Dear Blog,

hehehe, I wasn’t kidding about the multi-post update, was I? now you know!

[warning-to-self: this is a partial rant post]

we’re nearing the end of our COB project, an event we’re supposed to organize. The way Mr. Chin put it to us when we first started out, it appeared to be small, and easy. We weren’t even given any in-class time slots by him to do the projects, which means the project should have been easy and small enough to cram into the little free time we all have in our interlocking schedules, right?

WRONG.

Mr. Chin didn’t exactly draw out the parameters and requirements of the project clearly from the very beginning. When he was showing the marking criteria slides for this project some time back, I was copying it down, hurriedly, as he just flipped through the slides. I was the only one in class who copied it down, because I thought it would pay off, and be beneficial to me and my group. It did pay off later, to an extent. But here’s the thing: Mr. Chin said we wouldn’t be needing it, and told me “no need to copy down lah”.

A few days later, when the class asked him further about the criteria of the project, Mr. Chin said, to the whole class, that I had copied it down, so I knew. I ended up lending my messy notes in my Diary 3.0 to alot of people, which is how i’m guessing the information got passed.

Simply put, the parameters and requirements for the project was not clear. I tried asking Mr. Chin about this, but he said the project didn’t have any parameters or set-strict requirements that we had to follow. It was like secondary school all over again, where I felt lied to, when a teacher would tell us something about the subject, but the subject would be something different altogether. I clearly remember the literature teachers in CCKSS promoting the subject as “textbook-less”. In the end, the literature students were the ones dealing with the most amount of words on paper.

Mr. Chin wasn’t very clear about the requirements for the presentation, either. We’ve been learning presentation skills from our COB textbook, and we know it’s not right to read from the slides straight, but...

guess what Mr. Chin did, he decided to scare the sh*t out of poor Yen Chee, when she was presenting, by saying something so bold at that time, “IF YOU READ FROM THE SLIDES, THE MAXIMUM YOU’LL GET IS ONLY A C+”. Yen Chee stood there momentarily, stunned, and not knowing what to do, she continued. Mr. Chin repeated the exact same thing while she was presenting at least 3 times.

It was painful to see that 30-slide presentation take such a plunge at that very instant (i’m so sorry about your group, Ancherle), and I started worrying about ours. We haven’t even touched the presentation aspect of our project yet, and the group i’m in, we can work well together, but we just don’t have that level of synergy which could help us score. I called up Shafiqa later that evening, thinking of a meeting to rehearse, or at least, to save our presentation next week, but everyone’s busy. Siti’s working, Hazirah can’t make it for god-knows-what-reason, and Shafiqa could probably make it, but since half the group couldn’t, i’d take a wild guess: she’d rather spend the weekend with her boyfriend who’s in camp right now.

I don’t remember my group being able to gather the synergy to put the fist on the table together, and say that those 30 powerpoint slides we were working on have been finalized. As I type these words, i’m still rather uninformed about the slides, and when they go up on the projector screen on our presentation slot on Monday, I don’t know what i’m going to see. Siti was optimistic throughout, she kept saying that “we’re done” at the end of every meeting we had. Ah, Siti.

Despite my pessimism about the project, I think it’s been going surprisingly well. I was convinced, at one point of time, that the “project’s going to hell”. It isn’t as bad now, but still, not knowing exactly what’s going up on the projector on Monday is a little... unsettling.

My pessimism about the project was never appreciated, mostly because them girls didn’t like the negativity I put on the table, but I think it paid off. When Mr. Chin critiqued on our slides, we took it into consideration, and started working on it immediately. Ancherle’s group had their project finalized, they were ready to present, but then Mr. Chin and his STM gave Ancherle’s group some serious critique, which in turn, made them so stressed out over the project. Bloggie, you should’ve been there to see it. I never had seen Alicia so stressed before, ever.

On that phone call with Shafiqa that evening, I highlighted how Acnherle’s group’s presentation took such a huge blow, and then a plunge. I didn’t even complete my sentence, but Shafiqa knew, that I was worried. She gave a strong reply over the phone:

”Don’t worry Ramesh, that won’t happen to us.”

What she said was refreshingly reassuring, although no action has been taken as of then to improve, I believed her assurance meant something. I mean, it has got to be of some value, right? So, with a strange sense of relief, I hung up.

Looking on the more real and bright side of our project, I think our group has a nice edge over the other groups, and when Mr. Chin looked through our slides, he only said that we were missing information. The existing slides that we had, they were all fine. To put it plain and simple, we didn’t exactly get critiqued. I think it’s a good sign. When Mr. Chin was done looking through our slides, when he was leaving for another group, he said that if we finished our post-event right, we could make our event sound very believable, as if we were actually doing the event itself. This is one edge our group might have, over the others.

With this in mind, and with what Shafiqa said, on Monday, we’re (well, at least for me anyway.) going to take a deep breath, close our eyes, get out there, and flatter the rest.

I have no clue on how it’s going to be like on Monday. Only god knows, and may he bless us.

That said, I think its going to be difficult for everyone to match up to Jojo’s group. They were really good. Jojo’s surprisingly a excellent presenter, but i’m curious to know how many people actually bothered paying attention in class to notice this.

So, bloggie, with that, here are a few bits and pieces of what I did for the group. Maybe 2 years later, i’ll come back to this very post I wrote here to you, and remember all the good and bad times I had doing this project.

Uh, on second thought, I think I should post them here AFTER our presentation on Monday. I don’t think my group would like me to ruin our own so-called surprise.

Sigh, bloggie. Monday’s the day. Its either do…
…or die.

Word Out,
Ramesh