Apocalypse

I can't stop ranting enough about my exams. As soon as one's over, I'm staring at the other in the face. But the one next month (exactly 15 days and 6 hrs away as I type this *faint*) is the most important of them all. Now I usually don't freak out before exams. Correction. I never freak out before the exams. Never as in never have in the 13 yrs of my schooling. And believe me, looking at the amount of studying I do for them, that's saying something. But I digress. so , to repeat,I never freak out before my exams. But this academic session, as I look around at my brand new classmates, I am starting to feel like I have a lot of reasons to freak out. I'll tell you why:

There are exactly 4 types of people in my course:

The Weirdos: before you call me rude,I didn't name them. My friends did.(fine friends I have, still indulge in kindergarten name-calling) They are exactly five in number, move around in a group, are cold (make that icy)and they even have separate notebooks for their electives. Alone and effortlessly, they make me feel very,very inadequate.

The Cool Dudes: they are the ones who spend all their free time in the auditorium(our cafeteria stinks),take turns testing the willpower quotient of the weirdos( last count, the wierdos were left unshaken) ,yet manage to come for exams with the syllabus complete.They are the majority.


The "Kichu pori ni":( translated- did 'nt study anything) They hang out with the cool dudes in college, do all their studying at home, are hypocrites to the last degree and come with their syllabus complete AND revised.

The Library-worm: I alone inhabit that category. I sleep in class( just sometimes), and use my free-time to raid the library and study as I see fit. Most of the time its extraneous because loving the subject as I do, I find the syllabus incredibly and hatefully dependent on rote learning. So I look up stuff related to what I should be studying(but don't)and just Read. Extensively and voraciously. Doesn't help too much with my exams though and I end up for them with an incomplete syllabus, hoping for the best.

You would've noticed , category 4 is the only one where people don't study and being alone in it has thoroughly shaken me up.So I'm thinking maybe I should panic. Maybe it will help. Maybe it will shock me into studying.

15 Days to go. Will it??


P.S This post was composed on 18.06.09 ; 1.45 am but left unpublished due to load shedding.
P.P.S In this unbearable heat ( averaging 40*C) we are having an average of 3 hrs load shedding everyday.

Or Armageddon

Another day of fruitlessness, and I'm tired.Don't take it to mean that I've worked my ass of over my files of research, because I haven't. But I did open up my class notes and and wondered if at all it was possible for me to get round without having to do everything as copiously as the others have done.I wanted to plan some selective studying too, but ever since I 've given my ICSE exactly 3 yrs back, my plans have perfected a way of falling flat on my face.

I'm just weary of the system I've been seeing since the past year. There's simply too much of rote and that when the course has so much more to offer. There are vast areas that could be explored if simply there wasn't a do or die situation always hanging in the background. I mean obviously we need to be tested but there should be some elements of applicative study too involved.

Its important (and preferable to me ) that the examinees expand their knowledge to include a comprehensive idea, a kind of an overall view of the bigger picture.

But we don't do that. Instead we commit to our memory specific portions so thoroughly that we can recite them cold after being shaken up at 1 in the morning.If at all we are lucky to sleep that early.(I'm not talking about me here. I'm off to dreamland by 12.30)

I'd just like to go library tomorrow and read up something good. Something really nice.

It will wait.