Figuring It Out

The trip to pick up the take-home part of the retake was actually very brief — the round trip took barely twenty minutes all told.

Now comes the hard part.  Honestly, after a day to myself, I’m still torn on what to do.  It’s way too easy to choose the third option (in this case, write a short story about two writers discussing story writing devices like characterization, point of view, Setting, and Imagery), then coming up with an essay defending how the composition itself is story-like, because it’s likely that because it’s relatively easy that it’d be given more scrutiny by the exam proctor…  But honestly the two other options intimidate me.

I have to decide by tomorrow though, as I need to get writing.  No pressure eh?

Exam Retake Countdown: Four

Went to school again for some quiet time reviewing.  Really still getting used to the fact that I have to climb an insane number of escalators (six floors worth!) to get to the entrance of the Library (now the Learning Commons)… Which is why I used the elevator this time to go up the first six floors.  Couldn’t avoid the banks of escalators I had to use once inside the LC though.

The volumes I selected this time around were Nick Joacquin’s Manila, My Manila, and Cirillo Bautista’s Galaw ng Asoge.  I had a far easier time going through the former than the latter, mostly due to the fact that the latter was written entirely in Filipino.  I hate to admit, the fact that it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything in the national language for anything more than a brief read-through (like say the newspapers) really showed. 

With apologies to the esteemed Mr. Bautista, it was a chore to be honest, which is why I gravitated to old Nick’s witty retelling of the history of the city of Manila and, through it, the history of the Philippines as well.  As said in the book itself, when Manila sneezes, the country catches a cold…

Why can’t I ever write like that?

Unintended Skip

Ugh, that was embarrassing.  I missed out on an entry last night because… well, because I slept straight through the afternoon and well past midnight.  The plan was to take a two-hour nap, then wake up at around nine in the evening so I can do what I needed to be done.  Unfortunately that didn’t quite pan out, as while I changed the time for my evening alarm, I neglected to enable it.  So there.  Ugh.

Need to finish the second entry to the take-home exam.  Depending on how things go, I should be good by tomorrow.  However, I think I’ll hold of the energy drinks, so I’ll just go straight to bed, but try to wake up early to get a head start on it (2000 words don’t seem like much, especially when the expected style is overblown and long-winded to an extreme, but trust me it’s hard).  Yeah, this time I’ll make sure that the time is not only set, but also right.

Let’s do this.

P.S. It’s payday by the way, but again I don’t really think it’s going to stay that long in my savings account, as two different bills had already arrived.  Ugh…

Not Quite Post-Exam, Day One: Verbosity

So, first day of the week.  Despite my misgivings over the task at hand, I think I have a good idea where I want to go with the take-home examination I was given.  That said, going from idea to action is a different thing entirely, and in all honesty, I’m not sure I have what it takes to replicate the wordiness of Dickens’ (or Balzac actually) style.  It’s one thing to pad a narrative with words, but one has to recall that Balzac and Dickens were  practitioners of Realism, meaning that despite the wordiness each word wasn’t really wasted, and used instead to describe, with great detail, pretty mundane things.  Then there’s the lyric and melodic quality of the prose and, well, it’s no wonder I’m a little daunted.  And with the word limit we’re given (1000 per question), well, I suppose this is the part where we have to balance the verbosity with the narrative actually doing it’s job.

As for the second entry, eh, I’m far too embarrassed to go with the first choice, so I’ll just go with question number two.  Yes, I’m going for the easier question, but as I already mentioned, I’m not really comfortable with what the first one entails.  Besides, the usage of wildly differing theories in the text itself, and consciously at that, is another of my weak points.

In any case I better finish both by the end of tomorrow though, so I can work on the exegetic essays to both.  

Compre Exam, Post Facto Day One

It’s another Sunday, and I have to say after the mentally (and emotionally) grueling day yesterday, you’d excuse me if I felt entitled to a day cooped up in my room feeling sorry for myself.  Luckily this time my father, for once, set me straight, if only to remind me that I can’t stay up cooped up in the room, as my cousin has to clean it for the weekend.  So, it was out of bed, and into the real world once again.

That said, as soon as my cousin finished with her duties, it was back to bed, not to sulk, but to recoup some of that disturbed sleep.  No surprise, the next time I woke up it was almost eleven already.  Oh well.

Other than that, this was as close to a relaxed weekend as they could come.  Well, aside from the fact that I had to leave in the afternoon for a quick visit to the Greenbelt Powerbooks branch to look for some books.  Specifically, I needed Jessica Hagedorn’s The Dogeaters, and an example of 19th-century literature to crib from, in this case one of Charles Dicken’s books.  Instead of the more well-known choices, I elected to get something I actually haven’t read before: Hard Times.

