It's that time of the year again. The time where we all drown ourselves in the notes we have received and made in the past year. Yes, it's the End-Of-Year Examination period. Yay.
I'm at the start of that period now, I'm pretty sure all the secondary school students are currently what we Singaporeans like to call "chiong-ing" for exams. "Chiong" is to rush. Singlish is a pretty versatile "language", so while "chiong-ing" lunch means to eat lunch hurriedly, "chiong-ing" for exams is to cram/do last minute mugging for exams. Also known as "pia-ing". Yes, Singlish is weird. No, we don't really care.
I've finished my Chinese and English paper over the past two days and I'm glad to say that I think I've gotten off on a good start. For the first time in forever, I was able to complete almost all the questions in my Chinese paper (or at least write something for every question), save for one and a half questions which I couldn't do, so I technically completed the paper. I can't even begin to describe how nervous I was before that paper. It was horrible. I felt totally unprepared, although I studied till I fell asleep on my bedroom floor the night before. I've never studied as hard as I did this time round for my Chinese paper ever. The damn thing had a total of 200 marks, 90 marks for Paper 1 (what I would describe as situational writing and then essay writing) and 110 marks for Paper 2 (your usual MCQ and Open-Ended nonsense). I haven't exactly done all fabulously and shit earlier this year, and if I can do well this time round, I might actually past Chinese for the first time in secondary school. That is a big deal to me, even if it seems like nothing to others. I might still fail anyway, so whatever.
I didn't really study all that hard for English, considering that I've always done okay for it, either above average or just scraping through. No, there is no in between. Yeah, so I took the paper, again, split into Paper 1 and Paper 2, as all language papers in Singapore are split, and I might just fail it? Yepp. We were given an hour and a half to complete each paper, with a break between Paper 1 and Paper 2. For Paper 1, we only need to write one essay for English, unlike in Chinese. I managed to finish writing my essay with 15-30 minutes to spare, and safe to say, I was scared shitless. 15-30 minutes in an essay is actually a lot of time, and I felt like I didn't write enough, compared to my friends who wrote 3 pages and all that shit. I wrote one and three-quarters, but my handwriting is pretty damn small, so yeah. The word limit was 550 to 600 words, I probably exceeded by easily over a hundred. It's okay. No one counts the words. Then, there's the other problem to worry about, which is the "PEEL" format that all teachers want our essay paragraphs to be in. I didn't write in that cursed format. My teacher is probably going to mark me down for that. It's a tough world to survive in when they want you to have a personal voice but force you to follow the structure they decide.
For English Paper 2 (this one was 1 Open-Ended, 1 Summary, and 1 2-part Visual Text question), I swear half the time, I had no idea what was going on. Like, what are you even testing? The questions don't really even fit the passage? The questions that were posed kind of changed the meaning of the passage, and so I'd just passed it off as bad English and answered according to what the passage gave. (And the paper was set by ENGLISH teachers. Huh.)
So I'm done with my 2 language papers, and it's time for the Sciences and Humanities now, but my school always has this 2 day break between papers, so my next paper is on Wednesday, not Monday. (Why do the breaks even exist?? To stress our tits off?? I study in an all-girls school, if I haven't mentioned that before. Pardon my language, we often feel more comfortable when we're all the same gender and act like guys haha) We have normal curriculum time on Monday and Tuesday, and then it's gonna be Chemistry on Wednesday. I'm not too confident, but I can't do badly. I can't do badly for any of my End-Of-Years, to be precise. But I'm not the setter, and I can't predict the questions, so all I can do is leave it up to fate, as cheesy as it sounds. I'll be pia-ing for as long as I can. Hopefully, I'll do well this time round!
Alright, I'll end here for now, and good luck to all you readers who have any test or exams coming up! Live well, Love much, Laugh often!
-Midnight Flint
P.S. You can follow me on Twitter at @FlintStars if you want, though I don't really tweet all that often on this account. (But I'm not going to release my private account so lol) I've also got an account on Wattpad, and I'm writing originals as well as fan fiction (those are originals as well, of course...). I've got one on that account, but I currently have no plans on continuing the one that has been uploaded, though I have half a mind to change that. You can find me at Midnight4821 on Wattpad, and find out the origins of this name. I don't act like her, though. She's cooler :)
