It's hard to explain or even grasp the concept of how stressful and mentally damaging higher education can be. It's probably just me, but then again I see people having a mental breakdown on a daily basis. We are given tremendously hard coursework and very high expectations to ace everything. And I am honestly not someone who likes to put the blame on the system, I just feel that I am not vocal enough regarding my distraught.
I've been trying to write an obligatory end of semester post and despite the exciting things that happened, the highlight of the whole semester would be the time where I broke down and cried in the examination hall. I've never done that before. I've been displeased with my performance before, I am aware that the ratio of answers I am confident are right to the answers I think is right to the answers that I have no clue of has been highly compromised before and as horrified I am with myself, I always cry
after the exams, not
during, this was a new low to me.
See the thing is, I feel like I've worked really hard for this subject. It's an 8.30am class and for a huge majority of the time I come in half an hour earlier. I was the first to present individually, and I handed in my assignments a week earlier from the due date just so I can have the lecturer comment on whatever's lacking so I can fix it before submitting it for real. Heck I even read the whole book, I did past year questions, we had a study group! And it was the functioning kind, not the kind of study group you say you have but end up reviewing a few chapters before talking for the rest of the day. This was a real study group!
The quizzes were the weirdest thing. We didn't have questions given on paper, or written on the whiteboard. We had it on a timed powerpoint presentation flashing in front of us like some weird ass game show. We had approximately 1 minutes for each 2 questions which could be a yes/no answer question or fill in the blank or a short answer question. Then there's a lightening round where the slides repeat but faster and sometimes I didn't even had the time to read the last question properly but well, tough luck.
I knew my quiz marks, I knew the questions that I could answer, and whatever that I couldn't, I knew I had no marks for it regardless if I answered it randomly or not. I'm fine with the quiz marks, I know it was my fault, but knowing that I had average marks for my assignments made me furious. I didn't hand in my assignments early so I would get an average, I wasn't aiming for a pass, I was aiming for a solid full mark. And we didn't know our assignment marks until the day before the exams and I just felt so betrayed.
How our system works is that we have a percentage for exams and a percentage for all the coursework done and a combination of both would determine our final grade, but for different universities, the carry mark percentage is different for each subject. My parents work at UiTM so I know that their maximum carry mark weightage is 50%, but for UIA it could go up to 80% and most of the hard subjects takes up 60%, so it is a big deal. It is a really big deal, you know your chances for getting an A in a subject or lack thereof.
What was embarrassing during my breakdown was that the lecturer saw me crying and I didn't know how to tell him how betrayed I felt with his marking scheme and quizzing techniques. I just cried. Because I wasn't good enough, that another semester pass and still I won't get a 4.00 flat GPA, that this subject would be my downfall and regardless of how much I gained from explaining things in study group and how well I do in the final exams I still cannot recover from my carry marks and everything made me feel so sad.
For the record, only one person got an A, and only one person got an A- out of the whole class and it's sort of unfair to be compared to them because they're freaking genius and not to mention also Kashmiri. It feels like going to class with the 3 idiots (the genius ones of course)
When people ask for my results, they wouldn't consider my struggle nor the unjust system. They would see me, scoring low, because I'm not smart enough.
And everything just makes me so sad.
Labels: college, menbung, rant