Month: May 2019

The two day break continues. As this Tax paper gets closer and closer, all I’m thinking about is whether adults feel this way when they’re asked to file their taxes. Just, 0 clue about what is happening, but a requirement to do something compulsory that is expected of you by the Government.

Two day gaps between exams are horrific for individuals who enjoy procrastination, such as yours truly. The next exam I have is the Law of Taxation-II. I remember coming into University, and when I met fifth years, they told me how fourth year was horrible solely because of Tax as a concept. At the time, I couldn’t understand. As a student who liked Math, I looked at Tax as an opportunity to revisit numbers and concepts like percentages – all stuff I really liked. I was naive.

This is not to say that Tax is a paper that’s bad. It’s just that we were taught the subject in a manner that was rather unstructured – and none of us, for our part, paid any attention in class, which has led to information asymmetry to the extent that it is, at this point, just the Professor who knows the true extent of the portions which are included for the exam.

Sigh. Such is life. We will get through this as a batch, as we always do. The comfort of knowing that people are lost in the collective is humorous, to say the least.

In other news: I slept 4 hours in the afternoon today. So much for not getting sleep during exam time.

My morning was me oscillating from phases of “oh, I know this” to “oh, I know nothing about this”, and oscillating between my bed and my table. The exam went alright. My roommate gifted me a new fountain pen, which I used in today’s paper. I forgot what new, untested pens can do to writing paces when introduced to the system during exams itself. I wrote significantly quicker because the pen was a lot lighter than the pen I was used to writing with. I remember this being the biggest argument to switch away from fountain pens: the fact that the weight slowed you down. Which was problematic because as a left-hander I was anyway at a much slower writing pace than others. So to write slower, on purpose, was not something in my best interest. I persisted. As a consequence, in University, while my handwriting in my notebook (when I choose to write), is decent, in exams, my script tends to descend into absolute chaos by the last page. I make sure it’s legible though. To the best I can. I feel like pharmacists and University professors have the best ability to decipher new scripts. They’re probably the only ones who understand how to read the “Wingdings” script on Microsoft Word.

Speaking of Microsoft Word, I’m not certain if everyone’s systems have downloaded the patches to Office generally. But there’s a new logotype that now adorns all of the Microsoft products, in addition to the way the Microsoft files save on your desktop. There are some things in computer technology which are iconic, and the Microsoft logos was definitely one of them. The switch is something I’m getting used to, and quite enjoying. I must say, though, that I’m glad they didn’t mess around with the colours that each Office product holds. Word is still Blue, Powerpoint is still red-orange, Excel is still a green that is distinctively associated only with Excel (and the colour of the walls in the master bedroom in our Dubai apartment, circa 2007).

In other news, I got to go out for dinner with some of the people I spent a lot of time with around August-September 2018 as we tackled the shackles of the administration in unison. That was fun. The food was good. We also met for the same event’s 2019 edition, with two of my batchmates on this year’s Core. The quick realization that occurred over there is that these posts are very ceremonial: you hold them to deal with the administration, solely, and to manage and micromanage. But there’s enough people, and sets of people in each batch seem to collectively share the responsibility of specific events together, post or no-post. 6 of us do this for the Debate on campus from my batch, which is always super one. One Last Time will be too.

(That’s right. Mentioning OLT inb4 everyone else.)

Oh, also. I found this amazing documentary that I would urge everyone to watch, about Ed Sheeran’s songwriting process & everything. Really, really enjoyable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCU9hz_Xvdg

I liked it. Ended up downloading a copy on my laptop in case this gets blocked for copyright.

I spoke to my parents for a while today, and the nature of our conversation made my mother question whether or not I was actually in the middle of exams. I chuckled and responded with how normalized this entire process of writing exams has become for me. After writing maybe 93 papers so far in Law School, I’ve learnt the art of preparing for exams on short notice and writing decently enough (to the point of happiness). This doesn’t make me complacent, but it’s a skill that I’ve definitely picked up with the sheer number of papers this place makes you write.

Finally, a couple of things. We now have a new Director at our University, who will start term on July 1. I’m looking forward to that. And, I’m purchasing a MIDI keyboard! After maybe 7 years of wanting one. That’s something I’m super duper eager to use.

These one day breaks between exams really give you ample procrastination time. My policy of rewarding myself for each module that I finish has led to me sleeping far more than finishing modules. While I think that’s acceptable for papers that didn’t have portions that were heavy, it seems to be coming back to bite me, thus far, as I study for tomorrow. Guess I’ll be pulling a late-night to actually understand everything I read. Which is fair enough, I’ve brought this upon myself.

