I dont know how to feel now after prelim is over. To be honest, i just feel like im giving up as days go by.

Even though i can feel myself improving tremendously as compared from last year, it wasnt enough. What if i cant make it? Then what can i do? I know im not there yet, but i've done whatever i could over the SA2-Prelim period to save my ass and prove that im not just gonna fail all the way.

What killed me wasn't what i didn't know; but what i knew. 

Its funny how the things you know from the back of your head, and you just screw it up in the heat of the moment. Im talking about careless mistakes. Carelessness was never the problem with me, or the least problem i could care about. As time goes by, especially this year, i find myself being extremely careless. In that moment when you are doing the exam, you didnt even realize until its over even though your gut feeling tells you that something is terribly wrong. Mistakes like calculating the same set of values the second time and got an incorrect answer the second time when the first time was the right one, being stuck in a dead end at a question you swear you have done a million times before, (like a god damn million, million times) but it cant surface when you are doing the question. Maybe all these mistakes are surfacing up now because i know my content better and tend to overthink questions. I dont know if its a good thing or bad thing but it definitely isn't a mistake that i can afford during As.

It was like a domino effect; one after another paper, the careless killed me even more, spiralling into a series of disasters of my papers.

Before the september holidays everything was fine, or i thought the papers were fine. The very first paper i took after sept hols was Math p1. And genius me threw away maybe 16 marks just because my first step of Maclaurins was wrong(just genius). The very next day i had econs p2 in the afternoon which i couldnt finish because i misread the question and had to redo my third essay. Physics was just a god damn disaster with tons of errors in calculation.

I know there isnt a point in crying over whats done. I guess I have to make do with all the time that i have left and fix this persisting problem of mine.

Im still going to time myself whenever i do any paper because i will feel better under exam conditions. I would usually have a fever right after a math paper because it is a subject i couldnt really handle well under pressure.This time, it didnt happen. To be honest i felt fine, no headaches, no fever, nothing.

It took me long and forever to realize what was wrong with how i was studying; to mug blindly. I didnt had any interest in understanding concepts because i just want to do well for my exams and the fastest solution to it was to do papers after papers. It got me nowhere as seen in my o levels. It took me way too long to realize and maybe a little too late, but there is always time to turn things around. I really dont know if i can even make it with so much stress everywhere and i have a gut feeling i didnt do well for prelims.

I guess the take home message after the prelims is not to lose sight of your goals. Once you lose sight, you lose sight of your goal. No matter how badly you did for a paper, you have to push on and not let it affect you.

 The domino effect isnt just my streak of bad luck, it was because i have lost faith in myself.

I felt so terrible after the math paper and i just felt like i gave up even though i didnt say it. I felt so lousy, i felt like beating myself up for making stupid mistakes that i shoudlnt even be making as someone who is going to take A levels very soon. But hey, after thinking about it after a few days during post prelims i guess i felt better and stopped beating myself up anymore because im just really glad its not A levels.

Shit is going to happen to anyone, in any circumstances. I just have to prepare for the worst and not lose hope just because one paper was terribly done. Shit is going to happen no matter what, but its how we face them thats going to determine if we are going to follow through the path of self defeat or put up a good fight.

To anyone who feel the same as me right now because you think you just didn't do well for prelims, dont lose hope. Hope is the only thing that get us going now and if we lose it, we are going to lose this battle with A levels for sure. Learn from mistakes, and have faith in yourself and dont give up because it is the best solution we have right now.

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