My study spree officially begins!

It began quite late.

It’s almost afternoon by the time I woke up. Blame myself for sleeping very late last night.

After a quick lunch, I packed my bag and head off to IRC. My! It was damn heavy! With books, laptop, charger, a whole litre of water, jacket, stationeries, and even an extension plug (not that there’s not enough power sockets, just that everyone like to sit together), I was as good as going off to some sort of study camp @_@

IRC was a conducive place to study. Not to say my room was not comfortable to study in (actually it saves lots of time and trouble rather than going to IRC), but my main reason is to prevent myself from falling into the temptation of Dota!

Plus, I need to avoid being distracted by my own bed. If there’s a bed in front of me, I’ll gradually move my books from the table onto the bed, and eventually fell asleep drooling on my books.

Really pushed myself the whole afternoon studying. Unfortunately, I still got distracted chatting and surfing the net. Maybe I shouldn’t bring my laptop, but I’ll die from boredom!

Anyway, have to stop and attended a 5pm last Oil and Gas lecture. There’s no point of the lecture really, the test is over yesterday! No one gives a damn care! We got more important subjects to study, not to mention the Oil and Gas Test had rudely intruded in our supposedly free study week yesterday.

Yet, no choice, we had to attended this lecture no matter at what cost. It accounts for 10% for our coursework mark! There’s no attendance taken before this, so this is the only class in which attendance will be taken. They are serious about it, so whoever absent can kiss their 10% farewell. Quite a terrible scare tactic to force us to lecture eh?

There’s many more flaws in this course. Firstly, the lecturers are perfect, they are experts in their own respective fields and taught us perfectly. However, the system of this course is flawed. There’s no final exam, which is actually good because it allows students to prepare for other subjects. Nevertheless, our entire coursework mark only depends on two tests (75%) and one group assignment (25%). There’s suppose to be three test (25% each), but due to time-constraint, they have to combine test 2 and 3 so our second test is a walloping 50%, half of our total coursework mark! Plus, all the questions are MCQs (each question carries heavy coursework mark!) so you’ll either score with flying colours or flunk terribly.

Another thing I observed in both tests was that the MCQs questions are more or less the same with the past year questions. Most questions were recycled and came out exactly the same in the test, just that the order of the questions and answers were different.

From a result-oriented student point of view who valued their marks more than anything, it’s really a jackpot. To be honest, there’s a lot of things to remember in this course. But just by looking at the past year questions and memorising the answer, a student can score averagely well or even better than those who stay up late the whole night studying every details. Hence, the point of studying is lost. It’s more worth the time looking at past year papers rather than studying.

Last but not least, I strongly think that the Energy Game assignment is suppose to be individual work. Play the game and you’ll know it. The game can be completed in less than one minute. It’s not practical for everyone to crowd around one laptop just to discuss and play this game step by step. I’m sure most us played the game individually, and the report will be done base on whoever got the highest score. Furthermore, it’s troublesome to look for all the team members who are from different courses. It took quite some time for me to obtain all the contact numbers of my group members and to synchronise our work. I’m fortunate enough to have a large network of friends to ask from. Someone must take the lead. We can’t sit around waiting for one another forever. Haiz…but the toll on my phone credit…no need to mention la.. One more thing, this game depends heavily on luck. The same combination can yield different results, so in a sense it’s unfair. The score and ranking that depends on luck made up 50%, while the report that is painstakingly done also accounts for 50%!  No need for me to comment more right? Well, anyway, what past is past. Hopefully the juniors will soon have a better fate than us in this course.       

Back to reality, after lecture we went for dinner. At night continued my study spree. But suddenly feel like there’s no mood, as if my brain juice is depleted. Really lazy to think. Maybe I’m just tired. Came back around midnight,not so satisfied with my study outcome today. Lastly, dota for a few rounds to release my stress. Guess I cannot escape from the temptation of dota anyday!

Tomorrow is a new day, I’m gonna try harder, and maybe smarter. A person must study smart and have plenty of rest as well. Good luck to everyone in study week!  Not-so-Happy studying!