That sounds elitist and egoistic, doesn’t it? Well of course it does. I’d been scoring As consistently for that subject since beyond four years ago. Except for a small dip in early sec 4, when I hadn’t yet learned how to spew quality bullshit on a text I truly hated. And I’d gotten an 89% for my prelims, which had killed quite a few people. (I’m quite sure some people are quite tired of hearing this by now, but I must drive my point home.)
And it is not just me. My entire class. Even our very best could not get their A1s. There was only one of that rare breed, and it was a person who is less spontaneous or unothordox in his literature analysis than ready to reuse the analyses given by approved sources, like notes and teachers. I wish I were more like him.
Therefore Ets theorised that the marking scheme for literature examiners had changed from basic judgement to a list of set and rigid points that are to be found in the essay if one is to receive their marks, very much like English Summary. Which was probably what murdered me and left me on the cold, dead floor.
Mr Ken, our excellent Lit teacher, can be seen wandering around aimlessly in the hall, looking troubled and sort of poleaxed. It’s definetely not his fault.
My mother wanted me to SMS her my grades, which I thought was bloody offensive (yes, me and my touchy feelings, but let's not go into that), but it turned out to have a practical reason behind it. She’d left for work before I returned home (I was to attend a concert that evening.) My father came out to meet me at the bus stop in order to escort me home, which was nice of him, especially since it was so late in the night already. The first thing we started talking about were my lovely barrage of lousy marks.
My father is, at his roots, very much like our dearly beloved Anne Ang.
So. I outlined to him the Theory. And I said that I was a bit angry, because I felt cheated. And lo he said:
1. don’t blame others for your own mistakes. (right. And I’m an ostritch egg frying on a pavement. And so are Mr Ken and the rest of my class.)
2. don’t judge by your class. You judge by the whole (right. And this is reasonable only if you don’t consider that my literature class consists of above-average bright young things, studious bright young things and skilled debaters. Most of them with english as their primary language. And taught by Mr Ken. And in GEP. And with brains. Hopefully)
3. learn to be more humble, because examiners are qualified to judge you and not the other way round. And if you tell people this sort of thing i.e. the sort of thing I said, they’ll laugh at you.
And he wouldn’t even take honest semi-disagreement for an answer. So in comes conciliratory lip service. It’s hard enough for the poor man to have such a disappointing daughter in the first place. The least I can do is pretend I’m happy about being a failure.
Because I’d gotten far too many A2s on top of being sat on and ground into green bean flour for Lit. Therefore I have received a two-digit L1R5, which may render me unable to continue my JC life at RJC of the low cut-off point.
And I have received a beautiful D7 for Higher Chinese, which means that although I may have the pleasure of the choice of not taking CL as a subject this year, but will not receive extra two points if I were to have to leave RJ and go to another school.
Please let RJ hear my plea. I wouldn’t have minded any other school originally, but I seem to have rooted in RJ (I’d expected to stay there. Stupid of me really), and it would hurt me to leave. This is extremely ironic given that I didn’t really want to go there in the first place. And I’m not sure if I can enter VJ with my lack of 2 HCL points, and MJ has such rigid subject combinations although the campus and teachers sound nice. So I’m a lost sheep.
This is not, as some might think it, a question of status or ability. I’ll leave for you to decide though.
But there were so many people crying today. A large, often tough-talking person from my class burst into tears and could be seen sobbing into a teacher’s shoulder. Students were crouching in corners and whimpering while friends or mentors patted them helplessly. I felt fine initially but afterwards, when I went out with some of my friends for food and things, I discovered a few nasty cracks in my armour. That I wasn’t hungry even after all that stress, that I felt bloated and horribly, hollowly empty at once, and that I had this burning urge to buy something. Not in this order. I simply can’t be bothered to correct this today. I’m tired.
The Mozart Concert helped things a lot, and my father was very nice about my results. And he knew I’d tried my best. That’s enough, I think.
Tomorrow I shall go to school and see if the adminstrative office is open. Please let RJ hear my plea.
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