Exams are over. And yes, I managed to attend all of them. :D

Maths exams were... Gah, I hate to even think about them. I had about 2 weeks to study for the 2 Maths modules, along with the Media Communications module. I had initially divided up the 2 weeks to both subjects equally 'cause I treated both Maths as one subject. Which, in retrospect, was not such a great idea, even though both Maths and Media Communications modules took up 6 months in total. That is to say, Maths 101 and Math 201 combined took 6 months to complete, as did the one Media Communications module. I had figured I'd have enough time to cover/revise everything with my division of time. 'Cause that was what I did back in my Polytechnic days, and that worked out quite alright...

But of course, a lot of time has passed since my Poly days. 4 years or so... And how much real studying have I done since then? Not much at all. I've forgotten how annoying real, pure, studying is, and how time-consuming everything really is. Looking back to my Poly days, I feel like I was able to absorb more then, and I think that was partly due to less distractions. I mean, it can't be due to age, right? I'm still so young! :P

I found that I couldn't concentrate for as long a period of time as I used to be able to... Every 5 minutes would have me checking my MSN messenger (or rather, Windows Live messenger) program, and replying to people online. Also, every half an hour would have me playing a game, or watch a video clip, or basically doing anything else except for studying. Meh.

And thus, the first week was really unproductive... But after calculating the time left at the end of the first week, I finally managed to motivate (read : scare) myself to studying, and it went on a bit better. Being slightly OCD, I just had to complete my Math 101 before I moved on to Math 201... Better foundation, I'd argue with myself. I took about 5 days to finish revising Math 101 and in the end, that left me with only about 2.5 days with Math 201. How smart is that, you tell me?

And the rest of the time was spent on Media Communications... Which, again in retrospect, I really shouldn't have spent so much time on it; instead I should've allocated some of that time for Math 201. *Sigh...* I kinda lead 4 discussion groups in total for Media Comm, all at Republic Polytechnic, with the last one at UniSIM before the actual exam itself. Here are some photos of one of the discussion groups at RP. I had a video to go along with these pics too, but it got overwritten. Bah!

Here was me... Looking up stuff on my laptop. I was wearing a Threadless shirt that I chose but malique bought for me (he refused to take my money for it for some reason! Thanks, dude!) some weeks ago.

The title of this Threadless design is "She Doesn't Even Realize" and I love it so much. Like, how heart-wrenching is the image above?! And of course it helps if you can really relate to it... :P

Here's Kyle. Everybody say hi to Kyle! "Hi Kyyylllllle!" He's what we call "special". :P Haha. This is one funny, weird guy, who made our discussion groups lively. Rock on, Kyle.

Here's Ziana. All the photos I've posted (except for the She Doesn't Even Realize robot picture) were from her camera. Yes, this is a cam-whoring picture of her. Haha. And behind her was...

Rina. She withdrew from the Media Comm examination in the end as she said she didn't have time to really study for it, and the little bit that she tried, she couldn't get the information in her brain. I tried to help her out, but she had made up her mind... Oh well.

Even though I mass-e-mailed everyone in my tutorial class (and some who weren't, as it turned out), we always ended up with only 4 people in each discussion group. I'd have a few more who would SMS/e-mail me saying that they were planning to join, but in the end, they always couldn't make it. Doesn't matter... Their loss, really.

Our Media Comm tutor had highlighted some topics which were supposedly more important that the others and research (quite a sizeable topic by itself) was one of them... There's this thing called the 10 Cs in determining how useful information gathered from Internet research is, and for some reason I kept forcing myself to memorise all the 10 Cs (I can still list them down, by the way. :D) from day 1 of my revision.

I had a way of memorising some of the items that I had trouble with, and I shared them with my discussion mates (and the method worked with a couple of them too! Yay!), and 3 of them ended up memorising all the 10 Cs by the exam day too. I had said to them, "Shit, man... I hope we didn't memorise all this for nothing!" Oh, and on the day of the exam itself, I kept trying to memorise the definition of "stereotype" as listed in the study guide as well, for some reason. And thus, that spilled over to the rest of the study group and they ended up memorising that as well. One of them actually memorised it word for word (as I did!) within the few hours that we were cramming some last minute studying too. That was cool. :D

Of course at the back of my mind, I kept wondering if I was leading us all the wrong direction, and what if none of the stuff we were memorising (and we did more than just the 2 things mentioned above) came out at all in the exam? Maybe they would've been better off studying on their own, or even with someone else leading the group? Just because I did relatively well in my assignments did not mean I was equipped to bring the discussion/study groups a certain direction! I hoped I didn't cause all these people to fail! Argh!

But the best thing was that all the things we (for some reason) focused on during the last few hours of cramming, came out in the exam paper. :D Wahahhahahha. So damned lucky! One of the questions were, "Define stereotype." Haha. I was grinning from ear to ear and had to refrain myself from laughing out loud. I LOL-ed so hard inside though. :P

A question regarding the 10 Cs came out; things related to stereotypes were asked; the 6 characteristics of new media were questioned; 2 out of the 4 areas new technologies affected were asked and the only thing that would've completed the whole super-lucky-experience would be if they had asked about Wimmer & Dominick's 4 guiding principles on ethical research. Hahaha. Which they didn't, and we were slightly disappointed that they didn't. Heh.

At the end of the exam, the 3 of us were laughing our asses off (the rest of the discussion group didn't join us for the last session... Which was really a pity, looking at how everything turned out...) at how really really lucky we were. I mean, who could've guessed the exact things that I was focusing on were really asked?! And even though I'm sure none of us answered exactly what were needed (we couldn't exactly remember everything... Only human.), I know we did manage to answer at least 2 questions as defined word-for-word in the study guide. Haha.

Of course this brings into question just what kind of education are we getting when all we need to do is memorise passages of text (which takes time, but it's not exactly that hard) to pass an exam. The whole exam thing is so flawed, and add to that, asking questions that really test on your memory rather than your understanding...? How's that going to help you in the long run after the "education" part is over? Not much, really. Possibly not at all.

Oh well.

I have more bones to pick with UniSIM (instead of the whole education thing in general), but that will have to wait for another post.

Here's a short paragraph on the Maths exam papers, before I end. 3 hours for 2 papers... 1.5 hours, preferably, on each... I spent almost 2 hours on Maths 101, and only about 1 hour on Maths 201... Time management was way off. But I don't think it really mattered since I couldn't answer quite a bit of the questions asked. :( Which sucked ass 'cause I think I did quite alright for Maths 101! I better had, though, since I spent so much time studying for it! Bah! If I had split my time better (in both studying for and attempting the paper), I might have possibly done alright for both... For now, I just hope that I have managed a pass... I really don't want to re-do Maths. =.=

There goes my GPA... Which was screwed after Personal Financial Planning, anyway... I think I got a B- on that module... What does it say about me when I think a B- on a module means I'm screwed?

By the way, if you had read in my previous posts regarding my mass-e-mailing my Media Comm tutorial group as I had an "ulterior" motive...? It's really nothing sinister, and I'm sure you've already figured out what it is... And just so you know, it worked. :)

But of course, I don't see anything happening beyond this.

I laugh at myself sometimes.