alas! - or, at last!
The triple threat of History, SS and Mathematics did not live up its hype; I felt a strange calmness embrace me on the day itself, no doubt achieved by some serendipitous, inexplicable just-so positioning of events and influences which may never happen again, definitely not consciously, but at any rate, I took them in stride, I guess. Maybe a certain readjustment of relationship helped too, in this regard; as Ashima said, stabilizing forces are rarely missed until they're gone, even if you recognize them for it subconciously. Last week was a particularly devastating point of the decimation of my 'blind faith' in the world, and if I may, I suspect existential angst, as pretentious as that sounds, overtook me temporarily.
I remember the apex of it vividly: it was in the morning, as I lay sleepily in the car while my dad drove me to school in the usual hum of routine, and this school van suddenly flashed past me, with the face of a woman, the bus auntie, pressed slightly against the window, and my first thought was, what an ugly face, ugly in its lines of futility, petulance, blindness, lost in the mundane eddies of life, not amounting to anything, a non-happening face, and at that precise moment it was as though the entire emptiness of the universe and my, our existence came crashing down on me.
But today, I regained my - faith, in a sense, or blithe suppression of that acute feeling, a dulling of it as the social conventions and norms drew me back into their folds again, the mechanism that helps us survive; it was the human connection, I think, as liberating as it was wearying towards the end. This brings to mind Sartre's, and to an extent, (in so much as they share the same philosophy) De Beauvoir's idea of the deliberate rejection of our essence, the willing objectification of the Self; our weakness in seeking easy solace in pushing ourselves into an accepted form or mold without embracing all the complexities and vagaries of our existence; because it is so comfortable to slip readily into the socially accepted boundaries and assume societal models of thought and behaviour as one would don clothing.
Wei Qing said that when she thinks or finds a session completely useless, she still goes for it because it is a responsibility. I can't say I disagree with her.
Going back to the mundane concerns, the SS question was surprising in its focus, but I thought it was a very good question, because it tested our knowledge without returning to the FAs' question structures, as RGS SAs tend to do. I was dreading having to write exactly the same points I did for my FAs again, because the questions were so similar, but they weren't. I'm not sure how well I did, though, because I had too many concepts and points to stuff into a one hour essay, and it was too complex for the time limit. Math was - ridiculously easy, and I hope I did as well as I expect, because if my results turn out like Chem, I will honestly break down, because it was so easy. There. I said it. Now the words will forever be up for ridicule if I don't actually score well. History was - like SS too, in that the question tested your application of the knowledge; for both SS and History, there were no set answers to be followed because the questions weren't covered in class, although the facts and perspectives required to answer them were, and that's really, really good, because for me, that's what education should be about, and I guess this is another thing which restored, minutely, the superficial faith I have in RGS that, in hindsight, was chipped away, quite pettily, by the failures of my SS and History FAs.
I am still unsure how well I did for both, though, because it's always hard to say, but I do know I'm not aiming just for a 4.0 anymore, which means that if I don't even attain that, the blow will be unconceivable /: I CANNOT DISAPPOINT MR. LAW AND MR. JALLEH!
Stall 9's fried chicken is really, really good, as is Pasta Mania's Tri-Shooms pizza :D And the 30% student discount seriously makes everything more affordable :D
Today was - actually a very good day, because we ended at 1, and Wei Qing and I had a leisurely lunch at Pasta Mania until around 3 pm, and then it turned out that there wasn't actually WSC, so both of us went home, and I managed to get in more than an hour of unadulterated reading for pleasure, which is a rare luxury, and I finished Socrates and Marx, which was both an enlightening and a disappointing book; enlightening because it put Marx in a new perspective for me, but disappointing because it was very much biased against Marxism, and it was written with an obvious religious belief in play, which I felt undermined its credibility. I will quote from it soon, because I'm too lazy to get it now. I also finished half of the newest issue of Newsweek (: D). Before that, I was at the library with Deb and Joni and I read an magazine article on Simone de Beauvoir, who might potentially replace Sartre as my favourite philosopher as soon as I know more about her ideologies (:
So I actually didn't do any homework. What's your point?
I remember the apex of it vividly: it was in the morning, as I lay sleepily in the car while my dad drove me to school in the usual hum of routine, and this school van suddenly flashed past me, with the face of a woman, the bus auntie, pressed slightly against the window, and my first thought was, what an ugly face, ugly in its lines of futility, petulance, blindness, lost in the mundane eddies of life, not amounting to anything, a non-happening face, and at that precise moment it was as though the entire emptiness of the universe and my, our existence came crashing down on me.
But today, I regained my - faith, in a sense, or blithe suppression of that acute feeling, a dulling of it as the social conventions and norms drew me back into their folds again, the mechanism that helps us survive; it was the human connection, I think, as liberating as it was wearying towards the end. This brings to mind Sartre's, and to an extent, (in so much as they share the same philosophy) De Beauvoir's idea of the deliberate rejection of our essence, the willing objectification of the Self; our weakness in seeking easy solace in pushing ourselves into an accepted form or mold without embracing all the complexities and vagaries of our existence; because it is so comfortable to slip readily into the socially accepted boundaries and assume societal models of thought and behaviour as one would don clothing.
Wei Qing said that when she thinks or finds a session completely useless, she still goes for it because it is a responsibility. I can't say I disagree with her.
Going back to the mundane concerns, the SS question was surprising in its focus, but I thought it was a very good question, because it tested our knowledge without returning to the FAs' question structures, as RGS SAs tend to do. I was dreading having to write exactly the same points I did for my FAs again, because the questions were so similar, but they weren't. I'm not sure how well I did, though, because I had too many concepts and points to stuff into a one hour essay, and it was too complex for the time limit. Math was - ridiculously easy, and I hope I did as well as I expect, because if my results turn out like Chem, I will honestly break down, because it was so easy. There. I said it. Now the words will forever be up for ridicule if I don't actually score well. History was - like SS too, in that the question tested your application of the knowledge; for both SS and History, there were no set answers to be followed because the questions weren't covered in class, although the facts and perspectives required to answer them were, and that's really, really good, because for me, that's what education should be about, and I guess this is another thing which restored, minutely, the superficial faith I have in RGS that, in hindsight, was chipped away, quite pettily, by the failures of my SS and History FAs.
I am still unsure how well I did for both, though, because it's always hard to say, but I do know I'm not aiming just for a 4.0 anymore, which means that if I don't even attain that, the blow will be unconceivable /: I CANNOT DISAPPOINT MR. LAW AND MR. JALLEH!
Stall 9's fried chicken is really, really good, as is Pasta Mania's Tri-Shooms pizza :D And the 30% student discount seriously makes everything more affordable :D
Today was - actually a very good day, because we ended at 1, and Wei Qing and I had a leisurely lunch at Pasta Mania until around 3 pm, and then it turned out that there wasn't actually WSC, so both of us went home, and I managed to get in more than an hour of unadulterated reading for pleasure, which is a rare luxury, and I finished Socrates and Marx, which was both an enlightening and a disappointing book; enlightening because it put Marx in a new perspective for me, but disappointing because it was very much biased against Marxism, and it was written with an obvious religious belief in play, which I felt undermined its credibility. I will quote from it soon, because I'm too lazy to get it now. I also finished half of the newest issue of Newsweek (: D). Before that, I was at the library with Deb and Joni and I read an magazine article on Simone de Beauvoir, who might potentially replace Sartre as my favourite philosopher as soon as I know more about her ideologies (:
So I actually didn't do any homework. What's your point?