Eat My Sandwich

You suffer from so many mixed feelings during exams. For one, you suffer from tension and stress because of the massive information overload you need to go through. (For some reason I always replace 'have' with 'need' in all my sentences. I blame call centre training for that - "If you like our product, you NEED to pay $xx.xx".)

There are random things like sleep schedules and extraordinary circadian rhythms to control in order for you to wake up on time before each exam. Everything needs to be planned and executed perfectly.

You also have to adhere to the wisdom of not studying till the very last minute, which means, even if you pull an all-nighter, you should 'rest' your brain for an hour or so before the exam so that it functions while you are taking the exam. (Please people, you 'take' exams not 'give' them. Your professors are the ones who give you exams.)

You also need to clean your room so that you can organize and file all those random pieces of papers that are your notes taken during lectures and tutorials. It takes time.

Then of course, comes the hard part - studying. You need to make sure you don't have any interesting TV shows to watch on your hard drive so that you don't get distracted while you're studying - so you watch them all; back-to-back.

Once you're done, you open the syllabus, note down exam venues and seat numbers, and sit down with your book; highlighter and pencil in hand.

This is where you realise that all the interesting topics are not in the syllabus and you wonder if they might be related to the topics that are in the syllabus, so you read through them, just to be on the safe side.

Once you run out of interesting things in your book, there is nothing for you to do except facing the music. So you finally begin preparation for your exam. Please note, this is not about a nerd who starts 'revision' at this point. No. This is the first time this student comes into contact with the readings and the lecture slides.

Halfway through the first chapter, you get this immense desire to doodle, and you doodle away. You fight the urge and wonder if inviting your friends to study with you would help. They arrive and you chat away. They soon realize it won't work so they leave after a couple of smokes.

Of course, then you get really hungry so you eat. A brain in action needs nourishment. You are used to having company while you eat so you watch some random TV show episode for the third time while you eat. That's when you get back to your book and finally finish the first chapter.

Then you must sleep, so that you give your mind enough rest to shift all the information from its RAM (random access memory) to the hard drive.

In the process you will of course have nightmares about multiple choice questions (MCQs). Especially MCQs set for a psychology exam. "What if the psychology professor uses reverse psychology on me in setting the questions?"

It's worse when it's negative marking too. "Oh so the professor wants me to think this is the right answer so it's obviously the wrong choice."

You make careless mistakes on all the questions you could've answered correctly and the ones you mark randomly also turn out to be incorrect. You get a minus score on your final for the first time in the history of your university.

I hate exam time.

Labels: All-nighters, Back-to-back, Call Centre, Doodle, Doodling, Exams, Final Exams, Information Overload, MCQs, NUS, Procrastination, Revision, Studies, Syllabus, TV Shows

So when you promise others and yourself to do the things you need to or intend to do, and then if you procrastinate doing other 'extra' things (like blogging regularly) that are less important in contrast, you end up doing more than everyone else. Or so it seems. That is the secret of overachieving: procrastination.

Hereby I publicly tell myself: STOP PROCRASTINATING LIKE THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A TOMORROW!

Like my friend Aesa just told me, it is time for WAR now. Together we shall 'fight' the things we need to do today. And mine's a long list. But first, we shall shower (individually, mind you), for it would be unethical to use our stench as a weapon in this war.

Projects, papers, news stories and exams, smell my Herbal Essences, in a bit!

Click here to read this Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. (Click here to download full-sized full version.)

Labels: Calvin and Hobbes, Overachieving, Procrastination, Rants, Secret

Sunday arrives, and you know you have no choice but to continue with the cleaning process. It's now or never, you tell yourself.

You realize that since the previous night, you have accumulated more garbage and you need to pack more stuff in those shopping bags. And things appear a bit different to you - what you didn't consider garbage before now looks like garbage. You end up packing three more shopping bags to dump down the garbage chute.

That is when you receive a shock - ever since you moved into your new room this semester (three months ago), you never tried to fit your clothes in the cupboard! You've been taking them right out of the laundry bag! No folding them up or ironing them and fitting them neatly into your cupboards. Now you have a laundry bag full of clothes recently washed; and that old one with clean clothes you didn't clear out since you did your laundry at the beginning of the semester.

Luckily, at this point your sister arrives to feed you and help you with the folding process. So you delve right into it.

A few 8-minute smoke breaks, a sheesha break and an ice-lemon-tea break later, you get back to the much-dreaded ironing part of the cleaning process.

Nine hours later, you're through with both your laundry bags, and you have ironed all your dress shirts - for the first time in at least a year! The trousers will have to see the steam of an iron another day.

You proceed to have your breakfast (you never slept but normal people have breakfast at the time, so you decide you must conform - a bit). Dirty dishes need cleaning too, but you have more important things to do, like classes. The cleaning process must continue some other time.

Save for a 'quick' 60 minute bath to wash all that coconut oil off your hair! (And that facial hair must go too - or the young girls in your class will go "Uh, tsk tsk.")

Labels: Cleaning, Garbage, Ironing, Sheesha Break, Smoke Break

It begins with your blog of course - you delete all the spam comments one by one. (I don't turn on word verification because it might make the few people who comment here run away too - so I manually delete each and every spam message.) It's always stuff like,

Xanax has left a new comment on your post "Life for sale at more than US$ 24,000?": LnYi3B Very good blog! Thanks!

What the hell is LnYi3B anyway?

Next up is your Gmail inbox and spam folder. It includes unsubscribing from accidental sign ups of unwanted newsletters. It doesn't take more than 10 minutes. (And who cares about hotmail inboxes anyway? I have 1000+ spam in my hotmail inbox.)

We move on to the real world from there, out of all the virtuality. You collect all your rotten and soiled clothes and throw them in the laundry hamper (if they're any less than that they're still clean, right?). You force them to fit in the hamper when it begins to overflow. Then you rush to the laundry room five blocks away, making sure you get 20-cent coins worth ten dollars on the way because that is how much laundry would take. (Batch processing only twice a semester means each time it will cost more.) You throw the necessary stuff in the washing machine and rush back to your room.


That is when you collect all the empty shopping bags (you tsk tsk yourself for not being environmentally friendly), and then start filling them up with all the garbage. Empty cans, bottles, empty juice and Milo boxes, used tissue papers, the 20% off coupons you will never use, styrofoam plates and trays, empty cigarette boxes, ash trays, that 18th century sandwich sitting in your refrigerator, and all the stuff in both your trash-bins - everything must go down the garbage chute.

Fascinating stuff I write on my blog, yes?

By this time you know your clothes need to be moved to the dryer, so you head down to the laundry room again. Then, after stopping at Super Snacks to get yourself a chocolate cheese waffle, you head back to the laundry room to fold all your clothes once they're dry and bring them back to your room.

You meet a friend on the way, who needs some of those extra 20-cent coins you have, and when he comes in your room, he proposes to make a trip to 7-11 to grab some drinks. You drink the next three hours away, before falling asleep while watching Arrested Development. After all, it was Saturday night. The cleaning process can continue on Sunday.

Labels: Arrested Development, Chocolate Cheese Waffle, Cleaning, Garbage, Gmail Spam, Super Snacks, Trash, Word Verification