Thursday, July 02, 2009

Epic Passes and Failures

It came very much as a surprise when I received the English Commentary piece back. 20/30? Epic Fail. Apparently, I lost 5 marks in the sentence structure and mechanics, when I only made two slight mistakes, which if the marker was less picky, wouldn't have counted them to be mistakes in the first place. I don't know why I got marked down for my tone, but I guess some people just prefer a certain tone while writing commentaries. I shall comment on why Teck Wei got full marks when everyone else epic failed it. It's simple. He's a debator. Case Solved. What? You don't believe me?

It's just so obvious that DCruz shows favouritism to debator's style of writing. Note that I didn't say show favouritism to debators, but to their style of writing, which includes their tone, sentence structure and all of that. Not saying that it is wrong to do that, but it does bring a negative connotation. At this point in time if DCruz was reading this, she would first justify that there is nothing wrong with that, and then state that a debator's style of writing is exactly what an English teacher is looking for. And then I would say that everyone has a different style of writing, and not necessarily a debator's style, and especially in commentaries, a debator's style is what you need. So in effect, anyone who has no prior experience in debating will lose out on the marks. Thus, it is unfair. And since it is unfair in one part, it is completely unfair. I rest my case.

I don't even have to start an argument about DCruz's handwriting, while in the meantime she marks us down for being unable to read our handwriting, when our peers can read it just fine. And no one can read hers. No one at all. You must be some uber expert in the field like Yao Yuan in the field of listening to screaming. But never mind, alot of people failed for this one.

The second horror/shock was when I got back the Lit CRP, and I was like totally surprised because I hadn't expected such a low mark of 12/20. Yes that is a just pass kinda thing, so I was surprised. I can't say shocked, because usually for CRPs and ERPs I always get that kind of mark, and I've never really got down to understanding why. I did the Jew of Malta, so it was pretty familiar to me, seeing as it was very close to the Merchant of Venice minus quite a few other elements. But either way, I wasn't feeling very good with taht mark, although I must say that quite a few others failed, so I have to remain thankful. And Wei Tai likes suanning people because he got a 16/20, I think the only one who got GP4.0?

Then comes the first surprise when I got back the Lit Macbeth Quiz. It was amazing. A super zai/zhun score of 15/30! A pass! It was super cool. Ok, so it was a 50%, but so what? It was super cool! I passed a Quiz which was like impossible to pass. Just to give a bit of background info, the Macbeth Quiz is basically a Quiz which requires you to drill and drill and memorize the exact text in Macbeth, and has 30 marks in it. Many failed this Quiz, and its not surprising at all. I told DCruz about it and she congrautlated me. I was so happy. Haha. Anyway, I know that Wei Tai got 22-half but even that isn't a GP4.0 yet... so I'm not complaining, lol. But I must say that my Lit marks will get pulled down quite an unfair bit. I say unfair because the very existence of the quiz is unfair.

The second surprise was when I got back the Physics Paper. I was already feeling very worried about the Physics paper for several reasons.

1) I didn't finish the paper
Yup, that's true. I completely left the last section of the last question blank. And that was worth two marks. I didn't solve the bonus question either. Didn't even attempt, in fact. There was simply no time. I had no time to check as well, so I was like super sure that I would never get anywhere far from the passing mark. It was upon 30, by the way. I knew that I would make many careless mistakes, because it's Physics and I always make careless mistakes in Physics. And also perhaps in every other subject but that's besides the point.

2) Desmond Tan seemed rather worried too
Yup, he didn't even give us back the paper before the holidays out of fear that we would cry and have a very bad start to the holidays. Instead, it was pretty much a trembling in fear and trepidation for many of us, because of the massive suspense built up. He already stated that we did very badly in the test as a cass, and so we knew that the marks would be bad, but since we didn't know our marks, that suspense increased. Nobody wanted to know their marks, or even look at the paper, just in case somehow they might figure it out.

And that was exactly what happened. Many people just passed and even failed, because I think there was too little time for the test. Definitely. But other than that, the curious thing is that everyone took their paper, purposely looked away, held it back facing up, and then when they got back to their table, they would slowly flip it page by page from the back to the front, looking at all the red crosses, and then anticipate their mark before they looked at it. The class was noisy despite the fact that most of us didn't feel well enough to speak. That was because of the surprising small minority of us who didn't do too bad at all. I received my paper, and I was feeling very nervous that entire time, but when I looked at my marks, it was a whopping 24/30! That's a GP4.0! An A1 on a paper that I didn't even complete!

Omigosh! I quickly scanned through the paper, and looked at where I made my mistakes. Yes, all of them careless mistakes, but it was incredible beacuse that only amounted to four marks lost, and if you include the two marks out of the last unfinished question, that would be six marks lost! Although I probably should have been minused marks for alot of other things, the teachers had decided to make the marking more lenient, seeing as there would be countless more failures if they did not. They weren't 'cheating' to decrease the number of failures, but they were 'covering up' for the mistake of putting too little time for the paper. I hope they increase the time for further physics tests.

The next paper was the practical one, which was a so-so. I didn't expect to get anything lower than full marks, but hey, someone didn't like my weird scale, and I got minused marks for some significant figure thing. So in the end it was a 13/15, which wasn't too bad because it was a GP4.0, so I didn't complain much. It was quite satisfactory, but then again, all practical tests are satisfactory because they are so easy.

So anyway, the first PE lesson of the week is today. Lol, finally. And I wonder if MIA is still taking us. I hope he is, coz he's a nice guy. Nice in terms of his character. :D Ooh Basketball or Handball today?
kaizersabre performed alchemy @ 6:22 AM