ran, and even longer since I last ran my 5km route. Surprisingly, my timing was not absurdly bad despite walking the last 500m up the viciously steep Sixth Avenue.

I must however confess that I cheated. I brought my mp3 player along. This must be the first time I have done this and it really did help. Perhaps it was coincidental, but everytime a song from the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack came on, I felt I was more able to push myself to run faster and run further. various other fast paced songs made me feel more tired and weary.

Well, to sum it up, I feel satisfied. Now, if only I could put on my earphones and finish a literature commentaries in a matter of 27 minutes and six seconds.