Eye of the Tiger

Another bad day in the office and things are hanging by the thinnest of threads. My mother scoured through my school books like a hungry bull eager to see numbers written on the cover of test papers. She uncovers my test papers and was deeply dismayed about my recent performances on my test papers. She immediately displayed her in differentiable face of disappointment and fury directly at my grief-stricken face. She viciously swore in Chinese, threw multiple slaps at my forehead and slammed down every book she picked up towards the floor with tremendous force creating a shockwave throughout the house. I thought the house would come crashing down on top of us and kill the entire family, just like me dropping my guard in test conditions when answering questions that I shouldn't have answered incorrectly. Her voice didn't sound like the kind and caring trait of a mother, it was the voice of the devil finally unleashed casting a permanent spell of regret and sympathy into my soul. I began to sob. The spell was too powerful. I couldn't stop myself shedding my tears. I knew my performance in the mid year exams doesn't meet her expectations and she has classified them as a complete failure. In her interpretation, the chance to have an excellent future has been shattered.


Then the next question I asked myself, what is she going to do next? What would my severe punishment be? Would my invaluable iPad be clobbered, dismantled and scrapped? Would I be grounded from the house? Would I be left starving for a sustained period of time? Or is she going to be knock me out of my consciousness? She soon approached to her ultimate conclusions that I never red any reference book thoroughly, revised new knowledge when I return home from tutoring and constantly unaware of the time wasted on electronic gadgets like my iPad. Instead of punishing me straight away, she jabbered even more stuff and nonsense at me about personal dilemmas waiting to embrace upon me. I activated the audio shields in my ears but her sound pulses of outrage had overcome my barriers and I couldn't bear the agony much longer. I don't want to reveal exactly what she bellowed to me because I predict this is the point where your table or lap would be soaked in tears and feeling apologetic for me. If you want to know some of the truth, just try to bear with me while you prevent your internal emotions take over you. She believed she failed overall as my mother. I'm not worthy to be her son. My interests in casual gaming and recreation is unreasonable for the family culture and an unsuccessful result would be inevitable.


My mother's fierce rants doesn't just happen, it is triggered by a chain of critical events. Initially, my mother wants to know the latest from my school like important news, meetings to attend, forms to fill and sign and test results. I inform her the list of upcoming events that are relevant to me. Then she will instantaneously command me to attempt every revision question relevant to the topic being studied from Checkpoint for any approaching academic tests. She will occasionally keep an eye on me trying to catch me red-handed. She thinks she's too clever for my sneaky pranks and knows all the tricks in the book which any child will undertake to become disobedient. If my hands are hidden from her view, she immediately believes I recently played games on my iPad. She frequently threatens that my iPad will be history and will be deposited to the sin bin if I attempted to repeat my tedious deeds. Later, she returns to my room and checks on my current homework progress. For example, for chemistry, I only finished the multiple choice questions and began showing calculations for the extended response questions. Her instant reaction will be a devilish facial expression, a few blows to the cheeks and a verbal explosion to the face. I feel offended by her rude comments. She opinionates that inadequate work done is similar progress to no work being completed. I can't comprehend her mentality, what does that supposed to mean? Little work is virtually an identical situation to no work? That doesn't make sense at all. Is she saying that both situations would yield similar test results? If so, is she sending out a general warning in the form of a cryptic message that catastrophe would be inevitable if things don't change. I initially disregarded the warning and labelled it as preposterous. But on second thought, if my grades fail to reach the standard I've set myself, then the countdown to disaster may have begun.


Then something has to change for the better. But the big question is how? The possibilities are endless. I search through my memory bank for the archives. In the history of failures, my solutions to prevent them are short-term causes which means nothing will change eventually and things would return to the reality as it was previously. I guess I have no choice but to do it the hard way. There will be a significant and indefinite overhaul in my study habits, I know it wouldn't be beneficial to my social aspect, but overall it will bring about more positives then negatives. When previous vce students experienced the reality that I am shaping, academic success was the prize waiting for them at the other end of the tunnel. All electronic devices that can connect to the Internet must be stored away from the study room as I'm studying, this removes most apparent distractions and the level of concentration will therefore increase. VCE is a pressuring and constraining reality for any student and things can easily get tangled up and your desk will end up being a valley of loose leaf papers resting on top of each other. The strongest fan isn't the right solution, even though your desk will be spotless and paper free, the mess will be spread towards the floor, which means you have to bend your pack and practise cleaning duties. All papers shall be sorted out depending on the type of work such as tuition, school and practice papers which will be categorized into different subjects. Transparent plastic sheet folders, binder folders and zipper folders shall do the trick. Every day, I always have to correctly answer set questions, revise notes and going ahead by extending some tasks to explore the details and concepts of various problems. I have to do this for many subjects and procrastinating won't work overall because I don't want my brain to store knowledge from two contrasting subjects in its memory files otherwise the fragments of information would be blended together, a confused expression will be the result and I can't comprehend it completely. Therefore, a timetable comes to the rescue to sort out the unwanted mess. Everything will be done as scheduled by myself. There may be overlaps, interruptions and delays due to particular reasons, but this can be compensated by doing the task shortly after than planned as long as the order of completing tasks remains constant. I remember in year 10, when I trialled homework timetables during the school holidays. Initially, I seemed to have great difficulty sticking to the timetable because the order always alternates by myself and my parents every day to sort out the sticky situation I was in. Although my grades in some subjects improved dramatically thanks to my upgraded thinking algorithms in my brain, other subjects didn't benefit as much from this upgrade. So that's the key to unlock efficient memory procedures so I can fully understand everything I learn first time learning it. But I wonder why I stopped doing this for over a year? Did my personality of being laid-back, frantically finding fun and only doing minimum progress every day to rate it as a good day's work lead me to my strange downfall in year 11 and the beginning of year 12? Apparently, my parents vociferate about me putting an inadequate amount of effort into my academia and not working hard enough. The more I think about their harsh comments of me, the more i lean towards their verdict. Maybe the message they are trying to convey is that there is no other way than to follow the script already prewritten for me. On my computer, I have set up a daily basis on a large table with each rectangle filled with numbers, letters and symbols with extra information beneath it. My parents straight away gave it the thumbs up and ready to proceed. My major clean up is complete and everything I have prepared is reporting for duty. It's now or never in VCE. I'm loaded and I only get 1 shot at it. So I have to give my best shot and make it count. I'm a new and improved me. My strategy is guaranteed to work, the same strategy has worked for numerous VCE students over the years. If I can pull it off without any slip ups, then my preferred future will almost inevitably become reality.