Take a deep breath; let it all out
Dear friends who have been on the short end of my temper,
I apologize for my mood swings this past week. You see, I've been having a really bad week today, what with homework piling up and the best groupmates ever in the entire wide world (sarcasm).
I suffered from lack of sleep for several days, the worst being on Monday night, when I nearly keeled over (I am not kidding) while tediously working on that Botany lab report which I so abhorred. Only three of us - three out of six groupmates, imagine that - worked on the PowerPoint presentation for hours on end, the others coming up with various excuses such as papers to do and "Oh, I want to help but I'm afraid I can't" (for some unknown reason). And the other one was not at all in sight. We worked on it the day (or the night) before the presentation, being busy with paperwork and other assignments over the weekend. Sifting through pictures was tiring enough, but having to come up with a script just so our ever-dearest groupmates could at least have something to do was worse. I was so pissed off that I wanted to slap them, to shout at them, heck, even to write their names in a Death Note, had I owned one. It didn't help we got an A, which is supposed to be a good thing, except that a few freeloaders had to share the A we worked hard for.
The next day, I had to deal with the wushu finals, which turned out to be a real fiasco. I practiced hard, I did, but I felt frustrated. Why couldn't we do it right on that day? Why was my partner seemingly so easygoing about it? Add the anger and the exhaustion from having to do a whole lot of work on a presentation in one night to the frustration I felt from making an utter fool of myself in the wushu finals (and not staging it to music, which was our dream - my partner and I) - that equated to one angry person. I think some of my friends have witnessed my mood swings in the past. As much as possible, I hate dishing things out on people. But sometimes I can't help it. I want to yell. To scream. But I can't do it, because I'm not one to get involved in direct confrontation. Still, people say that I am scary when angry, that I give off this cold, get-away-from-me-or-else aura. And that's what happened on Tuesday.
I'm sorry, wushu partner and good friend of mine. I admit that I was frustrated because we weren't getting things right, and I thought you were being flippant and a bit indifferent about it. I was frustrated not only because of the grade, but also (and even more so) because I wanted to make our dream of doing these cool wushu moves a reality. And then I was still carrying over the anger I felt the previous night. But it didn't happen; so much for that. There's nothing that can be done, and it's a pity. However, I can't hold a grudge just because of a final PE exam that went wrong, so please accept my apology, Andrea. I shouldn't have acted that way. And I shouldn't have lashed my anger on the wrong person, the only person near me - to whom I could vent my anger.
On Thursday, the Math orals went wrong, too. Because our last long test (which took place on Friday) was good for only an hour, Sir decided to eliminate Lagrange multipliers from the written exam and schedule orals. Working in pairs, we were given problems involving Lagrange multipliers a few days before the orals, and we were to solve them in front of Sir Tuason for fifteen minutes. I thought that things would go fine, but I was mistaken. Willy, did you get cold feet? I don't know how you felt about it. But I was frustrated. "Help me out here!" I would think, and sometimes say out loud. "We need to have equal speaking and solving time for us to get a good grade!" And I need a 94 to get an exemption in Math, I thought. And we blew the follow-up question. Oh, you should've seen the look on my face when Sir told us that we had used up our fifteen minutes. But you wouldn't have wanted to see me kicking pebbles and walking wordlessly at a distance. Frustration + annoyance + hellish days + Tifa = scary and b*tchy, apparently.
I'm sorry, partner and good friend. I really am. I shouldn't have jumped to stupid conclusions like "There goes my grade." I shouldn't have been so selfish and even more grade-conscious than ever this week. The thing is - well, it's hard to explain but here goes - I wasn't mad at you or at anyone in particular. But for some reason, I was disappointed. Frustrated. Everything. I had a bad week and I thought, "Oh, what a great addition to my week, not acing the orals." Please accept my apology. Anyway, we got 19/20 in the orals. I don't know how I would've reacted if we didn't get a good grade, but I do know that I should just accept things in stride and not hold it against people (unless, say, my partner didn't do anything to help me out at all, which isn't the case). I'm happy that you, like Andrea, aren't holding grudges against me. I'm the one in the wrong. But you aren't mad at me. Thank you. :)
And anyway, friends, you won't be seeing cold-and-angry Tifa for the next few weeks, because last Thursday (after the orals), Jhenel, Zhandra, Rachelle and Nicole carpooled with me, and we let out all our frustrations and anger to one another, and it was like one big sharing session. If that session were a talk show, I could've titled it "Girl Talk on Groupmates From Hell." It was fun, and funny, to share experiences about annoying groupmates, and to find out that we shared similar experiences! I don't know how it all started - I think everything began when Zhandra ranted about how she was a one-woman team on her Filipino project - but I felt a lot better after letting it all out, and after listening to (and having a laugh about) everyone else's experiences.
