Wednesday, February 18, 2009
I'm surprised that today isn't Friday the 13th because I have had a pretty bad day. And it all started with a papercut.
I was trying to staple the notes and readings I had printed out at the AS7 computer lab just 2 hours before the Gothic Properties test when a stack of sheets slipped from my hand and slashed me on my right wrist. And after that unconscious attempt at suicide, everything went downhill.
I went to the Graduate Students' Room and had some problems opening the door. Thinking that the password lock was being cranky again, I didn't dwell on it and was let into the room by Miguel. I studied for a while until Miguel left to grab a bite before the test. 5.40pm rolled around - time to go to the restroom before the test at 6pm. When I came back from the toilet, I couldn't open the door. I tried again and again, but the door refused to open. And there was nobody inside the room to let me in this time.
Remembering what had happened to my room companion Adeline, I rushed all the way up to the General Office to catch the admin staff before they knocked off at 6pm. After taking what seemed like an eternity to find out what was wrong with the door, the clerk told me that they had just changed the door password. YOU DON'T CHANGE THE DOOR PASSWORD WITHOUT TELLING THE STUDENTS USING THE ROOM, YOU FOOLS.
So I ran all the way downstairs again to try the new password. And again the door refused to open. I was close to total panic by this time. Because my watch was in the room, I didn't know how many minutes I had before 6pm when the office would close and the test would start and all my belongings would be trapped in that blasted room for the rest of the night. So I ran up the three flights of stairs to the office again, and then I found out from the clerk that I had misheard the last letter of the password (and I'm blaming her bad pronunciation and hearing for this because I double-checked the first time!)
And so it was down the stairs again, and I was so happy I could have gotten down on my knees and thanked the heavens when the knob yielded and the door opened like the gates of paradise. Ironically, the prof came only at 6.05pm...
But that was not the last of today's spate of misfortune. The test questions were, as the prof said they would be, extremely open-ended and since we were not supposed to bring in any textual evidence but to talk about the issues in general, my answers ended up being airy fairy comments, which I absolutely dislike. Worse still, my mind seemed to have gotten stuck in a rut and with only 20 minutes for each question, I seemed to keep going over the same thing and nothing else was surfacing in my brain. Some of my classmates felt the same way and that is reassuring to an extent, but I still can't help feeling I just flopped in the first test of my capability as a graduate student =(
But after the test, things started to pick up and the seminar was enjoyable as usual. So this wasn't Friday the 13th in disguise after all, and I'm just fishing for superstitious excuses for my poor test performance... =___=;
kaoru said at 7:58 AM
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