Stuff and Guff

Feeling particulary onery and cantankerous after the Chemistry Common Test. My first series of exams in Singapore, in fact my first exam since June 5th 2008 - more than a year ago! - is not off to a good start at all.

The day started off on a good enough note, because I slacked the morning away reading through urban-farm blogs - very enjoyable, even if learning about goat calving isn't particularly beneficial to chemistry whatsover, as compared to what I was doing for the majority of yesterday, which was revising chemistry.

On my way to school at about 12.25pm (the exam being at 1pm), I spontaneously remembered that experimental planning would be tested and that I have neither revised experimental planning, nor have I any sort of hand at it. In fact, my single practice experimental planning wasn't even marked because, I suspect, beloved LCK gave up on it.

However there was nothing to be done for it as I was already on the bus with a shoebag in hand, containing only my wallet, pencil case and calculator.

Mucked around in school for awhile, all the while getting hotter, sweatier and more bothered, until they opened the doors of the aircon-ed MPH and I entered with gratitude!

Before the paper, I noticed someone's fleecey baby pink jacket in front of me and thought it would make a good 'destress-er' if I looked at it every now and then during the exam. Soft fluffy things are good for the eye and soothing to the imagination. A few minutes later proved me wrong, as I realized that finishing the paper would be a bigger problem than relaxing myself enough to think properly.

It wasn't that the questions were particularly hard, it was more like a lack of time to sort out all the concepts. I got confused over whether ionic energy increases or decreases across the period, erasing my graph 4 times! - and I also happened to draw a diagram with a basin, a gas tube and an inverted measuring cylinder when all they required was a gas collecting syringe.

The epiphany, when my eyes alighted on the words 'gas syringe', which I had until now not registered, was something along the lines of "aahhhh...so desu ne..."

I wasted precious time doing stupid things, like wondering whether to write 'radon fluoride' or 'RnF' because I wasn't sure that RnF was Radon fluoride, and measuring out my ionisation energy graph, and cursing my hb pencil and my non existent eraser, and you know, here and there my mind would just amble off for a leisurely stroll in Wonderland and leave me up to my nose in PtF6, whatever the cow that is.

The end result of it all, as I reflected while waiting for bus 55 to arrive - incidentally it sped by as I walked to the bus stop, leaving me to stew in the terrible heat for another 15 or so minutes - is a lamentable excuse for an answer script that, with so many skipped questions they are rather like a post transcripted pre translated mRNA, with the exons excised out but no time to splice the introns together, and hence disjointed and deplorably fragmented.

And then, having no time to finish the paper off is like leaving an mRNA without a poly AAA tail; just the way teachers are chopping marks away by the dozen, the lousy mRNA is getting degraded by ribonucleases.

You see? I have my bio down pat. Whether I'll have time to prove this on Thursday, is anyone's guess...though as Shaun says, CTs are 15% of something that don't matter.

Me : Did you finish the paper?
Elang : Nah.
Me : Really? Where did you complete it to?
Elang : The last sub question of the last question. It was...hm. Two marks?

(I'd insert a picture of the Sun but blogger refuses to cooperate. It would probably burn the readers' eyes! Damn, but I do have a nice picture!)

Stuff and guff! Now I wish I could have said that.