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I hate exams. So do you, I bet. But probably not for the same reasons.

Examinations exist to test your knowledge, your learning. After three months, six months, one year, they give you a test to see if you learnt what they taught and to see if all that time and money was wasted. They measure, they test, they examine, they give you a score at the end. A two-digit number, three if you're really good, and one if you're really really unlucky. And then that's it. They're cast in stone and can't ever change and they'll haunt you for the rest of your life.

Where is the logic in that. All you see are the results of the marking. All the marker sees are the results of your year's education. He or she checks if you're wrong or right, decrees it with the mighty red pen of Gandalf the Grey (You shall not pass!) then throws your script aside, casting around for the next one. They don't see your thoughts. They don't see the processes you went through. The examiner isn't in the exam room to see you jump with delight that you actually understoon the Chinese comprehension passage. He's not there to notice you feverishly scribbling down graph answers five minutes to the end of the exam. She doesn't know that you never noticed the change in question on the board. They don't see the changes you go through as you live the semester. All they see are your essays, which they judge, then get back to their lives. Every teacher says that it's the process, not the results, that matter. What you go through and learn is more important than what your marks are. Then why judge us on a test, on results. Judge us on our processes, look at what we go through the entire year, see how we change, how we learn, how we develop. Not set an essay to see if we've remembered what you've taught us.

I got 14/25 for Lang Arts. Do you know the feeling of total disappointment, when your hopes are so high they come crashing down all over your ears and bury you up to your neck? When you're supposed to be really good in something, but a test result comes back to prove that you aren't? Honestly, I didn't really expect to score really high for this subject, but x_x After Mr. Wong told me (jokingly) beforehand that, "You got 14!" [which was the class average] and after that says, "No lah, you didn't get 14." Oh yay, I thought. Maybe I got 15. Or even 16. Maybe... then BLAM. FOURTEEN.

What's the use of written commentary anyway. To teach us to understand and identify how the author makes use of certain literary devices to convey across a universal theme... for what? It's not like anybody listens anyway. You have all these authors and writers and novelists who write and write and have a subtle message in their writing, and all these literature scholars find it and know how the authors use it and... don't do anything about it. The world isn't becoming better. No-one's learning life-changing lessons from books anymore. People are even beginning to fear them, fear works of fiction, because that people might think they are true...

Chinese was a miserable 51. At least I just passed. A lot of people failed. x_x But at least this time I understood the passage. I enjoyed reading it. I was laughing through it because I (thought I) could answer questions I normally couldn't. That's what the examiner never sees. Lovely, wonderful 51.

IHS: 11.5/15 (the second interpretation was a limitation, mind you). Geog: 35.5/50 (50 marks is 100 points in 60 minutes. Impossible. Yet Zhang got 42.). C Math: 95/100 (the whole class got around there). A Math: 81/100 (THANK YOU MR NG IF IT WASN'T FOR YOU IT'D PROBABLY BE A LOT WORSE). Physics: 57/70 (Could've been 58 if it weren't for those stupid arrows and a 60 if it weren't for me mixing up vertically and horizontally. x_x) Chem: 59/70 (stupid ammonia NH3 not NH4). All in all a 75.25% average.

I hate marks. When all your best friends get higher than you, it hurts. It hurts more when your best friends get lower than you. Knowing that I beat my best friend doesn't give me any satisfaction. It hurts. It hurts more than knowing your best friend beat you. Beat you at something you were supposed to be really good at.

Lang Arts IOPs for term 3: 24/30; highest, shared with Shaun. Boey and Isaac got the same. IOPs was a complete fiasco, come to think of it. On one hand, I'm really happy that our (Shaun and my) presentation worked fantasticably (no that's not a typo), but on the other hand I feel horrigible that I probably messed up some people's IOP marks. How can you be so good at something it becomes bad. Thank you Mr Wong for praising me, but in that context it was more like the worse insult someone can ever throw at me. Words cut deep. Feelings cut deeper.

I don't seem to be much help to anyone, do I? Even when I'm just trying to do my best and have fun, you get people coming in to judge your actions. Maybe I should just run away. Keep away from everybody else. I'd probably die, but at least you won't get pulled down with me too.