We're going to have a serious topic today! EYAS.

So lately everyone's been agonising about how close it is, how important it is, how much the teachers haven't covered. It doesn't come as a surprise when people start crying, pulling off all-nighters, complaining, and sometimes acting weirdly. It's scary, a little, how an exam can affect us so much. But looking at the bigger picture, it's not the exam itself, but the implications of having a mediocre gpa, the pressure everyone feels and sometimes the attitudes the teachers have.


Personally, I think the stress everyone feels is exacerbated by the fact that people around you are all studying and worrying about grades, and then you feel like you haven't done enough when people announce how far they are on their revision schedule, or what they have not done. There isn't anything much to solve this problem; most people in our school are like that-- i.e. they need to achieve as much as possible, and do the best they can. They are admirable qualities, and I'm not faulting anyone who is like this. It's just that when you put a bunch of overachievers together [and an underachiever, me, in the mix] the energy/ pressure produced is greatly increased, than if the ratio of overachiever to underachiever (not counting people who are neither) was more equal.

Another factor also increases this stress: teachers. Sometimes it's in an active manner-- take a physics teacher, Mrs Q. She rushes through the syllabus quite quickly, and scares everyone by saying that our exams are near, and leaves lots of time for revision. This pushes people to get cracking on their revision, to bring "good questions" to the next class. Sometimes it's in a passive manner-- a chem teacher, Mr P.S., is very inspired by Socratic questioning and aspires for all of us to attain understanding on our own. Which is great, of course, because I remember things better this way, but not when we're 2 weeks from the EYAs! So people start to panic because there's so much more he has not covered, and they rush to finish the syllabus on their own, and do their own work.

Ah, the consequences of the IP system. If, say, I were having the olevels, I could do all my revision / mugging on my own, because the curriculum is standard and doesn't differ from school to school. It would be so much easier because there's a set syllabus to follow, and if you manage to do well on other school's prelim papers, and keep on doing questions, you're all ready. But the downside is that the olevels test things you learnt in lowersec, so you have to dig up your old notes, and waste time revising them all over again. haha like angle properties of circles. Still, I'm happy that I'll get to finish 6 out of 9 subjects at the end of august, and start celebrating early.