exam mon uow why do i think i'd rather die? 050223 ... mon uow i don't know. 050307 ... mon uow i was thinking about this just a few minutes ago then i clicked go go go and oh oh no 050307 ... mon uow why did go bring me here 050307 ... e_o_i Phew. I'm finished the German oral one and my students for the teacher certification are done theirs. Now to the medieval philosophy one (for me) on Wednesday. Yay. 231207 ... raze for some reason, the exam that's clearest in my mind is the one i did the worst on. i never learned to love math. i was always good at it, though. at least until grade eleven. then the language changed to such a severe degree that i couldn't adapt. all that stuff with parabolas was beyond me. i just couldn't work my head around it. i could unpack an equation, but i couldn't draw a graph to represent one, and i didn't have a teacher who was willing or able to break it down until it made sense to someone like me. that was the only high_school class i failed, outside of grade ten geography. i passed exactly one test. and that was only because of a can drive incentive that gave us a bonus percentage point for every canned good we brought in. the prize for the class that came up with the most booty was a pizza party. my class won thanks to me. well, the truth is we won because of my dad's insane ingenuity. and i didn't just pass that test. i aced it. but that's another story. i was twisted enough to think that maybe, if i attacked it with enough misguided hope, i could find a way to crack the code on the fly and stun my teacher with a passing grade on the final exam. but no amount of effort was going to help me. about the only thing i managed to accomplish was staring at my hands and realizing for maybe the first time in my life how long my fingers were. (also, best wishes and goodest hopes for a stress-free exam-writing experience next week, e_o_i.) 231208 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I had a similar experience with math, raze. It wasn't too hard for me until grades 10 and 11. Different school, and I didn't think to actually practice any problems before the exam. So I had a bunch of formulas written down on my "cheat sheet" with very little clue how or where to apply them. Then-undiagnosed ADHD, causing slowness with multi-step problems, didn't help. I managed to fail both final exams but pass the courses with 60s. ... As for last term, Philosophy in the Islamic World went well! On my transcript, it's "Phil in the Islamic World." A+ for Phil. In the Islamic World, which I imagine is some kind of theme park. You can ooh and ahh at calligraphy and architecture, then squint confusedly at treatises on the causes of "generation and corruption" or whether or not the physical universe is eternal or kalam vs. falsafa. My essay question wrestled with a text (incidentally by a Christian, but he's in the Islamic World with his friend Phil) about whether God's foreknowledge precluded the existence of possibility. The usual philosophical question is whether some kind of determinism would preclude free will, but nope, Yahya ibn Adi is all about possibility. And while Phil may be tempted to ask, "Why is 'possibility' important? Isn't the issue of free will more interesting?" he hunkered down and studied, and did well on the final, and got an A+. I'm convinced it was Phil and not me, because I'm starting to doubt my ability to write anything coherent in a single sit-down. So thank you, Phil. ... Anyway, today it was an in-class write-up, technically not an exam, for Literature and the Holocaust (not abbreviated to Lit and the Hol, so you can't imagine it's about something fun). The prof is good, the classes are well put together...except for this exam-that-wasn't-an-exam, pah. And I wasn't good at it. I wrote a painstaking introduction, proud of my handiwork, and then didn't have time to develop the body paragraphs. It came off as half-done. I called Dad to ask what to do, pacing around the atrium under the library proper, and then emailed the prof asking if I could have an extra 20 minutes sometime later because I technically have that 33% extra time through the accommodations office. He's been understanding before (see jesus_christ_divided_by_zero) and he wasn't the one invigilating this non-exam. Now, what I *really* want is to get good marks because I have a good introduction. To be recognized for having good ideas, however unorganized. Would that be fair? Not really. It's like Calvin's line when presented with a truism about life being unfair: "But why can't it ever be unfair in my favour?" Thing is, it is, often. Or at least I escaped many assorted unfairnesses just by being born here and now. ... In the book I was writing about, Primo Levi is facing a chemistry exam that his life depends on. Not that he'll be killed right away if he fails, but he's in Auschwitz, where the rations and work are designed so that the average prisoner who passes the initial "selection" lives about three months. If he passes this exam, he'll be put into a higher rank as a specialized worker. Then he might not have to do so much hard labor and he'll have a better chance of surviving longer. So he's waiting for this test, he's exhausted and starved, and it's not even a pencil-and-paper thing but a chemist asking him questions in German, not his first language. So while he's waiting he goes over the names of chemicals in German. ...All in all, I think I'd rather be here than there (in Denmark, that is Concordia Library's Denmark). 240208 what's it to you? who go blather from