Stapler- My New Friend

Until grade 11 semester 2, I have never really used my stapler. Not only did school not require a lot of stapling, I also did all the stapling at school whenever I actually needed to. 

However, everything is changed. Now, everyday I have to use the stapler twice or thrice. To staple my math notes/printouts, my data management homework, and my economics handouts. And there hasn't been a day in a past week when I didn't use my stapler.

So, in a way, the stapler has become my new friend. I now become attached to it, feeling anxious whenever I don't see it around. =D

Looking Back at Grade 11 Mathematics (Functions)

I don't really have much to say about this course, since there was nothing particularly memorable to me; I moved through the course rather effortlessly. Did pretty well (98), but worse than grade 10 (100).

However, this is not to say that this course was unimportant. Many concepts introduced in this course are actually ones that frequently appear on contests or ones that just come up a lot when solving math questions. For example, trigonometry with radians and geometric and arithmetic series are all things that one must know.

Also, it was through this course that I realized my greatest problem: I often misread the questions. On five out of eight tests, I misread the question somehow, and as a result got 2-4% lower (per test) than I could have gotten. This obviously served as an important lesson to me, and I now make sure that I underline the key information in each question so that I don't make any mistakes.

Looking Back at Grade 12 Chemistry

When I took grade 11 chemistry in grade 10, I got a high mark with a relatively small amount of effort. As a result, I grew a bit overconfident and thought that, hey, grade 12 chemistry would probably be just as easy as the grade 11 course!

Unfortunately, I was wrong. Grade 12 chemistry was — though not by a lot— more difficult than grade 11 chemistry. We received labs which we had to hand in on the day of the experiments, there were more theory-based questions on tests (as opposed to calculation-based questions), and the teacher just seemed to mark harder. For example, for the communication questions on the tests, I would lose 0.5 to 1 mark no matter how much detail I tried to provide.

Anyway, I didn't really study hard until after the second test, when I realized that my mark for the course was a meager 93. But even after that, I didn't work that hard; I rarely did any of my daily homework, since I thought the questions were all very similar anyway. And in retrospect, this lack of practice was probably what caused me to make so many careless mistakes on the tests.

What did he/she say?

Today as I was preparing for my economics quiz, I noticed that I had some uncertainties with opportunity costs, and soon after I asked my teacher to clarify the concept for me.

She quickly explained the whole thing to me, and everything suddenly made perfect sense; I remembered nodding eagerly just because the concept was surprisingly easy and straight-forward.

However, in the evening, just as I was about to review for the quiz again, I realized that I have completely forgotten what my teacher had said to me! Well, I would be exaggerating if I said that I forgot everything, but it wouldn't be too far from the truth; I only remembered a few particular remarks, which was a fraction of what she had said.

Exam Marks

Today I got my exams back!

Chemistry: 91/95 (95.8%)
I got half to one mark off here and there, due to my lack of attention to details. As a result, I didn't get the 97.4% (92.5/95) that would get me my maximum final mark.

In any case, a 95.8% got me my second highest possible mark, so I am not feeling too disappointed.


Math:  88/89 (98.9%)
I don't know what I should do to myself for not knowing that an obtuse angle cannot be greater than 180°. Because of this lack of knowledge, I got a communication question wrong. :(

But fortunately, this was the only mark that I lost, and I got my maximum final mark with my exam.