But now that I'm contemplating on the entire week, it wasn't that bad, I guess. I had my share of comforting and pleasant experiences. On Monday, I enjoyed the little sharing session we M04 students had. We were discussing the essays "College Pressures" and "Work," and almost everyone had a story to tell, about how so-and-so wanted to pursue this dream but took a more practical course, about the influence of parents in their children's majors, about entire families of doctors - refreshingly amusing stories like those. It was as if the authors of those essays were directly speaking to us and calling us. (In fact, I thought that the authors understood how I felt!) And it was wonderful how M04 was all ears, how everyone seemed to understand and to accept others. Sharing my own story also lightened my heart because M04 was receptive and understanding - even Sir Exie! See, I get this feeling that I'm being too idealistic about my triple-minor dream, but M04 doesn't think so. And once again, I remembered Billy Collins, who said that the true pace of education is slow. Sadly, it seems like something that (as far as the circle of people I know is concerned) only M04 will understand, something that might be dismissed as absurd by the people I know (well, sometimes, including myself), who are all caught-up in this fast-paced urban jungle. But, M04, thank you for sharing your stories, and thank you for listening to me. English 101 is over, and Lit 14 will be over next week, and honestly, I am not happy about it. I will compose a goodbye entry for M04 in the next few days.
Also, I'm pretty much certain that I am now exempted from the Math finals! Thank you, thank you, Sir Tuason for that easy LT #6! I was panicking because I felt that I didn't study enough, but I guess my studying paid off. Granted, I made a stupid mistake - my carelessness cost me six points (aww, too bad, there goes my perfect score) - but at least I got my target grade of 94, so now I don't have to take the finals. Yay! Now I have one extra day of bumming around - perhaps I shall watch anime or read a book. And Math is over and done with. However, I am going to miss you, Sir Tuason, because you almost made me love Math. You came really, really, really, really close to making me love Math, and other than a teacher or two in high school, no one else has succeeded in doing that. My disliking Math has nothing to do with you; it's just that I think Math and I were born to dislike each other. But you made Math enjoyable and understandable, and that's why I think you're really cool. Plus, whenever I talked to you or asked for help, I felt like I was talking to a classmate (a highly intelligent one at that), and not a professor. So thanks a lot, Sir Joey; I'm going to miss you! I hope you're living it up in the US right now, and I hope that if my sister studies in ADMU, you will still be there and that you will be her Math prof.
And on a totally random and totally superficial note, seeing Yuu Shirota, Shun Oguri and Jun Matsumoto on TV cheered me up one time this week when I was feeling down. I was watching Hana Yori Dango on GMA-7 (surprisingly, the dub's not bad, it's the cuts that really make me cringe) when, during a commercial break, I saw a teaser for Hana Kimi. Needless to say, I was squealing with happiness. XD Reading Makubex/Sakura fanfics (yes, I now have a revived interest in this pairing) brightened my day as well. :)
And then there's you, you whom I must not name. As cheesy as it sounds, there are times when you can brighten my day, but of course you don't know it, since we only connect through schoolwork and sometimes through anime - it's a rather fragile connection at the moment. This is weird; I do not know why I like you. What's stranger is that I am not sure if I actually like you or if my imagination is making you better than you really are (To borrow a line from "Mad Girl's Love Song," did I make you up inside my head?). I know you are a good person - my friends say so, too - but what if my mind is just exaggerating your, uh, goodness? I really don't know. But anyway, you do make me happy, and I hope we get to know each other in the future - we still have three years, after all. I hope we can be friends. Don't worry; like Prufrock, I don't dare disturb the universe. I've learned my lesson.
Anyway, friends, perhaps I've been rambling too much now. We only have a few weeks left, and then it's back to the fun times. We can go malling. We can prepare for the cosplay conventions and the Celadon ball. We can bond over anime and read the latest books. And of course, we're going to have lots of stories to tell - the good and the bad. :D It's just a few more weeks, a little bit more of hell that we must endure (Jhen, I hope the last two weeks we have won't be that hellish) and then it will be over. Momentarily. But when the summer comes, let's just pretend that our bliss isn't momentary, that we're living out an endless summer. :D
At least, until the next school year comes along.
