2 side of each stories...

on the day of my senior's graduation, i had a chance to talk to one of the juniors who stayed back after his exam to witness the graduation like myself...

as one could expect, the usual opening conversation between a junior and a senior would be no other than "so how was your exam??"

being a smart student like himself, he obviously passed his exam with flying colours....

he did not have any complain about those subjects, but instead he had more to talk about other ppl's opinion about them....

"you know ah, those senior's comments on how scary the biochem exam was going to be was the one which gave me sleepless nights before my exam. the picture of how scary the teacher i going to be, the image of her failing me is much more scary than the subject itself"

in the end, after taking that subject, he actually found that those comments were exaggerated.....and things were not as scary as he thought it would be...

of course....that's because he did well....

i remember back in 2nd year, during a psychology lecture (which i am sure, not many of my coursemate would remember, cause only few of us went)...the lecturer said....whatever challenge we have in life for the first time, it would be a stressful/hard one...our body will activate all it's system to adaptate to this new activity he is doing... but once he has overcome the challenge....it would seem like a piece of cake...looking back, he would wonder why he was so stressed back then...

remember the first time you learn how to ride a bike?? try compare it with now, when you don need to think what you are doing....you let yout subconscious do all the work...

the same goes with writting, walking and talking....

in exam.....there's this "psychological barrier".....you know har....although you might have studied everything that is to be studied, learnt all that is to be learnt....but as long as you haven pass that exam, which might last a few minutes and do not test all the knowledge you have studied.....but it would seem like the exam gives you the license to that particular subject.....as in you are assumed to know everything after that exam....

it's a wierd thing....although the knowledge you know is the same before and after the exam, it would seem like you know nothing before it, but after it, it seems like you are very pro at it, as if the knowledge have been with you for ages...

suddenly those fears which you had just a few minutes before the exam dissapeared into thin air in no time.....

everything is simple once you've overcome it....

it is a psychological barrier....a state of human mind which fear what is not known, considering every possible outcome, which make things very difficult. but once the barrier is broken, when you know what is and what will be, it's not as fearsome anymore....

thus, seniors will always think juniors are weaker than them, when it's just the matter of time when the all know the same thing.... it's a psycological thing most ppl can't overcome. take medical profession for example.....the senior doctors will always think their juniors are stupider, more incompetent with them. they compared it with their past experience....(bodoh)....when they don realise how much they suffered back then, because human mind tend to forget hardship.....that is why u see seniors doctors humiliating junior doctors all the time......well, what can you can...it's the human limit....

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one more thing a person should consider is whom he takes the advice from.

take my words for it, the junior i mentioned above must have taken an advice from someone who probably didn't do that good in his/her exam....and thus the teacher is scary, the exam is hard, everything is so horrible for that exam, that no one who take that exam should ever do well, in that person's opinion.....but it's never about him under prepared, nervous when facing the examiner, forgetting things which he's supposed to remember....

things he forget would probably be intepreted as "the examiner giving him hard, scary, PHD-standard question which is not in the syllabus"

it's always the examiner's fault, the exam itself....but it's never about the student fault.....and they go around giving comments as a flawless student in their eyes who had bad luck meeting a killer examiner....

"you know ah, i very suey la.....i got xxx for my exam....he asked alot of question.....and no matter how good you answer hor....he will not give 5 one.....4 is considered the max he would give edi...very suey la i got him...if i got the other examiner....sure can score well one..."

"did you answer all his question correctly ah...???"

"errr.....a few questions i couldn't answer la.....but a few only ma....if with the other teacher sure no problem one..."

God knows how much is "a few" questions....

well, if you get advice from ppl like them, it would seem like you will never pass the subject....

on the other hand, those who got good results in the particular subject, will forget the hardship they went through before the exam extremely fast. ask them about those subjects, and they will tell you it's an extremely easy one, one which u could do without much effort....take their advices and you will end up under prepared...coz they tend to be oversimplify.....and missing those details you ought to know....

of course you can take advices.....to give you enough mental preparation for whatever you do. but consider those advice from the point of view of the person giving them, and understand why they give such comment before taking them....could those advices apply to you?? are those tricks of the trade helpful in your case for this particular exam? or it's just more practical to just learn the trade itself??