Friday, October 09, 2009
Good week?
As continued from the last post, I'm getting used to the toughness of the modules, and thanks to the mid-sem break, even though I did not do a lot, it allowed me to catch up for some modules, do tutorials in advance for others, and overall, study until where I was supposed to be at.
This gave me a lot more room when the mid-terms hit, as I needed just to recap a bit, and I'm ready to go. As I always believed, physical well-being will affect your mental well-being, and I'm glad that having enough sleep in the mid-term weeks due to the sufficient studying beforehand led me to be a happier and more ready-to-absorb student.
This was a good week, with tuition money coming in deservedly after that 4-tuition week, reimbursement for my hostel fees, a way-easier-than-expected test, and of course, this.
Haolian moment it might be, as this is a really tough module with a super anal prof. Here hoping that this will give me a good buffer should finals come bad. (Legend has it that if you can finish half of his paper you're very good already)
But this also led me to being very wary and I want to keep my mind alert of things. By human gut feeling, knowing how to do tutorials and understanding lecture material will give us a (false or real) sense of security that you're going to score well. But my micro test gave me a good warning - no matter how well u do in your tutorials (which is not marked or counted), failure to translate that understanding or daily correct answers to the exam scripts' correct answers will only make the previous sense of security, well, false.
Back on the topic on helping people. Sometimes you feel good when you have a good intellectual debate on the answers - you know that the person is as interested as you to know the 'correct' answer, mutually benefitting each other. Or now when he/she doesn't know, he/she takes, but later on when he/she can give, he/she will.
On the other hand, when you get that feeling (very subjective indeed) that someone is only trying to make use of you, or show no sign of wanting to help you back, you do feel shitty helping him/her. I don't know, it's just a feeling.
I just like to share things - no matter I get very frustrated, or feel defeated by a module, or I did a very tough tutorial question successfully - both my failures and my successes. However, maybe, sometimes to protect myself, I need to share less, to prevent these vultures hovering around my head.
It's like a constant struggle inside me - the 'nice' me v.s. the 'evil' me; the 'helpful' me v.s. the 'competitive' me; the 'pro-active, smart and capable' me v.s. the 'backward, lazy, and blur' me.
I wish I could be nice to everyone, but sometimes evil strikes when you're the kindest, or when you're the most unaware.
Maybe, the stress and extremely high level of competition in the Year 4 econs cohort is getting into me, or I'm thinking too much. I hope someone can enlighten me on the art of helping people without being detrimental to myself, and how to strike a balance between the various 'me's'.
lowtide blogged @
6:44 pm
