ramblings of an undergrad

Week 5.
In the flash of an eye, it's been 5 weeks since I've started university life. I've been wanting to make this post for awhile but never got about to doing it.. so here I am.

So many people ask - how is uni? how are you handling uni? or other variations to this question.
Well, uni is not quite what I expected, tho I was quite prepared for it. This sounds paradoxical I know, I'll explain.

I expected uni to be tougher than previous education, but more fun, since I am studying things that I WANT to study, not about how positive and negative ions form ionic bonds and memorizing pointless terms like 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine that are just cool to say but have zero practical value.
I expected uni to be relatively free, because that was the impression I got from some people. Like, no more fixed lessons from 8am in the morning to afternoon, it's a flexible schedule.
I expected to make alot of friends.. simply because I want to.

Well, uni IS tougher than previous education. And uni is definitely more fun. Learning about circadian patterns, (our sleep cycle), Pavlov's many experiments on Classical Conditioning in more detail and proactive/retroactive interference which affects our memory. I'm virtually never bored when studying.
Flexible? yes. I go to school at different times every single day. And i have no school on tuesdays :)
Make alot of friends? Yea, thanks to camp, I have a regular bunch of people that I can have lunch with or meet up to study and go for lessons together with.

What was contrary to my expectations was the 'relatively free' part. Being in Arts, the amount of readings we have to do is insane. Imagine an upper secondary Biology textbook, covered over 2 years. The Psych textbook is twice (or more) that size, and is covered in 12 weeks or so.
I'm not even taking many content heavy subjects.. only Psych is heavy for me.

I am studying during virtually all my breaks in school, and my 'free days' of tuesday and weekends are spent studying too. It's like, mugfest.

And the annoying thing is, my circle of friends all tell me that i'm 'too mugger', that i 'study too much la!' . But it's not like i'm doing EXTRA or anything.. I just do the week's assigned readings. To them, lagging behind is the norm.
K wait that's not the annoying thing.. the annoying thing is, even though I study so much, it's very possible that I will not do better than all of them, because

1) Modules are marked on a bell curve, so let's say I do pretty well in all my modules but those taking my modules do EVEN BETTER.. my grades will become shit.

2) The modules other people take may consist of all slackers or something, so getting an A may be very easy.

3) Thus, their CAP will be better than me.

Ok i know this is a faulty conclusion due to the faulty reasoning #2, but another matter is that amount of studying does not necessarily lead to better grades. If I am not able to apply what I have learnt to the questions in the exams, it will come to naught.

So really, all i hope for is that my grades will reflect the amount of effort I put in. Because I am perpetually tired with all this studying, my sleep isn't very sound because I'm always worrying (or rather, thinking) about what I'll be doing the next day
etcetc.

Because if at the end of the day I get a decent CAP (above 4, as close to 5 as possible) I will feel it's worth it. The hard work I put in, the endless hours I spent studying, all this - it's all worth it.
If i DONT.... I think I'll just feel like shit. Like fmd, wasting my time studying so hard.

Alright, just wanted to pen that down. If you are really reading all this.. I'm honoured that you're so interested in my life. je t'aime, tres tres t'aime!

a bientot~