insominiac

i kinda forgot the term for being unable to sleep so i once put "amnesia" as my MSN nick. Quite a strange thing cause I don't remember my English to be that bad, but I guess I should forgive myself cause it was 3 am, I had to wake up at 5.30 and I couldn't sleep since 11. So I probably have a bit of amnesia as well. And I keep forgetting about a lot of other stupid stuff as well, like how I told myself that looking out for someone is a very dangerous distraction.

I mean, in 3 weeks time we have our prelims already, which almost certainly spell the end of AJ for most of us, for me at least. I don't care much, really, about my prelim results, since the ultimate aim is still A levels, but I guess I should take it as a good practice. The thing is, nostalgia comes back sometimes.

Remembering the day we stepped down, I actually wasn't listening to the speeches at all, and I really belittled that event cause in my mind I'm really out of council already... but then all the nostalgia came back, of how we always cram council room, how I posted a sign outside to refer people to the real storeroom, how I would hijack some tagged guitar to play during breaks, how I would hide in SC room whenever I skipped maths lectures, how we all stayed back late for no apparent reason, partly how the teachers get on our nerves with the occasional burst of a lack of logic and how we always curse the school admin for the stupid things they do. I'm happy that it's ended in some ways because good things will lose their value if there's too much of it. Why do we fondly remember holidays? Why do we fondly reminisce about those who have passed on? It really just occured to me its my last 3 months of actually wearing a uniform everyday (I don't intend to work for JTC, Macs or anything like that, not if I can help it, anyways) in my whole life. It crossed me that this is really the last time I can make a mistake and get away with a simple scolding. It really crossed me that in a few years time I will have to fend for myself, start a family and venture into great unknowns.

Like how I might be unfair to people when I rubbish their efforts sometimes. Yup, please do know that I always feel guilty after I realise I do it, so I'm really sorry yea. I was browsing through my friendster testimonials and as Alvin pointed out, maybe I do have high expectations of the people around me... misconception maybe but to a certain extent it's right... never mind, I'm really going out of point. Haha.

People, always answer the question. That's what I've learnt from the past month of history intensive teaching by Mr Seng. Must say his 1 month of teaching was very effective in making us better thinkers and allowing us to have better analysis. Not any discredit to Miss Ng, but to a large extent he really improved our analysis so much that now when I look at my past essays from last year I shake my head in disbelief that I actually wrote crap like that. Yups... and the essay assignment I just got back, quite a disappointing grade but a C is definitely generous for an effort that beat around the bush without answering the question....

And even though I still don't like Mrs Ong I do recognise her dedication and her efforts, just that I still despise the way she goes about teaching. One of many teachers under the special category of killing off my interests in subjects. With all due respect I don't remember dreading Mrs Lee's (math HOD) lessons last year even though she was more strict from the start on us doing our own learning. I guess it's really the approach. I don't recall Mr Denis Leong actually teaching anything, just him coming in, highlighting the method once and then spouting crap for the rest of the lesson. As in non-maths crap. And everyone got away with As. Again, I am deviating from the subject. The point is, answer the question please. Haha. Don't ask me how to do GP, the basic idea is answer the question. But if you wanna improve your writing, here are a few things you can do.

1. Get rid of your liquid paper/blanko/correction tape. This will force you to avoid mistakes when writing cause you don't want to cross out and make a mess of your own script.
2. Carpet bombing for GP is dumb and ineffective. Much as all the GP teachers in AJ, since that's all they tell students to do. There are chunks of information in the newspapers everyday, but remembering statistics doesn't really equate to examples. Actually it doesn't. But they still force people to do it anyway. It's actually an irony in itself because while their job is to improve our GP skills, they are actually asking us to do the otherwise. Trust me on that.
3. Try to think intelligently. Hard to start but once you get the hang of it you'll find that others are actually not-that-smart-as-their-grades look.
   
4. If your grammar is really bad, it's not too late. Go to the library, pick out those Oxford classics (I'd recomend Alexendre Dumas's works cause they don't bore you to sleep and yet those English freaks at Oxford translates his work into very very cheem English. I wouldn't really call it English, but reading such books helps your English standard A LOT). As compared to reading newspapers, since reports are factual and don't really make you more well prepared for GP. The review page can be interesting, but please note half of these adults really have weak arguments. So read with discression that all those viewpoints are mostly biased.
   
5. Read a history scholar's work. Really horrible shit cause its even heavier than Alexander Dumas un-condensed. Well what do you expect from professionals who spend all day debating viewpoints and making themselves smarter? Marvel at how they take a whole chunk of information and draw patterns and in-depth analysis that you would not have thought of.
   

Like I said, I don't really remember what I actually started out to write...