And my duty is done (for a day, at least)

Almost there…

Thank goodness! I’m doing the last summary now and will write the opinion piece in a while.

Block Tests: Chinese

I think Chinese went better than LA.

 

I ought to be able to get a decent mark for my compositions, providing I didn’t do what I always do and wrote some characters wrongly. Not sure about Paper 2, because the passages and questions were all deep and flighty Meaning of Life kind of stuff.

 

My right hand hurts. As I was telling Yong today, I need to learn how to be ambidextrous somehow. Also, Windows Live Writer autolinking is really helpful. Whenever I type Yong it links her, but only once in the entire post. It’s pretty smart! O:

 

Also, something happened to my left thumb (I dunno, was it a cramp or something?) while I was playing the Killer 30 Octaves of Doom (yes, there are 30 octaves non-stop in the bass line) in my fugue.

Block Tests: LA

Why does the school insist on calling them block tests when they’re not even in a block anymore? I think Continual Assessment or Common Test sounds fine too.

 

So anyway, for Language Arts, today’s question was:

 

“A world without conflict is an impossible dream.” Discuss.

Can’t remember what the last part was, but it’s always got the same meaning, so yeah.

 

What I Wrote

• Conflict is part of human nature. You can curb it, but you can’t deny it. Society needs an outlet for this repressed tendency, and thus will have major conflicts e.g. war.
  • I can’t believe I actually quoted playground fights as evidence.
  • I wrote something about St. Augustine. And I think that was it.
• Conflict brings progress, advancement and evolution – biologically required? Seen in nature?
  • Cited horrible example: A-bomb. Even as I was writing I knew it was screwed up, but no time to think and I was stressed.
• Conflict breaks up the monotony of life, and thus humans will be loath to get rid of it because life would be boring without it.
  • Short, no substantiation – just a point, because I had 10 minutes left to write a page (or I would have only 2 pages and no essay at all)

I kept debating whether to focus only on big huge conflicts like World Wars or if smaller conflicts counted as well. This took up a lot of time and left me more confused than ever.

Mistakes I Made

• Really bad evidence. Not enough evidence. Evidence holds no weight.
• Wasted 15 minutes of time trying to figure out what the hell to write…
• …and another ten staring at my blank paper trying to make my arguments make sense.
• Didn’t follow paragraph structure that the teachers wanted.
• Introduction had unnecessary sentences – will affect my language mark pretty badly.

I Think I’ll Get

• Language: Band 2 if I’m lucky, maybe Band 3. Which is not good, because language has always been what pulls my scores up.
• The “Reasoning and Logic” Bit: I’m hoping for at least Band 3 but I have a feeling that it’ll drop to 4.

pleasepleasepleaseletmegetatleast21markspleasethankyou

 

What I Should Do To Improve

• Read about boring topics in the paper. Read all the articles in the Review section instead of the funny ones on language and America.

EOY Results

Same result posting format as previous ones. Will be updated as I go along.

● = Good (relative to previous scores, personal expectations etc)
● = Sort of Good (relative to class median/mean scores)
● = Average (relative to class median/mean scores)
● = Pretty Bad (relative to personal expectations)
● = Poor (relative to everything)

Math: ?
Chinese: ?
Language Arts: 84.5% ● A1
Physics: 85/100 ● A1
Chemistry: 88/100 ● A1
Biology: 79/100 ● A1
Integrated Humanities: 34/45 ● A1 (totally unexpected!)
AEP (Study of Visual Art): ?
Bicultural Studies (Chinese): ?

EOY 2008: Day 4

Had Chem today. I thought it went pretty okay, but I got 2 or 3 questions wrong in Paper 1 and the ionic equations left me a little confused in Paper 2.

Bio (last Friday) started off ho-hum but Paper 2 was a nightmare. It was like, the mother of all Bio papers. Short-chain amino acid binding and hydrolysis?

By the way, if you haven’t noticed already, I’ve added a Twitter reading list to the sidebar; alternatively, you can also follow it (if you’re interested in that sort of thing) on Twitter at @krysjez_reads.

EOY 2008: Day 2

Physics

Argh equations of motion! And Physics teachers’ general tendency to make questions as confusing as possible @__@ “The seat belt expanded horizontally by 0.4m”?

Chinese Paper 2

Erm, well, I pretty much wrote rubbish. Throughout the whole thing I just kept telling myself 不要紧，干脆乱写一通好了 since, you know, I’m pretty much screwed already for Chinese.

Math Paper 1

The first-ever math paper I’ve done with 30 minutes to spare. Awesome!

This Post Has Sixty-Five Words

Obtained 136 for ABRSM Grade 7 piano, distinction, likely personal best.

Have new handphone number, please ask (irl)

Had LA paper today, wrote very short essay with unlinked paragraphs and disorganized points.

Scribbled a fairly short unseen analysis. Did Prose, have uneasy feeling that I veered away from Author’s Intent.

Plodded through a dastardly, disgusting and difficult (alliteration!) comprehension about Alzheimer’s.

Automattic buys Intense Debate, promises improved WP.com commenting.

Block Tests 2: Results

Well, now that I’ve got 3 papers back I think I can begin posting my results. I’ll be following the same format as before:

● = Good (relative to previous scores, personal expectations etc)
● = Sort of Good (relative to class median/mean scores)
● = Average (relative to class median/mean scores)
● = Pretty Bad (relative to personal expectations)
● = Poor (relative to everything)

Math: 31/60 ● and of course ●/●
Chinese: 71.5/110 ●
Language Arts: ?
Physics: 44/60 ●
Chemistry: 44/60 ●
Biology: 48/60 ●
Integrated Humanities: 15/20 ●
AEP (Study of Visual Art): ?
Bicultural Studies (Chinese): ?

Will be updated as I get more test scripts back. I hope I don’t die too hard this time. Please, please, let my MSG be below 3.

Block Tests OVER!

SoVA today. Whoever said Escher wasn’t tested almost cost me 10 marks. I wrote a bit of rubbish on concepts he used, some crap about maths. I certainly hope Penrose shapes are part of math (applied math or something?) or I will feel very very stupid.

Did the whole of Section B (30 marks) in 15-20 minutes. Aaargh. I spent too much time on the first one thinking because Section A is typically the memory-work section.

Stupid flying ants in my room took like an hour off my slack time. Today is my only official slack time (as in I can slack without guilt) because I have to work on other stuff like Math report.

Finally paid a visit to Scrabulous. It’s pretty fun but I suck majorly at it haha.