The question on International Rivalry preventing the complete subjugation of China between the years 1875 and 1918 was meant to be one of two to avoid, but I couldn't resist the temptation to see how much I could score simply with smoke and a fair bit of name-dropping.
This was in Paper 3, and the mark I got was 13 out of 20, which isn't terrible considering it was my first attempt at a regional paper and a question of this strange quality.
Today's paper had questions which were of that same nature - cautionary auras with oddly tempting possibilities.
Of the three war questions, only 1 was 'typical', insofar as it was about the the two World Wars, though they had managed to choose the one aspect of it that no one really ever studies, the impact on the status of women.
The other two options were on guerilla warfare and limited war, the latter being the more 'avoid-worthy' of the two.
While writing my SPS essay, I finally decided on going with common sense and doing the first War question, though naturally, the content of the essay was skewed very much towards the Chinese Civil War, with only 2-odd paragraphs on the Vietnam War.
There was some smoke, with some points interspersed between, or so I hope.
In the end, not studying last years' War topics boded well for me.
Another thing I found out after writing for those 90 minutes was that I still had the energy left for one more essay of the same quality, and so I'm no longer as apprehensive of the prospect of three essays next Thursday during Paper 3.
I did, however, realize that I was slightly out of breath after writing unceasingly for an hour and a half; it really is somewhat of a workout.
The other History paper today was enjoyable, while Math Paper 1 is turning out to be the same as others I've taken - done far more horribly than Paper 2, and I do hope this trend continues as I will need all the marks in Paper 2 i can get to maintain a 7.
Honestly, I'm pretty willing to lose every mark from Statistics and Probability, as I find the topic the most undoable for some odd reason, and even if I don't do any of the questions from that topic, I think I'd still be able do fairly well, assuming I am adept at the rest of the topics.
After a long day of exams, some of us gathered downstairs for some school food (it had been hours since we'd last had time to eat, so it probably tasted better than most days), and I took 74 back with Joash, Gerald and Elliot. No staying back to study, no stressing. Just an afternoon of absolutely nothing to do with school before the drama of four more papers next week.
Funny note to end the first week of my Preliminary exams: the whole end-of-the-world deal with the activation of the LHC, or the Hadron Collider, and the black hole it would apparently create is hilarious, and some of my classmates have really caught on to it.
So what was I doing on the day when the world was/is meant to end, since that seems to be a possibility as long as the LHC remains active?
Probably studying. What a thought.
