NO sympathy

Results are out and so are the true colors of many people.

Yes, this may offend many people and I am not surprised if this will be seen by many other people.
Why? Very simple. People place you ahead of other people and you are pushed down the rungs and ta da, who cares about the pack you all had before?

Anyway, this post will be a short rant about bell curve. Of course, it is one of the best tool to help the institution to sieve out and differentiate the better students from the lot. People who are the cream of the crop are truly cream of the crop as they stands out among their peers. Fair enough.

From the perspective of the institution, it helps them greatly as the value of the degree is maintained. Firstly, the value of the As will never change as they are only reserved for the certain few at the top of the league. This will never change even with different batches of students that matriculate into the universities every year.

Relativity plays an important role. We all do know that security dilemma do leads to negative consequences even though it is supposed to benefit individual's interest in the long run. In a bell curve scenario, you are graded based on your performance relative to your peers. There can be extreme scenarios such as the entire cohort taking the particular module scoring 90 marks and above. But due to the fateful intervention of the bell curve-god, the person getting 90 marks may get a C- or even lower, depending on the criteria laid out by the academic institution. The other disastrous scenario could be the entire cohort getting 20 marks or below, out of a score of 100. And guess who gets the A? The student with 20 marks!

It may sounds incredulous, but yes, I must admit it is still one of the best method to differentiate the strength of each student. However, there is the other side of the story.

Like I have mentioned previously, security dilemma is the unforeseen spillover effect of the implementation of bell curve. In order to feel assured that you have studied enough, you will always think that you have not studied enough as compared to your peers (Think about that for a second... sounds like a trick question... or maybe take an additional five seconds...) . I am right, right? Yes, don't deny. Those people who will reject the previous statement will be those who seems to be so busy with every CCA in the school and are able to get the 1st Class they so desire with the least effort. Yes, these people do exist, and of course they are the minority. At the end of the day, nil sine labore. Nothing without labour. Most people who get good grades are still the ones who put in the effort and also, the ones who studied strategically.

The side effects of such a "Security dilemma" or should I say "Study dilemma" is all to see. Slogging late into the night, churning down copious amounts of coffee, endless use of paper, plastic-free enlargement of the eye bags. This are the tangible effects of the spiral race. What about the intangible ones? Yes, they may not be visible now, but I am sure they are slowly building up right now. Who knows? The low birth rate may be due to all this stress, wear and tear that was built up 10-20 years ago...Moving on...

The focus that I want to emphasis is the ugliness of some people. For the record, I am using the word some people. Yes, it is one of the 36 strategies that Sun Tze has advocated. The art of deception. How do I apply it to reality? Well, people just deceive you by telling you, or should I use the word, fooling you to believing that they will be doing that badly and not study that much. The "Lies" or methods deployed  include acting like a victim on twitter, pleading for attention on fb, spamming tweets on twitter to show that they are indeed "busy", incessantly asking you if you did study, then start to come up with thousand and one excuses that they didn't study, or it can be the case whereby they admit that they studied and later on said that they didn't focus when they study. *POOF* When the results are released, I will start singing "I see your true colours".

Bitch Please.

Seriously.

Anw, congrats to all those who have done well. You earned it.
For the rest, I don't want to go so holy and say anything. I am not someone with fantastic grades.
Let's just fight hard, be ourselves, for life has its own way out.

*Just want to thank everyone who has been so supportive for me for the past weeks and years*

Quite grateful to have a junior who can actually sense your mood and point out to you the damage I have been doing to myself. You know who you are. I want to thank you. To know that someone actually care for you even without frequent catch up is really touching. A feeling that is are to describe.

Never Give Up and never forget to labour hard for what you set out for yourself!