reflection about my o level results

hi there! it's my first post on this blog and i am bomb-blasting this post with my results and what i think about it.

context: i am an average-performing student in school compared to the rest of my other friends (or is it just karma i got the lowest amongst all my friends, even my jc friends whom i dsaed with into my school). i typically get an r5 below 20, which may sound decent to some but to me, i was neutral. i couldn't feel much about the results because i know i am quite terrible in some subjects. with my grades, i was scared i couldn't make it my dream school so i took a leap of faith and entered the dsa route. i just didn't know what i was doing and randomly applied to the newly launched tamil language elective programme by moe. i applied to my current school and i got into the school, despite my poor track record in my mother tongue competitions and the only thing i could show to the interviewees was my model essays <face palms>. since i got my offer, i needed 20 points exactly to get into my school like any dsa offer but i wanted to get way better than that for o's. so, after putting in so much time into my studies, i got an overall score of 20 points for my last prelims. i was scared to my wits because i don't know that even if i were to put NARUTO RUN ENERGY load of hard work, i thought i would get the same results. i was quite demoralized looking at the 20 points on my report book. i didn't know what to do but to put in more work so that i can at least meet the dsa offer at the bare minimum. so, in the last 3 weeks towards o levels, it was just werking my booty off so that i can get the results i very much desired for the past 4 years. the last 3 weeks was basically staying back in school with my close network of classmates aka friends and mugging the shit out of the syllabi i was studying for. then, came the ACTUAL O LEVEL EXAMS. the day before, i was doubting myself if i could really get below 20 because that was how scared i was about the exams. with such a bad mindset, i took most of my papers. thank god i had such a good network of friends to get support from because if not for their help (last minute studying outside the hall), i don't think i would have even got to where i am today. SOOOOO.... ON TO MY RESULTS>>>>

my results: i got 17 points raw and 13 points net (after CCA and TLEP bonus points), which i was happy about when i received my results because i didn't see my name on the top students' list (4 distinctions and more) and started bawling my eyes out, even before getting my results (what a drama mama... HAIZZZ)

english: B3. i was quite happy with it because i never got higher than a B4 in school exams. trust me, my school papers were about the same standard as o's except for paper 2, where the english department always whacked us with harder order thinking questions. the o level paper 1 went badly because i didn't manage to complete the essay i was so passionate writing about my sister being a positive impact to my life, despite her being bipolar -- word for word what i wrote in the essay HAHAHAHA!!! then, LC went even worse because the angmoh accent was incomprehensible for me at least so i whacked the answers and after comparing my answers with my classmates, i felt even more horrible because we had totally different answers. moral of the story: don't compare answers with your friends, unless you want to constantly doubt your answers throughout the exam period.

emath: A2. i was quite sad because i expected an A1 for it coz I got A1 for an (easily set and a horrible motivation booster) prelim paper. i thought i did the paper to the best, like around 87-89 marks in overall but i guess the benchmark is higher since the national distinction rate is so high for math (blame the math tuition out there HAHAHA just kidding).

amath: A2. i was ecstatic with that because i got a C5 for prelims so it was an improvement. i credit my amath grade to my ever so monotonous amath teacher, mdm tang (she is a legend). she was a ninja warrior making us do 26 practice papers throughout the whole year on top of tys. she was crazy in giving us revision papers but thank god for her 3 day 1 set of paper routine, i got that distinction. actually, you won't need tuition to pull up your grades for double maths. just need to practice until you know every single type of question they is most likely to come out for the o levels. please, i implore you to continue doing amath prelim papers even till o levels because there were similar questions in the o levels that were not in the tys.

tamil: B3(merit). i got my mtl results in june and decided not to retake in the end because i wanted to prioritise my time on my other subjects. this subject's results especially broke me because just an hour ago, my school had called me to inform that i got through the dsa route and got the spot in the school. and for a person taking tamil lang and lit h2 at a levels, this set of results are atrocious but i am quite settled with my feelings about this subject because i would credit my B3 to my sleepy head oral examiner who i guess didn't get what i was trying to say! it's your loss that you fell asleep while i was talking technical details you didn't care about (OOHHH BURN) -- not really but it's also my fault lah coz i didn't do well for LC.

