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I invariably sleep poorly before final exams, but last night took the cake. I went to bed at 1:15am. It took me an hour to get to sleep since my mind refused to stop going over Japanese grammar, and then when I'd finally dropped off, the buzzer on the dryer goes off (I'm usually cogent enough to hear the dryer and ask for it to be shut down before I go to bed). This wakes me up and it takes me another bleary half hour to get back to sleep. I slept poorly and finally woke up at 6:15, 45 minutes before my alarm with that mild adrenaline rush you get from knowing you'll be taking a final exam in two hours. I gave in, made myself my first cup of tea with caffeine in... well a really long time, studying while I ate breakfast.
My 8am exam was Japanese. I'd reviewed all of last semester and this semester just in case, and while it did assure me that I have been learning something (I can manage full fledged conversations with Japanese people in my head. yay!), it didn't really assure me I'd be able to remember the 50+ grammar points we were supposed to use for the exam. That's something I don't get and I've never seen taught - if you know three ways of saying something, and each is equally valid, how do you know which to use in a given situation? Out of the two ways I know of saying, "I've decided" how do I know which one to use? If there's actually some logic to it, why don't they tell us? And if there is no logic and it's just what sounds right in the given situation, why don't they give us some guidance or at least clue us in? /rant Anyway, there was a section where we had to look at Japanese sentences and identify and correct two mistakes in them. It was so depressing, I did the six other pages of the exam before finally returning to it in despair. Other parts of the exam were okay (I'm so very good at translating Japanese to English, and I remembered all the kanji, so yay!), though as I suspected, I forgot about 10% of the grammar points. So I substituted other exactly the same/similar grammar points for them and will hope for the best. It wasn't a perfect exam, but I know I didn't fail so eh.
I then had six hours to kill before my next exam since I finished the Japanese exam an hour early. I'd technically only read through my painstakingly researched over several days study sheet once before, but since I spent hours upon hours researching each part of it, I wasn't too concerned with anything other than memorizing names and dates. This is a good thing since today's experiences have forced me to conclude that while caffeine does have an effect on me, it only does so about 7-12 hours after being imbibed, which meant there was barely enough time for my cup of tea this morning to kick in for the end of my evening exam (finished 7pm). I was a dazed mess, resting my eyes for a few minutes every ten minutes and just generally staring through walls and people. I went to a computer lab and checked my email while forcing myself to read through the entire study sheet once before rewarding myself with some chapters of fic before heading to lunch. I went for sugar and tea and carbs for lunch since two would keep me alert and one would keep my stomach from growling through my upcoming exam. The almond milk bubble tea (I forgoed the tapioca) was delicious, and is, I suspect, the only reason I'm awake atm (a friend of mine told me that most non-Asians don't like the taste of almond milk tea. Is this true?).
I then spent the next few hours finding various chairs in the student centre to doze and read in. I headed to the class an hour early, but was dismayed to find some people there trying to make up for not studying by reviewing the material. Having no inclination to help people who couldn't be bothered to study until an hour before the exam, I put in headphones and reread my study sheet for the fourth time. The exam was basically regurgitating all you knew on twenty chosen phrases which we researched before hand. Lucky for me, she had told us we'd have to write twenty terms, but she cut it down to ten as a surprise. Considering it took me all three hours to write the midterm which was ten phrases, this was a godsend for me. As it was, I only managed to finish just in time. By then, I was finally jittery from the caffeine so Dad had to deal with me all hyper and talkative while we went out to dinner. This was a bit of a contrast with how I wasn't finishing sentences and I told a button my life wouldn't be complete without it (to be fair, I'd say that anyway).
Today was the first day since my foot was smashed that I was able to wear shoes. I'm glad of this since it was cold and rainy. I actually ended up going to the doctor last week to get it checked and x-rayed to be sure it wasn't broken since the pain and swelling took an awful long time to abate. Fun times.
My resolve and strength of will to study were sorely tested on Tuesday. I'd been idly surfing fic, and found nothing good enough to reward me for studying so I decided to go into the folder on my computer that holds fanfic I've saved (you have to have an amazing fic to be saved to my harddrive - there's only about 35 in the whole folder collected over a decade). My eyes lit upon an X-men story I'd devoured back in 2000. It was a trilogy with the third story standing at roughly 20 chapters. A year or so later, I discovered there were a few more chapters and was happy. Then all links to the story disappeared or broke. I couldn't find it anywhere and was glad I had my own copy. I periodically searched for it, but couldn't find anything but old archive copies with less chapters than I had. Thinking to myself that I wasn't sure if I was up to reading a broken trilogy, I typed in the fics name and author and to my shock, the fic came up on ff.net of all places with 62 chapters! It's been mocking me all day, laughing while I resolutely ignored it to study, but no more! I'm off to read! *poses dramatically*
I suppose I may sleep at some point too.
