Wandering with the Wind...

Sunday, June 17, 2012

I had a horrible dream yesterday night, in which I clearly remember I flunked a literature CT paper, and it took me quite a while when I woke up to realise that it didn't actually happen in real life. While I did the paper as fast as possible, somehow my time management got extremely screwed up and by the time we had to put our pens down, I still had about three quarters of the normal paper unfinished, not to mention an extra RAlit paper attached at the back for me (even though there's no RAlit in RJ). Everyone else seemed to find the time limit perfectly fine, something I couldn't comprehend at all because I really tried my fucking best and failed. The paper wasn't even hard. There was just so much to do, too much to complete in too little time.

I miss RAlit with Ms Leow. Those two years offered me perhaps the best Lit experience so far, where a teacher's genuine passion could ignite the enthusiasm of the whole class and we would embark upon little journeys back and forth between the realms of reality and imagination. We questioned and answered, delved deep into things, pulled apart the veils and picked up all the nuances along the road, watching the scenes come alive in the mind's eye. We would solidify the spectres of meaning that impregnated words from a long time ago, words from a hand that no longer exists, and find such awe and wonder in the sensitivity and fragility of the written word which, in the interim, houses so much expressive power in its potential for both creation and destruction. If I recall correctly, RAlit was the one class in the entire level that did the least work in terms of academic assignments and dreary essay-writing. Ms Leow never did see much point in forcing us to practise for exams or adhere to the standard essay styles and structures. We attended lessons to have fun, meaningful fun, and in that way we could learn so much more at our own volition. Sometimes we would write poetry too, and hear voices we would never have imagined could come from one another's mouths. Everything was about discovery and creation, not filling in the blanks with the right words and getting the ideal marks (to be honest, I think almost everyone in RAlit has flunked at least one lit exam before). That's why I loved it.

Man, it's so different now, you know? The lecture theatre makes everything so impersonal all of a sudden; there's nothing between you and the text except for the cold white glow of the projector screen and the droning voice of a teacher whose sense of obligation overrides the desire to discover and inspire. I still do my best for it, of course, because Lit is really the second subject I love most after Art, and so far for both assignments I've gotten an A grade and had one typed out and disseminated to the level, which hasn't happened in quite a while. Yet this troubles me more than ever because I didn't want to and most definitely didn't plan to give my teacher such a good impression so early in the year. It means pressure. It means standards. It means expectations. It means all the things that would force me to work and score well but which I do not want to deal with if I could avoid them, and I cannot fail, because there's no excuse anymore for fumbling and coming up with strange interpretations for things and having fun the way we used to in RAlit. I'm no longer a child...I can't play anymore.

Sigh. Stupid existential crisis yesterday. I haven't had such a depressing one in a few months, and I don't have a clue - well maybe I do but ugh - about what triggered it. I must put those days behind me, pick myself up from where I had fallen...and get back on track soon.

***

~~~*Waited for the Winds at 11.01am*~~~

Aurinya blogged at 11:01 AM

Roaming the Winds