Tuesday, November 24, 2009
spells complacent.
complacent complacent CoMpLaCeNt. nope. no matter what format it is, the word still seems as ugly to me. yeah. i don't like the word complacent. doesn't give me a nice feel. and yet, 2 teachers were inclined to use that to describe me. hang on. incase you didnt already know, complacent means to be happy with what you've got, and stop trying to improve. if i was, indeed, the super-prodigy that many memebers of our class insist that I am, this word would never, in a hundred years, be used to describe me. and yet it is. what does this tell you? to those dum-dums out there, yes, for the last time, I'm not a genius, NOR a prodigy, and im definitely not an inhumanly hard-working being.
no, no, no. I am merely an normal student who managed to somehow get a weirdly high GPA in term 1 due to a combination of luck, and the fact that i learnt some of the stuff taught in GEP previously. of course, this was the stupidest course of action to take, because then the teachers started having high expectations and obviously the only way i could go was downhill from there. duh. ok so i am
complacent and have
definitely slackened this term and
could do better. the opinions of a certain teacher who shares a surname with our thinner da vinci teacher ( no offence really). kind of ok if you don't get this bit. now Im guessing this is because of the A- i got in a certain subject due to the fact that I am terribly long-winded and thus love descriptive writing and hence hate summary writing and therefore didn't really bother to put in effort in it.
hmm, yes, i guess i could have done better, absolutely, wouldn't disagree, but the thing is. sometimes, i feel like I've done my best, and teachers tell me i can do better. other times, I don't think I've tried that hard, but teachers tell me what a good job I've done. See my confusion? Im not really sure what it means to work hard anymore. Obviously, Im not zx, neither am i shiyi , thus i cannot be hundred-per-cent hardworking all the time. I try, i guess, but I am under the impression i do the most i can at any point in time. Of course, when i look back, i start to question, and i find things i could have done better. but the things is, i guess most people dont really get it that I just
do. I don't really think about is this the best i can do? or i have to do it better. mostly, its just a vague feeling on oops botched that up, or im pretty satisfied with this, and you know, i don't really pay much attention to small voices in my head? so basically when i look back i think: yeah i guess i coulkd have done that. or wadever. but at the moment, i don' think like that. therefore, i tend to have to do badly once, before i kind of try to do better. I guess it was meant to be, you know the regaining confidence and "wow i can do this!" feeling, coupled with never always hundred-per-cent that made me relax a bit, slow down and not try so hard at everything.
ok then i have the next teacher who says I
do work anyhow, that i
am
complacent ( again)
put in just enough effort to scrape through but
doesn't take work seriously and
has an attitude problem. and hey. i was kind of shocked when i heard that. sure, i knew i wasnt taking this elective that seriously, i guess because it was optional after all. and partly because i never got what they wanted in lab reports. I mean, they ask qquestion s and i s=answer them, but sometimes i do get the feeling i have no idea what they're asking for and i have to put to gether some random reply because of my cluelessness?
or maybe what gave her this impression was the tthat i spent one and a half hours freezing my butt off on the com lab trying to find asnwers to a certain question, but just wrote stuff quickly down in pencil, not bothering to clean up at the time because i was so freakign cold and felt like i was getting nowhere? and then next thing i knew i was sick because i didnt wear a jacket in the com lab and of course i was in no mood, no mood at all to refine my answer and gave it to shiyi to hand up for me without changin anything. and of course that would be an attitude problem because being sick with a fever of 39+ degrees celsius couldn't possibly have prevented me from erasing the pencil marks and neatening my answer. i mean, so what if i felt my head was so heavy all i wanted to do was lie down? so what if sitting up was an effort? so what if i had to hand the report to shiyi on saturday when my fever was at its worst? granted, i got much better after that, and could entertain visitors to my house, but that was on
monday. two days after the report submission and the two days in which i healed. yeah. maybe Im making excuses. maybe this is just rambling because anyway the teacher wont ever come here and all ive typed is just random sarcasm to myself.
or it could be the assignment we got. the fact that i only typed out the 12-step procedure and only went to collect the data every recess. i guess i knew that i used to be the one always trying to do the report, refine the report, add on to the report, but this time, i tried not to be so assertive? i guess because my other grp members started on the report themselves previously, and i missed the vital session in which they started typing the report, so i just left it to them. i just decided to finally let someone else take charge, to finally let them do the work just to see if i could take the back seat for once? just to see if i could just type the procedure and let them do the rest?
i think i was thinking along the lines of "they started this without me, so the info at that point in time is with them, so i leave it to them first" and "i shoudl let someone else lead" and " i guess I've done enough since they only asked me to check the results, even though i had company while i did that ( checked with friends so i was more willing)" i dunno what i was thinking. and i dunno, i dunno if i coulld or should have done more. and then i
only wanted to quickly wrap upwhen i got to the lab to do our experimental set-up. well, sure, i had no idea there was anything else to do after that? i marked the points on my petri dish, put the oats and slime, but i had no idea there was more to our simple experiment. I don't know what i was suppsoed to have done. inspected the mold a bit more, hoping it would suddenly shoot into growth in the span of about 5 seconds? i dunno.
and ok, so maybe I was trying to finish quickly hence the "faster wrap up" but only becaus ei realised in chem experiments and all that i sometimes finished really slowly so iwas trying to be faster, for once. i mean, i thought ending later than 4 was totally too late so i tried to be fast, i think i was trying to prove ot myself that lab can be fast if im effecient. but apparently it came out looking like i was rushed cos i couldnt be bothered to spend that much time on it. I thought i acted the same, but i guess i tried to speed things up cos i hated being the last group to complete experiments all the time.
I mean, i dunno, i guess im not someone who can handle confidence. i need to be insecure to do well. and i just, dunno much i dunno anything, i dunno wad they want, i dunno wad to expect, and i dunno wad to
do. i mean, realising i havent been at my best, makes me question: have i been slacking in taekwondo? shouldn't i be practising the pattern and stuff, just cos i got double promotion once im slackening? am i? and guitar? i stopped practising everyday, some times i forget and everything. am i slackening too? trying to practise as little as possible? could i do better? and the truth is i dunno. and it goes back, doesn't it, to me not knowing a thing when it matters.
i can say that maybe cos i had a total of about 1 close friend in that certain lesson, so i wasnt really inclined to do really well, and maybe having other ppl learn with me spurs me on? or it could be that i just couldn't be bothered with a lot of stuff after doing well in sem1 and realising i could relax a bit ( trust me i hate being at the top) and then ended up relaxing to much. or maybe i did too wel in sem1 and teachers then hhad impressions of me as a brilliant student and i started to dim, and they started goign after me for not trying to be 100%. but srsly, i think i would die of boredom or over-strain if i did go 100% all the time. and srsly, i dunno
totally clueless and now a fan of the word "dunno",
physics alien ( need a new nick for next year...)
