Uncomfortable Silence Part 1

Mr. M walked in to the class. Just last Friday we had our first test so the results should be out today. Based on my observations so far, Mr. M is the kind of person who is never content with anybody's achievement. He is the kind of person who will grill you to do your best, and when you do, he'll ask you to do better.

That is why I don't expect the whole class to do well in his test. I think I did quite OK last Friday, but he requires perfect answers to his questions. Any deviation from the answer script where he can't find the keywords, and you're toast. Anyway, once he was at his table he called out my name loudly, "Who is [Zemien]?"

I was shocked.

-------ONE WEEK AGO--------
By Thursday I was feeling frustrated. Since Wednesday night I had done nothing but memorize for Mr. M's test. I knew I had to get the keywords exactly right but it's just so damn hard. I created flashcards to help me remember, but it's still a lot of cramming. Every time I think I have got it right, I'll forget it after the next card. So I spent more than 12 hours just to get 22 flashcards into my head.

Even so, I have forgotten some of the finer details by Friday itself. I was disappointed that my 12 hours seem to be wasted. And besides that, I have neglected my other 3 subjects. I have many assignments that could have been completed sooner, but I chose instead to do some mindless rote learning and I'm afraid even that was wasted.

But I reassured myself before starting the test. I reassured myself that no matter what the question is I will be able to recall the facts. And then I did the test.

My mind came back to the classroom. I nervously raised up my hand. I didn't know what to expect - did I do extremely well? Did I do extremely bad?

[Come back tomorrow for the conclusion to today's post]