Final exams: Because sleeping is for the weak

This picture's been passed around a lot on facebook. But from what I saw over the last week, I've realised that this is a gross misconception. The actual last five minutes (more like the last 30 minutes in my case) were spent thusly:

I even tried asking one of the invigilators what was causing my fellow classmates to make such obvious physical effort in filling out the answers while I was counting the number of fans on the ceiling. Perhaps there was some kind of secret puzzle that had to be cracked in order to reveal another essay or something. On the first day I even tried putting all the first letters of each line together, and ended up getting "Edtda Wddaldcvpcg Svatanmaitiwtttb". How intriguing. It actually didnt sound too different from some of the actual questions they had asked, like "What is GOBIFFF?"

I finally decided that the most effective way to spend all my free time would be to take a quick nap. You would understand my astonishment then, when everyone came out of the exam hall and told me that there was no time to finish writing everything that they wanted to.

The way I see it, there are two possible explanations. Either I am selectively blind to some kind of invisible ink that they used to print the back of the question paper, or I'm just plain dumb. And I have dont think they used any invisible ink.

Either way, it was all over yesterday, and then we went to watch some random movie called Marina. After a week of not sleeping, you dont usually care much for such things as quality when you select a movie. But unfortunately, this particular movie also had some strong advice for the audience, delivered in typical tamil-movie style - very indiscreetly; advice that no fresh-out-of-the-exam-hall college student wants to hear. Advice on the importance of education and studying hard.

Oh the irony.

My exams are a few days away

And with that in mind, I have decided that it is time to make a few amends.

It may have appeared from previous posts that I did not particularly like my SPM textbook. This could not be further from the truth. It is such an amazing book that mere words cannot describe it's brilliance, and students like me are privileged to have such a masterfully written text as study material.

Dear SPM book, this song is for you.

"What? You've never seen a hypocrite before?" - Leonard Hofstadter

The Art Of Killing Mosquitoes

Mosquito hunting with the electrical bat can surprisingly be quite therapeutic. Especially during study holidays when one frequently feels the need to maim or seriously injure.

And I've only broken one vase so far.

I actually think they should make it into an Olympic sport. Send in a guy with a fully charged mosquito bat, and give him +10 for every dead mosquito and -5 for every bite. And a disqualification for breaking anything, just to keep things interesting.

What I think about my Social and Preventive Medicine (aka Community medicine) textbook

After reading a bunch of nonsense about school health (which included the recommended urinal-to-student and latrine-to-student ratio that a school is supposed to have), I was on the brink of losing whatever was left of my sanity

I therefore made this comic to describe what cannot be put in words.

The laws governing study vacations are as fundamental as Newton's laws of motion

Law of diminishing returns – During the study vacation, there is, on average, a 10% decrease in the total amount of studying that is done on any given day, as compared to the preceding day.

This trend, however, is abruptly reversed and accompanied with a sudden surge in both vigour and panic, at a specific point in time (the "break point") which usually occurs no earlier than 48 hours before the start of the exam (by which time, of course, the outcome of the examination has become inevitable, and the probability of altering it tends to zero)

Law of failed adherence - No timetable, without exception, however well-planned and seemingly practicable, will ever work as planned or be successfully implemented. This holds good for timetables that extend over months, weeks, days, hours, or even intervals of 10 minutes.

Law of extraneous influences - In the process of attempting to study, all things unrelated to the study material become supremely fascinating, and the student feels an obsessive and compulsive need to stare at blank walls, update blogs and play Castleville.

Law of successful recollection (applicable primarily to community medicine) – If the student possesses the ability to recollect, with reasonable accuracy, just one paragraph from one page after intensive reading for one hour, then the period of study shall be deemed to have been sufficiently productive.

Law of wishful thinking – Every student begins to incessantly replay some impossible fantasy in his/her mind, always ending with some disastrous event (like a piece of Phobos-Grunt hitting the college) that results in the cancellation of the approaching exam.

PS. Phobos-Grunt did not, in fact, crash into my college. I checked.

I just realised something groundbreaking

What do all successful sitcoms have in common? Dumb songs about cats!

New Year's resolutions

1) Kill anyone who posts or says anything even remotely related to 'why this kolaveri'
2) Try very hard not to tear up the SPM textbook before the exam is done
3) Gain 2 kg by the end of the year