In the midst of STPM

photo by Johan Le Bail

 Today I'm gonna share some short personal thoughts on passing the STPM 1/2 way mark, and a little on life so far.

I admit that STPM has changed my schedule for the past few weeks for both good and bad.

The good: I don't spend hours online or take over-long naps, substituting both to hit the books. I've also learned on relying on God to help me persevere in answering tricky exam questions - not giving up no matter how hard the question may be or how stressed (and impossible) I feel at the moment.
The bad: My hormones are probably hyperactive due to the stress levels, causing some rather unpleasant physical hormonal effects (won't elaborate so much on them here).

As for the exam performance so far, I'm really thankful for the fact that one subject is broken into 2 papers, as the 2nd paper can make up for the first. Going by individual subjects:

PA2: After writing all those individual section tips on this blog, you may have thought that I would score on this paper...but the verdict is that I really, really screwed up on this one. Even though I personally don't believe so much in reading spot questions, I do read them to ease my revision. Only one 'spotted' question came out in the C section! My essays had a lot of facts BUT may have been over the 350-word mark - I didn't have enough time to count them and I wrote a little over 2 sides of a page for both essays. Since one page is roughly 200 words, a little over 2 pages can mean a little over 400 words! I redid section E half- way through after spotting a tricky question requirement that I didn't pay attention to initially, which ate into the time I needed to do section D. I only managed to finish the chart (12 marks gone at least). I didn't have time to do the pie chart - and the worst thing is that I actually knew how to do it. Before the exam I spent time learning how to draw that exact type of pie chart complete with measurements and other requirements...sigh.

PP1: I'm grateful that none of the questions were too overwhelmingly difficult, and I answered all questions required (2 compulsary and 2 optional). There were some sections in the questions that I forgot the exact 'scheme' answers and toed with logic, though.

Sejarah 1: Many 'spotted' questions came out, leaving many of my friends jumping for joy. However, I didn't specialize reading in the spot questions like them (just skimmed) so there was 1 question each in Tamadun Dunia and Tamadun Islam where I didn't remember the 'scheme' answers. I did make sure that my facts were correct, though, so after the exam I was relieved to find out that my answers in the exam for the Tamadun Islam question were similar to the scheme's (hopefully I'm right). I'm not sure about the Tamadun Dunia question though.

Mikro: Another subject where I made many posts on this blog, this paper came in the hot afternoon on the same day after the Sejarah paper. The objective part was easy - there were only 2 questions where I was unsure of the answer. The essays were a little tricky though, and I know I've made a mistake in one of my long essays (a 5-mark penalty). The quantitative part was calculate-able (though my graph isn't exactly the neatest - limited space pushed the numbers for the x-axis out of the graph paper!)

Well, all hope is not yet secured (and lost) as there's still another half paper to go per subject. Especially for PA1, where I know I have to score an almost perfect score (at least 45/60 marks, to be safe more than 50 - I've yet to score that high in PA1 ever!) if I want to ace that paper. Well, I'll do my best and turn my worries over to the Lord :)

As for life so far, I have to admit that I'm immature to handle reading quite a number of posts on FB, blogs, and other media that talk about sensitive issues as well as people criticing others harshly. I won't go ahead and make myself all upset reading them for now. In the meantime, I just want to learn things (thus admitting that I'm weak which is hard but I need to do it). I've been approached by a potential mentor and if I meet her again anytime soon I'm going to say yes (I hope her offer still holds!).