171; now that the first semester is over

As a first year student in the Faculty of Arts, I have several goals I intend to achieve this semester. I have found that high school and university are quite different matters on so many levels, such as class hours, the number of assignments, time management, self organization, and independence. Taking a step from high school to university can be a life-changing transition, because we have to start all over again back at one. So, the first goal I wish to accomplish this semester is to survive all the changes. I intend to try to fit in with the new faces and new environment. Also, I cannot help but notice the increasing amount of assignments, and although there are more free periods than in high school, I cannot play around like I used to anymore. Plans have to be made wisely in advance, and I have to check the long to-do lists daily so as to make sure I do not miss any tasks. With all the assignments that come crashing in, and very limited time to do them, it is not an exaggeration when I say I am getting by and barely surviving. I think it would be nice if I can manage to finish this semester without any F’s, which is basically my second goal. I have an intention to make the amount of effort required to at least come away with a B+ GPA. It is often said that grades do not mean anything, which is probably right. However, I still disagree. To me, good grades mean winning a battle against the dark, lazy side of myself, and conquering the voice in my head that tells me to give up. And lastly, while I am still a freshman, I wish to stay happy. One thing I have learned as I grow up is that life gets harder. Like in high school, just when I thought life could not get any more complicated, university came into view. Life is like that. So, knowing all too well that I am going to be a sophomore next year, I would like to embrace and cherish the freshman moments while the year 2011 still lasts. At this point I know what I am supposed to do with my time; I am going to try hard for good grades and my own happiness. It is a brave new beginning, and although university life is sometimes a struggle, I know for a fact that I will be alright.

- Me, June 26th 2011
Second writing assignment: example paragraph

Let’s see. First goal? Yeah. I got it alright.
Second? Well, no F, but it’s still a MAJOR FAIL. I got a C+ on Use of Thai Language. How humiliating is that. Thai is my friggin’ mother language! That being said, I never really did care about it. Besides, I always came away with a B or B+ at Thai anyway in high school.
Last?  Maybe.

168; numb

Okay.. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to feel. I’m just sitting here, feeling numb. I looked at my grades and that’s it. Numb. A shiver just ran down my spines. A friend called and asked about it. I told her. She said, “Oh.” The kind of ‘oh’ that shows disappointment from high expectation. I hate this. I could sense that a lot of people were gonna call. So I turned off my phone. And here I am.

I guess it’s supposed to be a while till everything sinks in, and then I will know whether I care or not, whether I’ll cry or won’t.

I don’t like this.

161; burning brighter than the sun

So far I’ve finished 4 final exams! German, checked; Use of Thai Language, checked; English, checked; Eastern Civilization, checked. Yay! Two more to go, baby!

Today was really really really tough. I have a need to tell you how I’d been lately. I studied like all the time (except for the 6 hours of my supposed-to-be study time I couldn’t get back that I spent brewing potions on Pottermore). And I even  picked up the habit of drinking coffee. I never used to drink coffee, but now I need it quite desperately. I don’t like that. Coffee makes teeth turn yellow.

Anyway.

Let’s just say that I’ve been studying a lot. I’d go to bed at 3 am, or go to bed early and then wake up at midnight to continue until 2 or 3 am. My brain’s been going fuzzy. I had English first thing today. It was tough. The vocabulary was nothing much. I think I only got one wrong, which was okay. But the grammar. Oh god. I don’t know how this could have happened, I mean I got everything right in class, and grammar was never my problem. But this exam’s got me questioning myself. Also, I’ve always been a great error detector. I usually know when things are wrong and I always detect the exact number of actual errors in the error analysis part, no more, no less. But not this time. It’s got me questioning myself again. And then the reading. I know my reading skill is great, not excellent but better than just good. Guess what, it didn’t go well in this exam too. And I started wondering if I had started losing my potential or something. The writing was fun, however. As I couldn’t come up quickly enough with examples for the “advantages/disadvantages of being the only child”, nor with reasons for “why social networking sites like Facebook are popular among teenagers”, I ended up with something I already know all too well: describe the first person you had a crush on.

I was being completely honest when writing the paragraph. The picture of the way he was 7 years ago was still clear in my mind. And I poured everything I could think of down on the paper (although, as usual, now to think about it, there are a lot more stuff I failed to come up with at that desperate moment in the examination room). And it made me smile like an idiot to write about him. My words were the truth. Now, Mr Michael might think that the person was fictional, because he seemed unreal by the way I wrote it. But let me tell you, he’s as real as the sun is real. Burning brightly far, far, far away, but it still never fails to let you know that it’s there. The heat makes you go mad, but you can’t live without it either. That’s how real he is to me. And of course, I didn’t write those sentences down because they don’t relate to the topic, but still, I wish I had shared this with Mr Michael. It felt funny, though, to write about my childhood love interest. But hell, it’s Mr Michael. He probably knows me a lot more already than most of my friends at the Faculty. I’m not sure if it’s  good or a bad thing that I am almost always honest and personal in my writing. I wish I had had time to make a copy of that paragraph. It could be a perfect love note, seriously. I wish I could show it to him. I liked the way I felt when I was writing it.

And now I’m hungry.

And I still have to study.

And I hate my life.

Oh, Mr Michael told me I can borrow the books in his office anytime. Even during school break.

Yay! :D

153; i just want to say that i’m happy today

I like this place, too. Strange I’ve never seen you there.
As always, your paragraph is outstanding .

20

Thank you Mr Michael :)

There aren’t many corrections. Just a few misspelled words, maybe I was too nervous. XD And no grammatical error. NONE. Wow. And the fact that he likes this place too is awesome. Maybe I’ll run into him one of these days. Also, he didn’t mind me using ‘storey’ hahaha. It’s fun to look at myself panicking.