My 8am exam was Japanese. I'd reviewed all of last semester and this semester just in case, and while it did assure me that I have been learning something (I can manage full fledged conversations with Japanese people in my head. yay!), it didn't really assure me I'd be able to remember the 50+ grammar points we were supposed to use for the exam. That's something I don't get and I've never seen taught - if you know three ways of saying something, and each is equally valid, how do you know which to use in a given situation? Out of the two ways I know of saying, "I've decided" how do I know which one to use? If there's actually some logic to it, why don't they tell us? And if there is no logic and it's just what sounds right in the given situation, why don't they give us some guidance or at least clue us in? /rant Anyway, there was a section where we had to look at Japanese sentences and identify and correct two mistakes in them. It was so depressing, I did the six other pages of the exam before finally returning to it in despair. Other parts of the exam were okay (I'm so very good at translating Japanese to English, and I remembered all the kanji, so yay!), though as I suspected, I forgot about 10% of the grammar points. So I substituted other exactly the same/similar grammar points for them and will hope for the best. It wasn't a perfect exam, but I know I didn't fail so eh.
I then had six hours to kill before my next exam since I finished the Japanese exam an hour early. I'd technically only read through my painstakingly researched over several days study sheet once before, but since I spent hours upon hours researching each part of it, I wasn't too concerned with anything other than memorizing names and dates. This is a good thing since today's experiences have forced me to conclude that while caffeine does have an effect on me, it only does so about 7-12 hours after being imbibed, which meant there was barely enough time for my cup of tea this morning to kick in for the end of my evening exam (finished 7pm). I was a dazed mess, resting my eyes for a few minutes every ten minutes and just generally staring through walls and people. I went to a computer lab and checked my email while forcing myself to read through the entire study sheet once before rewarding myself with some chapters of fic before heading to lunch. I went for sugar and tea and carbs for lunch since two would keep me alert and one would keep my stomach from growling through my upcoming exam. The almond milk bubble tea (I forgoed the tapioca) was delicious, and is, I suspect, the only reason I'm awake atm (a friend of mine told me that most non-Asians don't like the taste of almond milk tea. Is this true?).
I then spent the next few hours finding various chairs in the student centre to doze and read in. I headed to the class an hour early, but was dismayed to find some people there trying to make up for not studying by reviewing the material. Having no inclination to help people who couldn't be bothered to study until an hour before the exam, I put in headphones and reread my study sheet for the fourth time. The exam was basically regurgitating all you knew on twenty chosen phrases which we researched before hand. Lucky for me, she had told us we'd have to write twenty terms, but she cut it down to ten as a surprise. Considering it took me all three hours to write the midterm which was ten phrases, this was a godsend for me. As it was, I only managed to finish just in time. By then, I was finally jittery from the caffeine so Dad had to deal with me all hyper and talkative while we went out to dinner. This was a bit of a contrast with how I wasn't finishing sentences and I told a button my life wouldn't be complete without it (to be fair, I'd say that anyway).
Today was the first day since my foot was smashed that I was able to wear shoes. I'm glad of this since it was cold and rainy. I actually ended up going to the doctor last week to get it checked and x-rayed to be sure it wasn't broken since the pain and swelling took an awful long time to abate. Fun times.
My resolve and strength of will to study were sorely tested on Tuesday. I'd been idly surfing fic, and found nothing good enough to reward me for studying so I decided to go into the folder on my computer that holds fanfic I've saved (you have to have an amazing fic to be saved to my harddrive - there's only about 35 in the whole folder collected over a decade). My eyes lit upon an X-men story I'd devoured back in 2000. It was a trilogy with the third story standing at roughly 20 chapters. A year or so later, I discovered there were a few more chapters and was happy. Then all links to the story disappeared or broke. I couldn't find it anywhere and was glad I had my own copy. I periodically searched for it, but couldn't find anything but old archive copies with less chapters than I had. Thinking to myself that I wasn't sure if I was up to reading a broken trilogy, I typed in the fics name and author and to my shock, the fic came up on ff.net of all places with 62 chapters! It's been mocking me all day, laughing while I resolutely ignored it to study, but no more! I'm off to read! *poses dramatically*
I suppose I may sleep at some point too.