I apologize for my mood swings this past week. You see, I've been having a really bad week today, what with homework piling up and the best groupmates ever in the entire wide world (sarcasm).
I suffered from lack of sleep for several days, the worst being on Monday night, when I nearly keeled over (I am not kidding) while tediously working on that Botany lab report which I so abhorred. Only three of us - three out of six groupmates, imagine that - worked on the PowerPoint presentation for hours on end, the others coming up with various excuses such as papers to do and "Oh, I want to help but I'm afraid I can't" (for some unknown reason). And the other one was not at all in sight. We worked on it the day (or the night) before the presentation, being busy with paperwork and other assignments over the weekend. Sifting through pictures was tiring enough, but having to come up with a script just so our ever-dearest groupmates could at least have something to do was worse. I was so pissed off that I wanted to slap them, to shout at them, heck, even to write their names in a Death Note, had I owned one. It didn't help we got an A, which is supposed to be a good thing, except that a few freeloaders had to share the A we worked hard for.
The next day, I had to deal with the wushu finals, which turned out to be a real fiasco. I practiced hard, I did, but I felt frustrated. Why couldn't we do it right on that day? Why was my partner seemingly so easygoing about it? Add the anger and the exhaustion from having to do a whole lot of work on a presentation in one night to the frustration I felt from making an utter fool of myself in the wushu finals (and not staging it to music, which was our dream - my partner and I) - that equated to one angry person. I think some of my friends have witnessed my mood swings in the past. As much as possible, I hate dishing things out on people. But sometimes I can't help it. I want to yell. To scream. But I can't do it, because I'm not one to get involved in direct confrontation. Still, people say that I am scary when angry, that I give off this cold, get-away-from-me-or-else aura. And that's what happened on Tuesday.
I'm sorry, wushu partner and good friend of mine. I admit that I was frustrated because we weren't getting things right, and I thought you were being flippant and a bit indifferent about it. I was frustrated not only because of the grade, but also (and even more so) because I wanted to make our dream of doing these cool wushu moves a reality. And then I was still carrying over the anger I felt the previous night. But it didn't happen; so much for that. There's nothing that can be done, and it's a pity. However, I can't hold a grudge just because of a final PE exam that went wrong, so please accept my apology, Andrea. I shouldn't have acted that way. And I shouldn't have lashed my anger on the wrong person, the only person near me - to whom I could vent my anger.
On Thursday, the Math orals went wrong, too. Because our last long test (which took place on Friday) was good for only an hour, Sir decided to eliminate Lagrange multipliers from the written exam and schedule orals. Working in pairs, we were given problems involving Lagrange multipliers a few days before the orals, and we were to solve them in front of Sir Tuason for fifteen minutes. I thought that things would go fine, but I was mistaken. Willy, did you get cold feet? I don't know how you felt about it. But I was frustrated. "Help me out here!" I would think, and sometimes say out loud. "We need to have equal speaking and solving time for us to get a good grade!" And I need a 94 to get an exemption in Math, I thought. And we blew the follow-up question. Oh, you should've seen the look on my face when Sir told us that we had used up our fifteen minutes. But you wouldn't have wanted to see me kicking pebbles and walking wordlessly at a distance. Frustration + annoyance + hellish days + Tifa = scary and b*tchy, apparently.
I'm sorry, partner and good friend. I really am. I shouldn't have jumped to stupid conclusions like "There goes my grade." I shouldn't have been so selfish and even more grade-conscious than ever this week. The thing is - well, it's hard to explain but here goes - I wasn't mad at you or at anyone in particular. But for some reason, I was disappointed. Frustrated. Everything. I had a bad week and I thought, "Oh, what a great addition to my week, not acing the orals." Please accept my apology. Anyway, we got 19/20 in the orals. I don't know how I would've reacted if we didn't get a good grade, but I do know that I should just accept things in stride and not hold it against people (unless, say, my partner didn't do anything to help me out at all, which isn't the case). I'm happy that you, like Andrea, aren't holding grudges against me. I'm the one in the wrong. But you aren't mad at me. Thank you. :)
And anyway, friends, you won't be seeing cold-and-angry Tifa for the next few weeks, because last Thursday (after the orals), Jhenel, Zhandra, Rachelle and Nicole carpooled with me, and we let out all our frustrations and anger to one another, and it was like one big sharing session. If that session were a talk show, I could've titled it "Girl Talk on Groupmates From Hell." It was fun, and funny, to share experiences about annoying groupmates, and to find out that we shared similar experiences! I don't know how it all started - I think everything began when Zhandra ranted about how she was a one-woman team on her Filipino project - but I felt a lot better after letting it all out, and after listening to (and having a laugh about) everyone else's experiences.