biology: A2, my only science distinction! i was super happy with bio because paper 1 was bad -- there were people in my school scoring full marks and look at me (making careless mistakes that could have allowed me to get full marks also);
paper 2 was quite unexpected because there were some novel questions like for genetic engineering, which didn't appear in about 20-25 years at the o levels (yes, i was that crazy guy who did so many papers for bio and neglected the rest of my subjects) but thanks to my kinda ineffective teacher, he spotted the kidney dialysis question in prelims (almost word for word but same points). i got out the exam hall so distraught, i thought i flunked bio also (after my horrendous chem paper, which i will tell you later on). i didn't feel i did the paper to the best of my ability because i was in a hazy state doing the paper and it just seemed i made many careless mistakes in the paper like even the 1st question and my dumb brain chose to do the enzymes essay question, instead of homeostasis even though i knew how to do it. practical for bio was a breeze compared to my other 2 sciences because i had expected the paper to be as hard as the 2018 practical paper (it was way easier but don't assume the difficulty of paper in any year because the papers do not follow any sort of trend). so in the end, all my fears was for nothing and shoutout to my mavis tutor for biology, mr imran ibrahim! he was such a saviour because he just helped me to streamline exactly what i needed to study for the o's. salty thing is i got higher than what he predicted my bio grade would be for my o's based on my school prelim grades.

chemistry: B3. i was honestly expecting a C5 despite getting B3 for prelims because i felt i did way better at prelims (i found prelims easier and a more fun paper to do) <nerd mode>. i made so many careless mistakes in paper 1 -- took the paper as a joke, i felt so guilty for making careless mistakes. after the exam but since it was the last paper, i wasn't bothered and passed the qn paper to my teacher; rather i just felt relieved the holidays started after 330pm on 15 november 2019. paper 2 went terribly for the amount of effort i put into practicing for the paper. i felt so bad after that morning paper because i didn't complete the data-based question (i did it last with 20 minutes left till the exam was over); i didn't give proper explanations in my answers compared to prelims so i thought my chem results are gonna be jialat also. practical went better than expected because i had low expectations -- to pass. for all major examinations, i failed all science practicals (bio, chem and phys) so there was nothing much i was expecting but what i hated about my year's practical was that TITRATION WAS A PLANNING QUESTION!!!! it was the most unexpected thing on earth. i knew something unexpected would come out because after 10 years, the combined chemistry practical had redox titration but for pure, titration was a normal part of experimental data collection but never in my mind did titration cross my mind to do planning (even the revision questions my school had compiled for planning didn't have any titration questions). other than that, the practical paper was fine.

NOW COMES THE LAST 2 UNEXPECTED RESULTS!!!

physics: B3. honestly, i expected a C5/C6 because amongst the 3 sciences, i hated physics the most and i scored the worst in it too (i guess passion translates to grades?). paper 1 went ok because it was quite expected, i just memorised as many answers as i could from my tys and prelim mcq practices and it came out for o levels. i did better than how i did for prelims but still, it is a low score for others. paper 2 was abysmal. i finished the paper just as the central presiding examiner told everyone to stop writing. basically, had no time to check and i knew the paper was quite hard for me -- i lacked practice, which is crucial for physics. i only looked at answer schemes side-to-side my question papers and did my tys and prelim paper practices my school teacher gave. i know this is a bad habit but it kinda helped me to understand exactly what the examiners wanted us to write for answers. in my prelims, i scraped by with a C5, even with tuition at mavis. with consistent practices we went through in tuition lessons, it eventually became a habit for me to take note of keywords required for most answers. then, there is practical: i just hated the practical with passion -- it was quite dumb. i didn't know how to set up the practical set up and even had to ask the teacher to set up for me. then, i knew i was in deep s**t. even with the teacher's help, i didn't know how to continue so i just whacked the data and draw a random graph, which was eventually wrong. then, the spring experiment is even weirder so i didn't care about the practical in the end of it. i knew it was an ultimate flop so i just put in more work for the other papers so as to compensate for my horrid practical marks (around 14/40). for physics, just practice questions every single day with a strict time limit and learn from your mistakes and you will do just fine.

lastly, humanities (ss, history): C5. i was quite satisfied with the grade, though it was my worst grade at the O's. the social studies paper was plain disastrous. i spotted the wrong topic for essay and i whacked the essay. then, for sbq, i didn't do the whole issue properly -- no proper skills applied basically. i bet you if i were to study the whole syllabus properly, i would've got a B3 for O's because i think i got below 20/50 for the paper. i didn't understand the purpose of ss so i guess my grade explains it well enough... that paper really affected my mood for the next paper in the afternoon, which was amath paper 2. basically, i was crying while studying last minute for amath (flipping thru tys and practicing last minute with it) -- i am an emo person HAIZZZ. bless my soul! then, came history - it helped me pull my grades to a pass at least. i put in so much effort for the paper but even then, i was almost going to skip the paper because i was distraught by how "horrible" my bio paper 2. so after my bio paper 2, i just asked my classmates to explain the full syllabus in 1 hour and thank god for that! they basically gave me the basis for my essay and we did the asia essay in class before as timed practice so it went fine. also, stalin's purges was quite ok because i had done a similar sbq by st nicks 2018 so it was fine! in the end, i didn't complete both my humanities paper (i didn't finish my essay for ss and 3 paragraphs for assertion in history elective) so don't worry. just do your paper to the best you can!

i hope you liked the post and please do comment if you can!