26 September 2011

418

lessons learnt from chem p1 today:

1. read question carefully.
2. don't be lazy and eyepower the options
3. read question very carefully.
4. never ever underestimate my stupidity.
5. if you spot a trick and tell yourself to watch out for it most likely you'll still get tricked anyway ._.

basically somehow I managed to misread q38 (which of the following reaction schemes will give the following ester) as which of these reactions will give AN ester. and somehow I didn't even see the desired ester below and only managed to see the options. hmm.

then another question arranging from most to least basic (i.e. they asked for decreasing Kb) I ordered them by least to most basic and then forgot to reverse the order. blah.

also screwed an electrochem question by just assuming stuff and being lazy to do calculations and check the other options.

and got tricked by NaBH4 and ketones again (that question I have no idea what I was doing. oh dear.)

but whatever prelims are finally over. so like one month of freedom for now. yay.

just that I have the whole week off school and I have no idea what I'm going to do. so I'm just lying around at home reading stuff now. and I'm bored already even though chem ended at 915 and I got home at 12-ish.

sigh.

and papers coming back next monday. oh dear.
got a bad feeling for phys geog GP again.

zzz.

ok we'll see how things go.

now what to do for the next 8 hours before I sleep ._.

22 September 2011

417

hmm I'm posting again!

although I don't quite know what I'm going to write about. just bored and with nothing to do I guess.

and it's a bit too early to be sleeping.
and I so don't feel like mugging for physics MCQ.

anyway I messed up papers 2 and 3 so no point aiming for dean's anyway so who cares. should be a safe enough A either way.

hmm chem p2 was rather fun. just that I messed up my alpha helix again. blah.
pharm chem was ow. ran out of time cos I wasted too much time reading / picking questions. so missed one mechanism and 1 NMR elucidation. but the paper was kinda fun (especially wty's question which just looked scary but was actually quite doable. unlike some others which looked horrible and were also icky). so I skipped the bio / essay question on drugs which was actually the one that would take the least time (ironically enough) so didn't manage to finish at the end.

and I had a lot of fun sorting through my scripts since they were all in a mess and I didn't number the questions very properly so I held everyone up and eventually astee just gave up and skipped me. oops.


anyways have been spending the past 2 days in the library reading! so finished the first 4 books of the h2g2 trilogy. and spent a lot of time loitering around school as well. it's so funny to see all the j2s being replaced by yr5s mugging. and they're so much more hardworking than us ._. like the library was damn crowded today even though promos for them are like still relatively far away.

ok whatever.

bored.

sec3s are damn irritating still and keep ignoring me / whatever I tell them.
meh.

but whatever I'll be gone very very very soon. it's been a long 2 years already.
tired.

17 September 2011

416

yeah I'm finally updating.

don't know why though. maybe cos I'm really bored.
also since all the major papers are over already.

can't believe I actually got through the last 2 weeks heh.
mugging / cramming 2 years' worth of work (I can't believe how much math I forgot already ._.) + random visits to kevin sim during the hols (it's fun listening to people talk lol) + POC prep and everything.

and then this week's papers were also rather crappy - physics dropped 12 marks (in a 72 mark paper) due to stupidity and stuff. then chem -7 for forgetting that H2/Ni and NaBH4 can whack carbonyls. and -3 for stupidity. and -2 for unit conversion errors again. blah.

then human geog picked both essays wrongly so kinda ran out of things to write again.
math I was ok (thankfully). just that I didn't bother with the shangyi question.

then friday - 6 hours in ISH. math II was fun! and geog I don't think I did myself justice on the DRQs since I forgot most of my key words. but then I realised I'm very bad at memorising things so whatever. and my essays weren't very long either. so I had 10 min left at the end of the paper (and for geog every minute counts). So I asked for a world map! yay. cheng was so shocked / confused when I did. hmm.

also my pencilbox is too messy already. should clear some things out of it.

blah so not expecting much from prelims. last year's results were anomalous really. so yeah everything should be easy As but percentile-wise - not expecting much. and there's always GP. blah.


anyway then after everything on friday it was POC.
2nd one that I actually attended (I skipped most of my own ceremony in '09 since it clashed with german prelims).

can't believe that 2 years have passed so quickly already.
and I don't know I'm not one who says much or says things very well so I don't think I'll be able to encapsulate everything I'm feeling right now / yesterday in words.
yeah but essentially thanks guys for everything you've done and I'm glad everything went well.

(as in everything these 2 years; the ceremony yesterday was fail. blah. should have stepped in sooner / more)


so I can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that another batch has gone / taken over and that 2 years have passed already. also that in a sense not only is 59 leaving but I am as well - so really it was also somewhat my own POC all over again. so like all these hours I've put in over these 2 years - all the late nights, the meetings on weekends, the wasted opportunities elsewhere, all the emailing when I should have been doing work / mugging - it's all over now.

and I don't know what to say about it. (to paraphrase TPL)

not sure whether I'm relieved / content / happy / sad / just tired / all of these and some more. don't know if all this was worth it in the end. or whether it even meant anything at all. or maybe I still haven't gotten past the realisation that everything's over / ending already. including my life in RI / RJ.

maybe that's why I didn't say much yesterday.

ah well it'll hit eventually.
but right now I'm just in some sort of limbo - tying up loose ends / getting things ready for next year - when I won't even be there since I'll most likely be stuck in tekong from december on - and just going through life not knowing what will happen after As.

so ultimately what does everything this 6 years add up to - I don't know.