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All my life, I have believed that the world runs on a fixed set of rules. Something simple, elegant and makes sense. Like 1 + 1 = 2. Or gravity makes an apple fall on someone’s head. So, by the same set of rules, I would assume that in the context of a student, the easier a paper, the higher one should score for the test.
I mean, assuming equal amounts of effort ware invested in the papers, the results should be inversely proportional to the difficulty of the paper. I could almost say for certain that I spent the same amount of time studying for each of my tests, and I expected to score higher for the modules that were easier (Astronomy, Aerospace,etc). After all, the killer modules most people (me included) fear would be mathematics 2 and dynamics. Many a nights were spent re-reading the lecture notes and textbooks, in a futile attempt to grasp the knowledge that eludes me.
So when the results were announced, I really had a shock when they were the opposite of what I expected. Of course, I had a slight inkling after the tests, but then again that’s just speculation. In short, I didn’t do very well for the easier tests and scored fairly well for the “killer modules”.
After serious brainstorming, I have come up with 2 possible explanations for this.
1) The test were set on a different level of difficulty. Perhaps the final paper for the killer modules would be so depressingly difficult that the school decided to give a morale boost for the students by setting a relatively easier test paper for the quizzes. And on the other hand, the easier modules probably had too many people scoring so well that they decided to set a slightly more challenging paper. Couple that with the possibility of dropping one grade with every mark lost due to the bias of the bell curve, the strange phenomenon could be explained.
2) Somehow, I had, in my subconscious, put in more effort to study for the killer modules and underestimated the other modules.
No matter what’s the case, there is only one way forward. Final exams are in a month’s time, I shall devote my full attention to preparing for it.
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Ever since setting up this blog/website a few years back, I have not really changed much of it’s design. My previous blog which was supposed to run alongside this one was unfortunately terminated by the webhost due to “inactivity”. Of course I tried to fight against the decision, as no fair warning as issued before the complete destruction of my data. Hence for this blog, I experimented by switching over from Joomla to WordPress and added plugins for automated backups and offloading the backups to cloud storage.
The color scheme of the mobile site has been tweaked slightly, many a useless/redundant plugins have been removed. A new plugin called “Worth the Read” has been added. Basically, this adds a sort of progress bar at the top of the page which increases as you scroll down the page. Check it out here.
What you see above is a adrenaline junkie who perhaps was trying to figure out how fast he could run along ledges without falling off. Either that or he’s Catman. I was minding my own business in my room when suddenly, at the corner of my eye, I saw a quick flash of orange. Curiosity got the better of me and I went out to investigate. What greeted my eyes was this guy jumping on the ledge. In the unfortunate event where he loses his balance, the fall would be about 5 meters, not enough to cause death, but definitely enough to break something. Someone should really recruit this guy to join the special forces or gymnastics.