But now that I'm contemplating on the entire week, it wasn't that bad, I guess. I had my share of comforting and pleasant experiences. On Monday, I enjoyed the little sharing session we M04 students had. We were discussing the essays "College Pressures" and "Work," and almost everyone had a story to tell, about how so-and-so wanted to pursue this dream but took a more practical course, about the influence of parents in their children's majors, about entire families of doctors - refreshingly amusing stories like those. It was as if the authors of those essays were directly speaking to us and calling us. (In fact, I thought that the authors understood how I felt!) And it was wonderful how M04 was all ears, how everyone seemed to understand and to accept others. Sharing my own story also lightened my heart because M04 was receptive and understanding - even Sir Exie! See, I get this feeling that I'm being too idealistic about my triple-minor dream, but M04 doesn't think so. And once again, I remembered Billy Collins, who said that the true pace of education is slow. Sadly, it seems like something that (as far as the circle of people I know is concerned) only M04 will understand, something that might be dismissed as absurd by the people I know (well, sometimes, including myself), who are all caught-up in this fast-paced urban jungle. But, M04, thank you for sharing your stories, and thank you for listening to me. English 101 is over, and Lit 14 will be over next week, and honestly, I am not happy about it. I will compose a goodbye entry for M04 in the next few days.
Also, I'm pretty much certain that I am now exempted from the Math finals! Thank you, thank you, Sir Tuason for that easy LT #6! I was panicking because I felt that I didn't study enough, but I guess my studying paid off. Granted, I made a stupid mistake - my carelessness cost me six points (aww, too bad, there goes my perfect score) - but at least I got my target grade of 94, so now I don't have to take the finals. Yay! Now I have one extra day of bumming around - perhaps I shall watch anime or read a book. And Math is over and done with. However, I am going to miss you, Sir Tuason, because you almost made me love Math. You came really, really, really, really close to making me love Math, and other than a teacher or two in high school, no one else has succeeded in doing that. My disliking Math has nothing to do with you; it's just that I think Math and I were born to dislike each other. But you made Math enjoyable and understandable, and that's why I think you're really cool. Plus, whenever I talked to you or asked for help, I felt like I was talking to a classmate (a highly intelligent one at that), and not a professor. So thanks a lot, Sir Joey; I'm going to miss you! I hope you're living it up in the US right now, and I hope that if my sister studies in ADMU, you will still be there and that you will be her Math prof.
And on a totally random and totally superficial note, seeing Yuu Shirota, Shun Oguri and Jun Matsumoto on TV cheered me up one time this week when I was feeling down. I was watching Hana Yori Dango on GMA-7 (surprisingly, the dub's not bad, it's the cuts that really make me cringe) when, during a commercial break, I saw a teaser for Hana Kimi. Needless to say, I was squealing with happiness. XD Reading Makubex/Sakura fanfics (yes, I now have a revived interest in this pairing) brightened my day as well. :)
And then there's you, you whom I must not name. As cheesy as it sounds, there are times when you can brighten my day, but of course you don't know it, since we only connect through schoolwork and sometimes through anime - it's a rather fragile connection at the moment. This is weird; I do not know why I like you. What's stranger is that I am not sure if I actually like you or if my imagination is making you better than you really are (To borrow a line from "Mad Girl's Love Song," did I make you up inside my head?). I know you are a good person - my friends say so, too - but what if my mind is just exaggerating your, uh, goodness? I really don't know. But anyway, you do make me happy, and I hope we get to know each other in the future - we still have three years, after all. I hope we can be friends. Don't worry; like Prufrock, I don't dare disturb the universe. I've learned my lesson.
Anyway, friends, perhaps I've been rambling too much now. We only have a few weeks left, and then it's back to the fun times. We can go malling. We can prepare for the cosplay conventions and the Celadon ball. We can bond over anime and read the latest books. And of course, we're going to have lots of stories to tell - the good and the bad. :D It's just a few more weeks, a little bit more of hell that we must endure (Jhen, I hope the last two weeks we have won't be that hellish) and then it will be over. Momentarily. But when the summer comes, let's just pretend that our bliss isn't momentary, that we're living out an endless summer. :D
At least, until the next school year comes along.