Saturday, September 20, 2008
This long hiatus from blogging can be attributed to the excellent planning of timetable this semester by the management in NIE. They are indeed preparing us well for teaching in schools after graduation by making us spend more than 12 hours a day in school. Here's a brief summary of my weekly timetable in this semester.
Monday
7.30am to 8.30pm
Tuesday
10.30am to 8.30pm
Wednesday
8.30am to 7.30pm
Thursday
7.30am to 5.30pm
Friday
8.30am to 9.30am
As you can see from above, Friday is the only day I can leave school early if I want to see sunlight out of Jalan Bahar. However, project meetings mean that I might have to even sacrifice this only free day to meet up with my mates to clear them. The 7.30am lessons on Mondays and Thursday are abit obscence because due to timetable clashes, my class and the Year 3 crossovers are unable to find a common timeslot. It meant that a few of my classmates are sleeping over in school (not in halls mind you). I recommended to them the NIE squash courts because it is comfortable and the doubles court have aircon back in the basement area.
I mean you can go on telling us that we wil be waking up so early next time when we enter the teaching world. However, we will be posted to schools near to our homes, not when you're are living in Ang Mo Kio or Hougang and are expected to reach NTU by 7.30am. Try as we could to rearrange this module to another timeslot when 1 module (AED 201) ended early, but we couldn't even find an available one. I was like telling my classmates, the semester is already half way through, we might as well see it through. I am very thankful that both my geo tutorials this week had been cancelled and it meant that I have a 4 day week this semester.
Sleep is indeed a luxury these days and it's something that I really need to catch up on. Here comes the weekends and recess week but we all know it's meant for clearing work (not for enjoyment purposes). Instead of being able to go out and perhaps catch a movie with my friends, I am left calculating the opportunity cost of doing that. 2 hours of movie = completing 1 question of my soccer assignment or 1 question of GIS. When you're playing sports day in and day out, the lack of sleep is seriously detrimental to your performance and increases your chances of getting injured too. I am suffering from a groin strain thanks to soccer and rugby this semester but I shall not complain too much. Being able to take these 2 sports is better than taking netball and basketball.
I need to rest and recuperate over this week and perhaps stay away from sporting activities. Skills assessment for soccer is coming real soon, can't afford to play around when it could potentially determine whether I get good grade or just a decent one. This is one of the rare moments I am whinning about my current situation in universitiy so much but it's the love of what I am studying that keeps me sane. I was pleasantly surprised during the first few weeks of school where I saw Marvin in canteen A while I was having dinner with my classmates. That chap had also just ended his classes while I just finished sport psychology class. I know that PE students are not alone in this, even my ADM friends are having like night classes. However, ours is extremely bad.
I met Aunty Agnes, the school librarian, back in acs(I) on my way home last week. I was waiting for the train back to Bukit Batok at the Jurong East interchange platform where I saw this familiar looking face. She stared hard at me and I did likewise. After greeting her, we engaged in a good chat during that short journey. Found out that she had quit her post in acs(I) to look after her child. Perhaps other reasons could have come into play but she didn't tell me but I know that nothing beats watching your own child grow up. It helps alot if you didn't have to worry about making ends meet too. So many thing have changed over the years, even the familiar librarian is gone. I wonder who I can recognize the next time I head back to dover road.