Just a note. I’ve nailed all the 4 in-class writing tests so far, and come away with 20/20 each. I just realized this and it makes me extremely smiley. :D

And Mr K, you know who you are, my blog isn’t all about ranting.
Just so you know ;)

 

147; fail day

I don’t know what I’ve been doing lately. I don’t know if I’m even on the right track. I’ve spent a lot of time reading books I shouldn’t have been reading at this time, since it’s the month of final exams. Yet I couldn’t help it. Being me, I don’t put down a book until it’s finished, and I don’t call it finished until every page has been thoroughly read. That’s the problem. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes is pretty thick. And I’d been reading it for almost a whole month, in fact I just finished it last night. And then I realized that I don’t have much time to prepare for the finals anymore. Time’s running out. And that I still have homework to do (English project presentation, German oral exam, and another movie review for drama arts class), and memorize a whole list of books this publishing house, Bliss, has published, so I will be ready to take the test for a job I applied for next Monday. It didn’t occur to me until last night that I didn’t know what I was doing. And that makes me want to cry so much.

Today isn’t my day either. We had an in-class writing test today, and it was a descriptive paragraph. There were about 5 or 6 titles to choose from, and I ended up with Describe a place you like to go to unwind when you are under a lot of pressure, and I described my favorite bookstore. I was under a lot of pressure already, because the time was so limited, and I’m not good at writing in limited time. Usually as I write, the draft I have within the first hour of writing sucks, and after that first hour, I edit here and there and things get much better. But it’s not the same with the in-class writing tests, because it’s on paper and there’s not much time. So my paragraph sucked even more than I had expected it to. Here are some mistakes that I made:

1) I described it was a 3-storey building. That is a no no. Mr Michael is an American and he prefers us to write American English. I mean, I know storey is British but I somehow was blank at that point in the classroom. I didn’t even bother to change it simply because it didn’t occur to me that it is British. FAIL.

2) Another fail with this storey thing is that I kept using storey ALL THE TIME. When I wrote At the top of the creaky wooden stairs there is the second storey which is a big WTF now that I think of it. Why didn’t it occur to me that I should’ve written The creaky wooden stairs lead up to the second floor which I think sounds a lot better and less stupid.

3) I don’t know if I was supposed to describe a place as in one room like my friends wrote about their bedrooms or if my description of those 3 floors of the bookstore was acceptable. Maybe I overdid it.

4) It wasn’t until I walked out of the classroom with my first draft that I realized I hadn’t put enough details in the paragraph. I spent all the time saying how many bookshelves there are in each floor, and what the yellow labels say the genres are, and how there are tables in the middle of the room, and how I like the smell of old books. I totally forgot about the mood of the place: a lively bookstore? A crowded one? A peaceful one? What’s more, I also forgot about colors. Can you believe it? I didn’t even write any color other than the yellow labels. And trust me, I didn’t even write about any books at all. I only mentioned the bookshelves and how I dug through books with joy. But no specific details of anything which is the whole point of a descriptive paragraph.

5) I misused so many words and tenses. This sucks because I  didn’t have much time to think and go through things. For example, I wrote I never leave this store empty-handed, which I think could’ve been better if I’d used the present perfect, I have never once left... But I don’t know. Another example would be The cashier is right beside the shelves, for which I would like to bang my head against a wall. What is right beside the shelves? What did I mean by ‘right’, and which shelves? On the left side or on the right? I didn’t make myself clear on that one, and it just occurred to me that I hadn’t. Another sentence is, My head is cleared of the stress I had before I entered, which now to think about it I think it just sounds wrong. I don’t know how I could change it, but it sounds so wrong. The thing is I don’t remember what I wrote, head or brain or mind. If I’d written brain I’m gonna shoot myself. But …I had before I entered? I don’t know.. The whole paragraph was written in present simple tense, because everything is either facts or habits of mine. I don’t know how I could change it, still, but I know that it’s wrong, and it’s gonna cost me some points for sure.

Man, if I’d had more time I would’ve made it much better. I’m sure of it. When I handed in the paper, Mr Michael broke my heart by simply beaming at me after taking a look at my long paragraph (I can never write paragraphs shorter than 20 lines. I can never do it. I have tried. I’m just a person with so many things to say.) and saying “Is it excellent again this time?”. Well, lately he’s been grading my papers full marks, with comments saying Excellent! or Beautiful! or things like that that fill my heart with overwhelming joy. And what could I answer him? I knew all too well that this paper was doomed to disappoint him greatly. It was definitely not my best work. I forced a smile, saying, “I hope so.” With that smile still on his face he replied, “I hope so too!” And then I had to turn away because I couldn’t bear the feeling that I was going to disappoint the teacher whose class I am most fond of being in.

In the Use of Thai Language class right after, I was given all the papers back. I failed so many and trust me, I couldn’t even care less. Thai class is never a class I care about. Never. I could fail all the exams and it wouldn’t even bother me at all, while if I got a 15 out of 20 for the paragraph mentioned about earlier, which I think would serve me right, I would start bawling like mad. I cannot accept anything that is below 17 (if out of 20) points in English.

Which comes back to the point. I think I’m gonna get, like, lower than 16 on that descriptive paragraph. And it breaks my heart already to think about.

On the bright side, Miley, my best classmate, chose Describe a classmate of yours who really stands out in some way, and the person she wrote about was me. I’m a subject on her paper! What an honor, really. She’s an excellent writer, usually full-scorer like me. I can’t wait to read it. I’m sure she’s gonna have 20 graced on her paper again this time. I don’t know how she does it, but she does, she’s so brilliant.

I’m so far, far, far from brilliance. What a shudder.