Saturday, June 16, 2007
REBorn, now that exam (no 's') is over
I had my last exam for the semester yesterday. It also happened to be my first uni exam ever! All in all, it was an experience I'm ambivalent about. Most of our uni exams are held in the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton Gardens. All well and good, because what better motivation for students to go all out to ace their exams than the knowledge that they are sitting in a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with Culture and Splendour and Heritage springing up from the creaky floorboards and filling their orifices with the Spirit of Learning.
Wonderful.
Taking a walk from Melbourne Central to REB is a cake- er, walk, especially if you have a good friend to accompany you and to run through pointers and last minute notes with you. Oh it was freezing, absolutely freezing, plus a strangely foggy day (which one of my friends pointed out, made Melbourne seem distinctly Silent Hill-like. I agree entirely, it was the first thought that popped in my head when I realised I couldn't even see the top of my not at all tall apartment building. I admit, seeing Eureka (PHWOAR the tallest residential building in the southern hemisphere) sliced in half by a fog machete is a truly who-gives-a-shit experience.)
Personal acrimonious feelings towards fog and frost aside, most of my discomfort was helped by being able to out-conservatise, out-liberalise, supra-feminise and ideologise each other with quotes from Locke, Smith and Bozo the Happy Clown. (Three cheers for a sense of humour that, while decidedly corny, is at least not uncommon.)
They made us wait in the cold however. We sat out in the open, sat our frost-hardened buttocks (what an image!) upon hard concrete. It wasn't too bad, but after half and hour of sitting out in at most 10 degree weather, the PA System of Doom ordered us to put our belongings in several stainless steel containers very much like the ones used by shipping companies to store their crates of Oreo cookies and Hello Panda biscuits.
Unleash the scrogs and boars! At 2 o clock, at least 2000 students streamed into the entrances of the Cultured and Unheated UNESCO Building to sit for 2 hours and 15 minutes ofmental regurgitation showing their examiners their accumulated skills and knowledge (which of course will not disappear at the end of the exams in a brain dousing of alcohol and unhealthy finger food!)
The instruction from my lecturer (which was, for god's sakes, repeated by my tutor in our tutorial) was that CIM students were allowed to write prepatory notes during reading time. Yes, that involves picking up a pen or pencil, and writing out throughtful essay structures and key quotes on paper. No, not every subject gets this. In this case CIM students were allowed to. It's on the lecture slides of our final lecture, which I quote verbatim from Contemporary Ideologies and Movements Week 13 Lecture Two, 'Exam Information & Revision' , Slide 4 Point 2:
•Notes may be prepared during reading time
But no, during reading time, one of the invigilators comes striding by, yanks the paper from beneath my furiously scribbling hand and yells at me, "NO WRITING!"
I was flummoxed. That does it, I thought, I'm going to be disqualified from this exam, which means I'm going to fail my subject, which means I'm going to have to pay another 700 bucks to take it again.
Fortunately, another invigilator comes running by. "Oh no, it's alright! Seat numbers 800-932 are exempted from the no writing rule."
"Oh," goes the first invigilator, still hanging on limply to my shrivelled up question paper. She then puts it back on my table (gently this time), gives it a few quick pats, issues a breezy "Sorry about that" and goes off to terrorise some other student for not placing her bottle on the floor or for not putting their student ID card at right angles to the table or for not ensuring that all therr pens are of the same brand and same colour and placed evenly with no pen caps peeking out naughtily between the rulers and erasers.
I'm sorry, I had to get that out of my system. I do not deal well with authority figures. 16 years of being told how to behave by authority figures, and 18 years of living in absolute terror of the Highest Divine Authority Possible has done me no good, I'd say.
And in the mad rush to grab belongings from the containers after we were dismissed, someone pushed my bag off the shelf, which caused everything to fall out. People happily trampled on my notes and stepped all over my subject reader. Even my poor tissues were not spared, and were so trod on and soiled upon that they turned into grimy, hole-ridden, limp-lettuced, floor-adhered, pulped patachouli. I managed to grab everything that had scattered across the floor, carefully dodged other student's scattered belongings (I saw lots of sad-looking bunches of keys sitting forlornly between strewn highlighters and unclaimed textas).
But 5 seconds later I realised my iPod, my iPod had gone missing! In a panic I ran back to the Container of Cattle-tude, hoping that it's unglamarous packaging (it's stored in a ugly plastic casing) would deter even the most greedy bastard thief, and feeling unjustifiably mad that I had to queue up along with the rest to neatly ascertain whether any grubby itchy-fingered robber had made off with my precious electronic music listening device. I know I say this in a stinky fart of middle class privilege as a parental-income reliant student who used Pappy and Mammy's money to claim feudal overlordship over my oppressed, overworked nano. (And I shit you not, it shames me, though not nearly enough for me to emancipate it.)