The good thing though is that I’ll have nice music to keep me company. Vampire Weekend released their new album today. They had released 2 singles off the album onto YouTube, which had really HD music videos, but I didn’t know what to make of the songs themselves. However, upon my first listen, I have figured that I really like the new album because of how diverse the songs on the record are. Each one appears to come from a different place, a different background. That’s exciting because of the fact that there’s an unfamiliar melody/countermelody that’s running through the song, as well as instruments which aren’t so popular in pop music today. Reminds me a lot of why “Redbone” by Childish Gambino had so much success.

Coming back to examination stuff. I think that it’s pretty hilarious that we engage in so much piracy and study for Intellectual Property Rights examinations. Rather enjoyable: to download an entire movie off the internet, but then study the Law that’s supposed to prevent these things from happening.

Back to the books I go. Or is back to my bed?

Yes, I read the title out loud exactly the way T-Swift would have if this was a Taylor Swift song. Unfortunately, it is merely a blog post, and you’re stuck with a mock T-Swift, a T-Rao, if you would. I have the same amount of swag, though. Don’t be fooled.

The cycle of rewarding  myself with naps after each module I completed continued onto today, the day of the exam. So, with about 4 hours to go to the exam, I think I napped for a good one hour. I played nap roulette. Slept without an alarm, fully confident that if anything happened, my roommate would ensure I would wake up. What I did not factor in was his potential to sleep as well. So sleep we did.

In either case, the paper went well. I’m pretty happy with the kind of papers that have been set this semester. They’re broad, with testing coming from across the syllabus. Which makes studying this much portion actually worth it – because you know atleast one question will be asked from the module. Kudos to our Professors. And they’re fun questions also. But this is only one-third the way through my exams, so we’ll see how the other papers turn out.

The sleep cycle has been turned on its head by the exams being in the afternoon, but I’m loving every minute of it. I came back from my exam at 5pm and slept till 8:30pm. Woke up for dinner, and then began my day as if it’s the morning: eating, then catching up with the news and music, and everything I usually do.

CBSE results were apparently announced today and we’re celebrating toppers on national television, but what’s notable is also that the number of candidates appearing for exams, in addition to the pass percentage has both gone up. These are good indications. What’ll be interesting to see is whether the number of candidates has gone up merely because of demographics or because there are more people enrolled in schools from this age group rather than last year’s graduates, or even as compared to 5 years ago. I don’t exactly know how the mechanics of such a study can be designed, but it’ll be interesting data for sure.

I’m also getting super into Marie Kondo’s show now. Her philosophy is very interesting. I’m curious to see whether I actually end up implementing it when I get home in summer.

Yup, it’s officially May now. Which means GloPoWriMo has come to an end, and you will no longer be subject to an infrequent post list which ends up with you getting around 8  notifications when I post 4 days worth of content.

You’re blessed. You’re welcome.

Today is labour day, and I woke up in the morning forgetting the rest of the country would be on holiday. Hence a few texts were sent in the morning wondering whether people had left for home, and wondering if I should call to wake them up: in the event they overslept and missed their alarm. I’m glad I didn’t. In the evening, however, I discovered that today wasn’t a holiday in the United States of America. At first, I thought it was a natural consequence of capitalism: why celebrate your labourers at all. It seemed fairly plausible that America had taken this to the extreme. A quick Google search revealed they celebrated labour day in September, on the first Monday.

This led to me thinking two things.

First, different countries shouldn’t be allowed to celebrate the same thing on different days. It’s so weird. This happened to me this year, because it was Mothers’ Day in the UAE when I was there (March), and I refused to gift my mum, telling her I’d wish her when it was Mothers’ Day in India (May). But imagine you’re a globetrotter. The number of times you’d celebrate the same holiday is incredulous to me. Also, standardizing the holiday around the world will allow for a more wholesome celebration, in my head – because you can compare the different ways in which each tradition celebrates the same day.

Second, America got this one right. See, we celebrate this on May 1st, a date. And in India, we have a lot of “date” holidays. As a consequence of this, we don’t get some holidays – because they’ll fall on a Saturday or a Sunday. Which means inevitably we lose one holiday in the year. We should switch to “day” based holidays. First Monday of September. Second Monday of June. Tejas’ birthday must always be a working day and celebrated as Tejas Jayanti. Just throwing these ideas out there.

Anyway, off to study Labour Law now. It’s hilarious that I’m studying Labour in Gujarat on Labour Day and Gujarat Day. I’ve made this joke several times over the last 24 hours and it gets me every time. The subject’s very whatever. Can’t wait to be done, and get 1/3rd the way through exams. Closer to the end of fourth year with each passing day.