Speaking of Hard Times (the book of course), I have to say that Dickens’ prose seems so much… wordy than I remembered it to be.  I guess that writers were paid per word back then (doubly so in Dickens’ case, as his books started out as serials), so the descriptions were as thick as possible.  Seriously, a single page (back-to-back) to introduce a character?

Anyway, just a few more things, then bed.  Feeling kind of burnt out after I got back, so I guess I’m still feeling the aftereffects from yesterday.

Disaster Most Paramount

That’s the only way I can describe how this afternoon’s comprehensive examinations went, really.  For all my review, it didn’t seem to matter in the end, as not only was none of it on the exam (as expected!), but what’s more, every single entry required an essay-type answer that I simply wasn’t prepared to, well, synthesize properly.  Add to that the time pressure (despite being allocated two hours per question, for a total of eight hours worth of back-to-back essay writing!), and things went FUBAR rather quickly.  Ugh.  And while I didn’t leave anything blank (which would have merited an automatic zero for that question), I’m sure as not impressing anyone with the short essays I left as answers, especially when the expected length per answer was much more… substantial than what I submitted.

Yeah, it’s no wonder I feel lousy.  I have a feeling that I’m going to be redoing this next term.

On the bright side, the take-home portion seems relatively easier.  Take note, I still have to track down a copy of Jessica Hagedorn’s the Dogeaters, as well as an example of an 19th-century novel (Dickens would be obvious), then convert the former into a functional copy of the latter… And it’s halfway done.  I’ll have to figure which of the two questions I’ll use for the latter half, but after what happened this afternoon, hmm, anything is more welcome.

The Review, The Eve Before

It’s the last evening before my moment of truth, and honestly I don’t feel any more confident than when I started a week ago.  Or indeed, a month before, when I made up my mind that, yeah, this term was the trimester that I’d take the program’s comprehensive exam.  I’m anxious all the way to Sunday, to put it mildly, and I’m in constant fear that all that knowledge I’d forcefully crammed into my head over the past few days might figuratively just pour out at the most inopportune moment.  Or even worse, everything will just turn into a jumbled mess, and I’d mix up Barthe’s theories with Kristeva’s.

Ugh.

I’m a worried mess right now, and there’s still quite a bit of the evening to go.  I honestly want to spend it more on review, but I think a few hours of sleep will do my frazzled nerves much better than any energy drink (which I’ve been imbibing copiously again over the week).  And it doesn’t help that said energy drinks leave me with at least half an hour’s worth of lethargy before their effects kick in and keep me awake for twelve hours…

Speaking of energy drinks… All those calories made me gain poundage again.  Ugh.  If I pass, there’s a lot of catching up at the gym to do.

Well, if I pass.  I want to pass, especially considering what I’ve had to sacrifice to even prepare for the exam (14 days off work is a big deal for a part-timer!), both in time and in money (and the application itself isn’t cheap!).  As it is, I don’t think I can take not passing.  Ugh.

All this negative thinking isn’t going to do me any good.  Going to do some last-minute reading, set my alarm for an early day so I can review one last time, then off to bed.

The Review, Day Five

Well, today didn’t start as planned.  Despite me setting the alarm for eight-thirty, I woke up close to lunchtime yet again.  I have no idea just why, especially since I set my phone’s alarm volume to its loudest setting.  Hmm.

Last day tomorrow before the actual exam.  Dunno how much I can squeeze, or if it’s ever going to be enough, but at this point I’m just going to have to do what I can in the time I’ve got left.  Likely just going through the theorists and their theories again, and maybe squeeze another local book to finish the deal.

Of course, I do still have two bottles of energy drink left over… Hmm.

Yeah, I think I’m going to need more than just a little luck for this one.

The Review, Day Four

I didn’t go to school this time around, and instead tried to do some studying here at home.  Since my sister isn’t here during weekdays, her room is sort of perfect for this, where it’s bright and — more importantly — it’s far from the computer and its distractions.

It went as well as you’d expect: I blasted through three books (The Praying Man, State of War, and Dekada ’70)… then promptly fell asleep for the afternoon and most of the early evening.  I kind of forgot how comfortable my sister’s bed and pillows were, compared to my own (I have to get my own mattress replaced somehow), and the gaggle of stuffed animals she had lining it just sealed the deal.

I’ll see if I can squeeze one more reading tonight (the likeliest candidate is Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood), but it’s not really a sure thing.  And with only two days left until the exam, well, I can’t say I’m all that confident.

Oh well, gotta continue.

The Review, Day Three

I went to the library again today, and I think that it’s been pretty fruitful.  I think I’ve gotten the gist of some of the more important theories (and theorists!) in the Norton Anthology, but whether or not I’d be able to remember them in three days is another matter entirely.  Here’s to hoping I don’t mix, oh say, Roman Jakobson’s stuff with Roland Barthes’.

That said, need more classic/contemporary composition reading.  Even after more than a month, I still don’t believe I’ve covered all of my bases on that regard.  Ugh.