Thursday, December 01, 2005

There are two big moths in my room

Sorry for the extremely random post title, but just as I was about to title the post, I noticed my two new room mates who have taken it upon themselves to bug me. -sigh-

Today has been a relatively up-and-down day for me. The day started beautifully, with a wonderfully blue sky and great clouds (yes, I'm a sky person). Headed over to Seascape in the morning for a morning run with sketch and the no.4 jaggar (:P). That actually felt pretty good. I kinda overdid it on Monday and felt like puking, so I was careful not to exceed my limit today.

We then headed over to Glen for lunch. TUP came over to no.4 and gave us a lift, and we met up with dar, tkh, alamak!, win, siao-eh and shyboy. Sketch decided to go get a hair cut (or trim,or whatever), and the rest of us pretty much just waited for her while drinking bubble tea. It actually came out pretty nice; I like the new fringe. But bald would still have been better. ;)

We then decided to head over to no.4 to chill (we being sketch, jaggar, TUP, tkh, alamak! win and myself). Only they couldn't decided what they wanted to do. So I ended up dropping home to pick up the PS2, mahjong set and the poker set. And a bunch of DVDs for good measure. When I got back into the car, they told me the exam results had been posted.

I checked my results in sketch's room. She insisted that I should go first, and said she was going to brush her teeth. I jokingly asked whether brushing teeth would bring good luck. As it turns out, I got some pretty crap grades, while she did pretty well. Dammit. I knew I should've brushed my teeth.

Good news is I'm definitely graduating this semester; bad news is my results were quite far below what I expected. I didn't think I would get more than one Credit, with the other three units Distinctions or High D's; as it turns out, I got HD for Systems Integrity (which was a shocker, since I never expected it to be my highest scoring unit this semester), and D for the thesis. Was hoping for an HD, but what to do.

The crappy part was the two Passes I got for my teaching gig and Technology&Society, mainly because of the amount of time I spent on the teaching reports and presentation. Tech&Soc's also disappointing because I got really high marks for the assignments, which means if the results are accurate, I failed the final exam. -sigh- Looks like I'll have to call Michelle at Department and request to have a look at my exam scripts.

The results hit me pretty badly. While graduating would not be a problem, I was in danger of losing my H2A honours. Problem was, I didn't have my spreadsheet with me, so I couldn't actually calculate how these new results would affect my honours weighting. I did some rough calculations, but it was going to be too close to call, unless I checked with the spreadsheet. That's actually even worse than knowing that I'd definitely lost the honours: not knowing.

I joined the rest in the lounge and we ended up playing mahjong, poker andeyetoy, although we didn't watch any of the DVDs. I was dealing with it pretty okay, I thought. Went outside for a smoke and had a chat with StupidBoy which kinda put things slightly in perspective.

We later went to RK for dinner, and I was still handling it pretty well. I guess it really only started weighing down on me when we proceeded to AS for coffee. By the time we moved on to siao-eh's place for more fun-and-games, I was already fighting depression mode. I was okay at first, playing Blind Man's Bluff (which I hadn't played for maybe 15 years?), then Dad called and I told him the news. I went outside to take the call, and for some reason, I didn't feel like heading back into the party after that.

I've been fighting off this deep feeling of upcoming loss lately, trying to avoid thinking about how much I'm going to miss my friends, and even the place (though I hate to admit it) once I return home. I thought I had it handled when I figured there wasn't much to be done, and to simply make the most of my remaining time here. I guess that's why I decided to go on the trip to Adelaide with three crazy jokers, and why this entire week's been packed full of activities (like horse riding tomorrow).

It's not so much the fact I didn't do well that pisses me off; it's that I never expected it to happen. I thought I was over the "passing" phase, and it turned around and slapped me full in the face on my final semester. These are probably my worst results in two years. So I guess it's an accumulation of pent up feelings and this new thing.

So I sat around outside siao-eh's house for nearly three hours before I decided to walk home. It would have been a nice, cool walk in the summer's night breeze, but I wasn't really in the mood to appreciate it. As I walked past the field near Seascape, I noticed the field sprinklers were turned on, and had this sudden whim of walking through all of them.

So I did.

By the time I was done, I was pretty much soaked through, which means I froze most of the way home, and seem to be coming down with slight sniffles. Felt good though.

6 comments:

Emma said...

I'm not sure I understand your grading system... Do you mean a "D" as in "Too bad, sucker, you just failed"?

'Cause here, a D is really really bad. Help me out.

Me! said...

HD - High Distinction
D - Distinction
C - Credit
P - Pass

So, a D is good.. :)

Emma said...

Odd...

A
B
C
D
F

D sucks.

dodge said...

yeah, tell me about it, i was hoping for a HD for my thesis, got a Pathetic instead..... eng subject can be like a mistress sometimes.

Scott said...

Yeah, it's a different system over here, Em. The grades are given names, instead of an alphabet.

Theresa said...

In elementary schools here they have a grading system like that. It goes something like:

E - Excellent
S - Satisfactory
P - Poor
U - Unsatisfactory

There used to be an F for Failing too, but kids aren't allowed to fail in in the US anymore. :o)