effort

I'm trying to get back into the blogging groove so I'll try to make one blog entry a week (minimum) !!

If I could create an ideal world, I would enforce equity throughout.the world, in terms of education. Yes, I'm a firm supporter of meritocracy, I believe effort is what should count, not how many As you manage to get. That will be my mantra for my kids anyway. Do your best, put in your best effort, and noone can fault you.

(Just to loosely define some things in case people don't understand, meritocracy = getting rewards based on your effort, and equity = things are distributed fairly according to what you deserve.  In this case, good results)

So anyway, one of my pet peeves, on top of bad breath and smelly ______s, is people who get good(or better) results but work less than me.

My work ethic is as such - work first, play later. I finish what I have to do, then I'll slack and play whatever. I like to draw up study schedules so that I can plan my work accordingly and finish them ahead of time. I HATE doing last minute work it's just so ... frustrating and stressful.

As such, I'm often finishing my readings and supposed 'studying' way ahead of time, as compared to people around me. I don't know what is it about the culture around me but uni people seem to like to do things last minute, including readings. I know people who study like 3-4 chapters in the last 3-4 days before a test (whereas I typically cover 3-4 chapters over 3-4 weeks)

And the worse part of all? They do better than me.

Like what's the point of my working so hard? What's the point of doing readings on time and still not doing much better than them? (or even just slightly better)

It really gets on my nerves when I know of people who study like just the day before, and when results come out, they COMPLAIN that their results aren't good enough. 'Why didn't i score higher? oh noes. I put in so much effort you know!'

WTF? Effort? Last minute study is effort? I guess staying up late till 3AM (or later) the night before an exam quantifies as significant effort for these people.

What about me? I end up scoring lower, or at most 1-2 marks more than them, when I studied waaay in advance.

What's the point of studying so hard like that? Why can't my memory be as awesome and I can also cram just the day before the exam and score as well as them? Why do I have to read waay in advance and revise several times before I can truly encode everything? Zzz.


And a side topic, ok nevermind I shall write that side topic on realFASS blog. thanks for reading this rant if you really did. bye.

szehong

Because I am shameless:

and not shameless enough to put on facebook, so i put it here hahhaa.  yes i know bad photoshop. difficult ok had to photoshop her svelte figure myself because she stood next to shimin and their 2 black dresses merged in the photo.

A Good Conclusion

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhvX1pELrK4]

To add, a good report will get an A, but a good report and a good conclusion will get an A+
(and excellent report will ofc get an A+)

Yup.

randomz

Heeyy sorry haven't had the blogging mood i wonder who still visits. besides the random spammers on my tagboard.

Anyway for you awesome people who still visit for idunnowhatreason, you are rewarded with this funny video!


[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9oxmRT2YWw]

ok, 1, 2, 3 - AWWWW!

Super cute la!! i love how he trashes his arms around at 0:45 like he's trying to escape and get out of his walker hahaha super adorable.

And another not so cute video - Basically my 2nd VLOG haha. I play a song at the end k! though i suck and i screwed up.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94miYf5iefg]
Anyway this video was recorded a few weeks ago, and I have already completed that philo test i was talking about haha. And i JUST got the results back ... and I did pretty well! I expected to fail it cos of one question i really wasn't sure. But in the end I scored above the median!! yay :D

Ok now for some random pictures

Szehong's life dream was to eat a MACARON. It's some french thing that I had never heard.

And since a Delifrance recently just opened (is 'recently just' an error? redundant word?) at NUS YIH, she decided to go buy.

The legendary macarons. $1.30 for 1 zomg expensive. the brown one was mine.

SH tasting her caramel macaron

enjoying it

Miss Unglam 2011

It's not THATTT nice though SH insists that mine was the lousiest tasting one (she took a bite of mine) It's freaking tiny and it's just like.. oh ok lor. Not say very nice! I would rather spend the money on an OCK curry puff! hahaha. Same price. Maybe 10cents cheaper.


Ok just a brief update on me. Erm. Next 2 weeks are mad got 3 reports to submit and social psych mid terms. And somehow I've just made the resolution to play 3 Starcraft 2 ladder games every day lol i'm mad. I want to hit Masters league! ugh.

And as some of you know, I'm writing for realFASS, and I'm considering starting some sort of weekly column so that at least I'll be blogging on a regular basis. I want to! But need inspiration one this kinda thing I scared I can't maintain. heh.

Oh well. signing off now. nite!

I am not a cognitive miser

A theory in social psychology suggests that people are 'cognitive misers'. It suggests that most people are lazy to employ much mental effort, and hence rely on automatic processing to make their decisions/attributions.

For example, a stranger trips and falls. You think 'He is clumsy!' , because you are lazy to process situational factors (e.g. Someone stuck out their foot to trip him)

I think i am something resembling the opposite of a cognitive miser, whatever that is called. I have a constant need to challenge my mind, to exert some sort of mental effort. Whether be it playing starcraft, words with friends.

In fact, my theory is that everyone is like this. Well, many people at least. When you don't exert any mental effort, you build up a cognitive surplus, and there is some sort of uneasiness in you. Dissonance, so to speak.
People expand this surplus in a variety of ways, sometimes subconsciously. Do you listen to music when traveling? That's one example already. Listening to music occupies your brain and taps away at that cognitive surplus.

(actually this idea of cognitive surplus is not my theory, i learnt it in My CNM mod last sem)

Proof that this cognitive surplus exists? There seems to be a limit. In the past I used to play UnblockMe on my iPod touch. Now, with words with friends, I stopped playing that, because I just didnt gave sufficient cognitive surplus to expand on another puzzle game.
When you say "I'm bored " , you're actually saying 'my cognitive surplus is building up, I need to expand it!"

And this whole blog post was written on my iPhone on my journey home because I had to expand my cognitive surplus. :)

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I have already mentioned this, but I'll say it again. I'm currently also writing for realfass, and their blog link is simple http://realfass.blogspot.com. Unless it's a personal blog entry, I should be posting my stuff there for now. So check them out! They have a great Twitter feed too, you can follow them @realfass even if you are not an FASS student. Www.twitter.com/realfass