What I Did To Pass

I went to Melchor Hall yesterday to pick up my text paper for the first exam in ChE 31. It's been there for so long; everyone's just too lazy to pick theirs. So I was busy rummaging over the pile of papers in my prof's pigeonhole, seeing others' papers with circled "100"'s in red ink (actually, nearly all got a perfect score). I thought she lost mine until I saw one with a huge "20" at the top. Yeah, OK, I know failed that. I know right after I finished taking it. I took it all the week after that. I moved on. Nevertheless, I'm so stupid.

No hope for the second exam. I bet my score there would be no more than 10%. No good to rant. I'm oh so sad that I have no energy for that.

I left the department with the God of Sadness embracing me tightly. I was trying to take in the idea of being delayed. I see the road leading to the idea of passing the subject with utmost darkness. Nothing but black. Doom.

But there should be hope. So cliche but there should be. So I look at it again earnestly desperately trying to conceive something. And yes, I saw (or maybe imagined) stars. Isn't that overly pathetic? Hope should come come in a form of a light coming from a torch or flashlight or from a door ajar. But instead, just stars. Tiny bits of light that say, "You're stoned." Haha. No they're saying, "Maybe through a desperate method of lulling your prof or more than perfect-ing the next exam or stealing the class record, YES, you can pass the subject."

So what did I do to pass. The department was near the Engineering Library. I loaned overnight my prof's favorite book about elementary chemical engineering. Actually, the book's not good. It's too lazy to essay the topic and give the answers to examples. You'd face sentences like "Convince yourself", "Verify on your own", "The duty is passed on the reader to calculate the needed data." And you would get questions at the chapter's end like, "Is the man right or left-handed?" What?

Anyway, I went home and pored over it. Swallowing material balances and degrees of freedom until two in the morning. Slept. Woke up by seven. Continued reading until ten, when I got the idea of having brunch and taking a bath since I need to be back to UP to return the book and reserve for it so I could loan it again. (The book's in Reserve Section and it needs to be returned before 8:00am and fines ding-ding 5.00 pesos per hour; basically, it was overdue.) I arrived at exactly 12:00 noon. I saw a sign saying "Lunch Break: 12:00pm - 1:00pm". Pucha. Life is so coincidental. At first, I decided I should wait, read it while waiting and since it's a library, it's a place to read. One hour is un-endurable. I went to SM apparently no reason at hand by 12:30. Enjoyed the cool aircon (so hot outside!) of Mcdo Carpark while finishing the chapter until 3:00pm. Went to KFC, ordered a meal, continued reading until 6:00. The library's closed by then and no choice, I am to return the book the next day with a fine of 50 pesos. OK.

(I bet someone who reads this skipped that paragraph, what am I writing.)

I'm back home. After posting this, I should be back to hugging that book once more. The chapter has a hundred and fifty pages - just for a single topic. Still, I'm finding it hard to take in ideas. For the next hours, I'm to answer end-of-chapter problems, answer the problem set and pray. One of the questions in the problem set appears in the exam. See, it's that easy and give-away. Add to that the fact that the exam is open-notes (Eh, the problem is I don't have notes, I always arrive late and never able to catch up with what is happening; everything is MY FAULT). Yet, I still fail. Exam's tomorrow. Seven in the morning. Stress that, seven AM. I wish Commonwealth Avenue will cooperate. Hehe.

I need to score a perfect 100.