work work.

math portfolio, IOP, long overdue chinese orals, physics test and chem test, plus unfinished pracs, and a host of other less important academic endeavours face most students in year 5 of the ACSI IBDP programme.

How interesting that every year, there always is a period of mad rushing of high-value assignments, which somehow always seems to come in waves, not unlike the allied forces on the beaches of normandy on the 6th of June, 62 years ago. Perhaps its due to poor time management on our part. Year after year it has been emphasized, both soft (pastoral care talks) and hard (spamming us with work, hoping we'd learn) ways, but the lazy, procrastinating human nature (or is student-nature more apt?) always wins out in the end. Only at the point when the urgency-due-to-impending-doom function graph exceeds the benefits-of-slacking-off function graph when plotted against time, do we begin to attempt our work seriously. That point for many of us, unfortunately, is around 1-3 days before the due date, some more, many less.

I have reached that point a while ago, but unfortunately the gradient of the urgency graph is not sufficiently steep enough to warrant really focused work, hence my concurrently typing this out now while doing my math portfolio. Doesn't matter. Soon, sleep will come, and pain will fade away slowly into the night. Well, until tmr morning that is, if I haven't finished my portfolio by then.

Not long ago, I was unceremoniously referred to as a part-time student (or so i've heard), in reference to my constant disappearing acts at school due to my airborne commitments. Then today, yours truly was questioned about whether it was 'right' for me to miss lessons due to that, and the party referred to continued to go on rambling about things while completely missing the irony of the whole situation. In light of these recent issues, and others concerning skipping school to do work (yes. DO WORK. tell that to any student 30 years ago and he'll have a field day laughing his rear-end off) and even more other unspeakables, I have begun to feel rather disillusioned (maybe I'm a little slow) about how education is being treated.

Caught up in a storm of image/book-keeping and the nuances of bureaucracy ever-present in every large organization, certain people easily forget that the objective and primary mission of the noble profession of education is one of nurturing talents and dreams among the raw, unpolished young people, to allow them to harness the potential that is in every student, and allow them to achieve far greater things than if they were left to their own devices. Yes, that, not things like whether one comes to school on time. Granted, a certain level of decorum is needed both for organizational purposes and preparation for the working world, but overemphasis on that or any other administrative duties above actual education is definitely a step backwards.

As an esteemed counterpart of mine has put it:
"i’ve said this one time to many, but it seems to keep happening over and over again - people actually ponning school to do work or study is has been come a far too commonplace occurrence already. as if it were the most “noble” form of ponning, it already says a lot about school and the workload.
1) unlike previous years, the objective to pon this year is actually to miss as few lessons as possible instead of missing more (so short days are better to skip)
2) this shows students actually value lessons and want to learn
3) ponning to do work defies the original definitions of “ponning” in the very first place. (when you pon you would think it was to go watch movie, have fun, pak tor, or something!). this shows our students are actually hardworking"

This gives much faith to me, that the education system, though very conformist and intolerant of oddballs, does in fact have some hope. Although the abovementioned observations could just be attributed to the paper-chase so prevalent in this system, I would try to be optimistic for once.

Of course, we in our school are very privileged to have many brilliant and inspiring educators/educationists whom I have had the honour of being taught by or known by, definitely worthy of the noble profession of education. The purpose of my writing today (at the expense of 45 mins of math portfolio time) is to get this load off my chest, which was triggered off by my abovementioned unpleasant berating this morning. Which in turn was due to myself attracting attention by laughing at the party concerned telling us 'time management' was one word, before hastily correcting the mistake.

I did not attempt to give my points then, due to the common interest of the class, lest it degenerated into a counterproductive flurry of points being shot forth from dissidents from all corners of the classroom, and coupled with the party concerned's unwillingness to accept any criticism (whether healthy or otherwise) of the establishment, would lead to frustrated individuals and bruised egos, with a net productivity of zero. The next time it happens though, I will stand my ground.

Nemo Me Impune Lacessit



Semper Viper