prologue: these few days have been very trying. and i don't expect them to end just yet.

i'd be a damned liar if i said i wasn't disappointed, or even shocked, at my gp essay result. for my standard, 21/50 is just... abysmal. say what you want, it just sucks. for me.

i now know why i did so badly. actually, i'd already known as soon i finished writing the essay during the exam itself. with 15 minutes to go, i read my completed esssay, and straight away i knew it was going to be bad. not topic sentence, no structure, no linking of points to question. that was it.

i don't regret doing the question i did, ("is conformity more important than individuality in the world of the modern teenager?"), because at that time (and i still do now) have personal encounters with such problems. i thought that i'd be able to paint the so-called "full picture" to this question. i ended up getting too emotional while writing the essay, and started including points of no relevance at all to the essay and were obviously not going to help increase my score. on hindsight, what i wrote was probably what i'd have written on my blog... but that was gp.

i'll learn from this time. next time i'll avoid doing questions i can relate too well with, and instead stick to more "generic" topics like the environment, education and whatnot. at least i wouldn't get so personal.

kenneth was very nice to comfort me and say i wasn't that bad, seeing he also only got 23/50. kelvin and samuel also offered kind words of reassurance. thanks guys. =)

fyi joseph got 36/50. omg he broke a new record for gp essay score.
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the other significant thing which happened today was that our chem tutor, once again, literally lectured us for the entire tutorial period. this time it was because less than 5 of the class actually bothered to go home and do corrections for our wrong mcq questions. yours truly was obviously not in one of those "famous five". she then went on for the entire hour, about us having a crisis (which very few people can argue against right now) in our studies, and that we should really start studying, cut down on cca stuff etc.

just before she dismissed us, she said that there were some of us were obviously not fulfilling our potential in chem and could (& should) be doing much, much better. when she said this i was desperately hoping she would mention me. not that i wanted to be disgraced in front of the class, but more of the fact that i wanted her to re-assure me that i wasn't really this bad and i had the ability to be doing much better than...well, what i was getting now. she did.

you know, i don't blame her for being so upset at our class. in fact, i actually applaud her for forcing us to continue working hard, even if she's no longer our CT. i tried being in her shoes. if i were faced with a class who did badly for my subject, and are still unwilling to buck up and "wake up their idea", i'd have already exploded.

having said that, her intentions are indeed good, after all, she does want to see us do well. but her approach would seem....well, inappropriate. i'm not critiquing her teaching methods, hell, she's one of the longest serving teachers in the school. but i am of the opinion that if you take away the condemnation, give us no stress at all [refer to previous entry], and we'll do much, much better. but i know that it's extremely difficult for her to do so, and i don't blame her.

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you try being in my position. 28/95 for math, 21/50 for gp essay, 12/25 for chem mcq, and 19/25 for econs. not that easy, ain't it?

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epilogue: so far, i've had to suffer disappointment for gp, chem and math. only slight cause for celebration was econs. with bio still not returned yet, i'm hazarding a guess that it'll belong to the former group.

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it's just unfortunate that i hit rock-bottom during the block test period.

but.

the worst is over. everything's going to get better from now on.