oh, what a wonderful world.

My kids at the centre have been planning for weeks for the programme next Saturday in celebration of Teacher's Day and guess what. We're all gonna get sabotaged on that day. Highlights include flour, water and even cockroaches! And I can't make it. Sigh. I just hope the psc seminar is going to be worth my trip down to town.

The kid I'm mentoring is showing progress so that deserves some good hurray-ing. He's pretty bright, but he's not careful enough in his work. What's with 12 year old kids thinking that their mental sums are as good as a calculator's and that they can multiply two two-digit numbers in their heads? And what's with them not drawing their models? Sheesh. I wish he'd just draw the models since they help so much. Ok, second best alternative to algebra, but seriously, 12 year olds don't exactly dig the whole idea of x being anything. Leave the real/complex number thing to another day.

Point being, I wish I could inspire him enough to realise that hard work comes from within, not without. At least that's something I've learnt over the years. I can throw him tough papers and slave-drive him by asking him to do 10 problem sums, but if he doesn't want the grades bad enough, there's no way I can ensure that he works hard enough to attain them! Is there even a way I can bring that across to him without sounding too preachy?

I wonder.

***

Life's been a great Bore and all I'm doing is mugging, mugging and more mugging. I've been alternating between chemistry and maths...and some occassional econs to break the continual drag of calculating pH or finding the area/volume of some complex looking integral. Yucks. Bio's been looking good, especially considering I can still remember what the hell "stabilising selection" is without looking at my notes! Another cause for hurray-ing.

***

SAT IIs are up on October 14th and I'm planning to take those. I know, I know, I'm fickle about whether I should go US or UK (assuming I can even pull together my finances to make it there), but fact is, I very much prefer a broad-based education that US colleges offer. Yep. And that's no point cutting off my options so early. I'm going to do Chemistry, Maths II and French (which is quite retarded, but oh well.). Variety is key. And since chemistry and maths II are pretty much A level, I shouldn't have too much of a problem revising for those. Yep.

Now the problem should be how I'm going to break the news to Miss Chua that I'm planning to apply to the US...without irritating the hell outta her. I know many students are plaguing her for references, but...ack. I just pray I don't give her too much trouble. Sheesh.

***

And just to remind myself.

- NJC chem paper 3
- Market structures (sloman + notes)
- Pack my table, which is in a complete mess!
- Read notes from "For and Against"

***

Coffee, yes.