In the corner, wires all tangled up, ear-piece nearly fallen off from being kicked around and stepped on by Steve Madden heel taps, Nike rubber soles and whatever that guy from seat number 628 was wearing on his feet, lay my iPod. I grabbed it, thanking FSM (flying spaghetti monster).
It played like a dream, sprongy ear-piece or not.
Wonderful.
Taking a walk from Melbourne Central to REB is a cake- er, walk, especially if you have a good friend to accompany you and to run through pointers and last minute notes with you. Oh it was freezing, absolutely freezing, plus a strangely foggy day (which one of my friends pointed out, made Melbourne seem distinctly Silent Hill-like. I agree entirely, it was the first thought that popped in my head when I realised I couldn't even see the top of my not at all tall apartment building. I admit, seeing Eureka (PHWOAR the tallest residential building in the southern hemisphere) sliced in half by a fog machete is a truly who-gives-a-shit experience.)
Personal acrimonious feelings towards fog and frost aside, most of my discomfort was helped by being able to out-conservatise, out-liberalise, supra-feminise and ideologise each other with quotes from Locke, Smith and Bozo the Happy Clown. (Three cheers for a sense of humour that, while decidedly corny, is at least not uncommon.)
They made us wait in the cold however. We sat out in the open, sat our frost-hardened buttocks (what an image!) upon hard concrete. It wasn't too bad, but after half and hour of sitting out in at most 10 degree weather, the PA System of Doom ordered us to put our belongings in several stainless steel containers very much like the ones used by shipping companies to store their crates of Oreo cookies and Hello Panda biscuits.
Unleash the scrogs and boars! At 2 o clock, at least 2000 students streamed into the entrances of the Cultured and Unheated UNESCO Building to sit for 2 hours and 15 minutes of
The instruction from my lecturer (which was, for god's sakes, repeated by my tutor in our tutorial) was that CIM students were allowed to write prepatory notes during reading time. Yes, that involves picking up a pen or pencil, and writing out throughtful essay structures and key quotes on paper. No, not every subject gets this. In this case CIM students were allowed to. It's on the lecture slides of our final lecture, which I quote verbatim from Contemporary Ideologies and Movements Week 13 Lecture Two, 'Exam Information & Revision' , Slide 4 Point 2:
•Notes may be prepared during reading time
But no, during reading time, one of the invigilators comes striding by, yanks the paper from beneath my furiously scribbling hand and yells at me, "NO WRITING!"
I was flummoxed. That does it, I thought, I'm going to be disqualified from this exam, which means I'm going to fail my subject, which means I'm going to have to pay another 700 bucks to take it again.
Fortunately, another invigilator comes running by. "Oh no, it's alright! Seat numbers 800-932 are exempted from the no writing rule."
"Oh," goes the first invigilator, still hanging on limply to my shrivelled up question paper. She then puts it back on my table (gently this time), gives it a few quick pats, issues a breezy "Sorry about that" and goes off to terrorise some other student for not placing her bottle on the floor or for not putting their student ID card at right angles to the table or for not ensuring that all therr pens are of the same brand and same colour and placed evenly with no pen caps peeking out naughtily between the rulers and erasers.
I'm sorry, I had to get that out of my system. I do not deal well with authority figures. 16 years of being told how to behave by authority figures, and 18 years of living in absolute terror of the Highest Divine Authority Possible has done me no good, I'd say.
And in the mad rush to grab belongings from the containers after we were dismissed, someone pushed my bag off the shelf, which caused everything to fall out. People happily trampled on my notes and stepped all over my subject reader. Even my poor tissues were not spared, and were so trod on and soiled upon that they turned into grimy, hole-ridden, limp-lettuced, floor-adhered, pulped patachouli. I managed to grab everything that had scattered across the floor, carefully dodged other student's scattered belongings (I saw lots of sad-looking bunches of keys sitting forlornly between strewn highlighters and unclaimed textas).
But 5 seconds later I realised my iPod, my iPod had gone missing! In a panic I ran back to the Container of Cattle-tude, hoping that it's unglamarous packaging (it's stored in a ugly plastic casing) would deter even the most greedy bastard thief, and feeling unjustifiably mad that I had to queue up along with the rest to neatly ascertain whether any grubby itchy-fingered robber had made off with my precious electronic music listening device. I know I say this in a stinky fart of middle class privilege as a parental-income reliant student who used Pappy and Mammy's money to claim feudal overlordship over my oppressed, overworked nano. (And I shit you not, it shames me, though not nearly enough for me to emancipate it.)
In the corner, wires all tangled up, ear-piece nearly fallen off from being kicked around and stepped on by Steve Madden heel taps, Nike rubber soles and whatever that guy from seat number 628 was wearing on his feet, lay my iPod. I grabbed it, thanking FSM (flying spaghetti monster).
It played like a dream, sprongy ear-piece or not.
Labels: University
# posted by me lah @ 9:35 pm 
