"show your working."

ways to drive yourself crazy during a geography elective mid year paper (45 minutes):

- flip first page of exam booklet.
- open the huge map which resembles the tablecloth at home.
- gawk at its sheer hugeness.
- pick up pencil and protractor to start finding bearings.
- realise that some doot from the year before already circled the points to measure from on the map grid for you.
- rejoice/smack yourself on the forehead if you had already spent time looking for the miniscule points only to realise it has been circled for you.
- double check with question paper. "find bearings of given points and show your working."
- get confused over the "show your working" line.
- decide to ignore the "show your working" line.
- work through rest of questions for map reading section.

(at this point, you should already have spent 30 minutes.)

- fold map back.
- look at clock.
- realise theres only 15 minutes left till pens down.
- flip to next page of exam paper, tearing it in the process.
- mumble expletives.
- look at two questions and decide which to answer.
- finally decide to answer question one/question two.

(at this point, you should have about 10 minutes left to answer the question.)

- answer question one...A.
- look at clock.
- realise theres only 10 minutes left.
- panic.
- try to compose thoughts to answer question.
- scribble.
- sweat.
- scribble.
- panic somemore.
- repeat steps starting from "panic" to "panic somemore" for questions B and C.

- start on question D.
- teacher says "four minutes left."
- sweat.
- panic.
- scribble.
- 3 minutes...
- scribble.
- 2 minutes...
- panic and scribble faster.
- 1 minute...
- panic, scribble and foam at the mouth.
- PENS DOWN!
- lie on the table with foam spewing from mouth.

congratulations! you have successfully driven yourself crazy!
____________________
had geography elect and english paper one on friday.
like, screwed?
shit.
english paper one was simply crap.
i think i wrote out of point and i had writer's block before that.
definitely not a good thing to happen during exams.
on the other hand, situational writing went reasonably well.
but i think i got the whole format wrong.
its either i'm wrong, or the whole class is wrong except for me.
pick your favourite scenario.
(mrs poon said that the format is only worth one mark. can she be trusted? i bloody hope so.)

geogprahy elect went, well, to put it mildly, horrible.
there wasnt enough time.
and after the paper everyone was cursing mrs yeo under their breaths.

oh yeah.
here are some hilarious questions by mrs yeo.
"given the bridge at GR ****** and the high point at GR ******, find the bearing from the high point. (show your working.) [2m]"
huh?
what working?
2 marks for a bearing question, not bad.

"find the gradient from......blah blah blah. [1m]"
wah, dont need to show working.
1 measly mark for a gradient question?!
*tears hair out*

aurgh.
bye bye, A1/A2.