Wind In My Head: Homework
Wind In My Head
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Homework
When I was in primary school, my mother would always tell me that I should finish my homework on Friday so that I wouldn't have to worry about it during the weekend. In theory, that sounds like a good idea. And it will probably be one of those pieces of advice that I will say to my children and then stop myself halfway in horror because I would have suddenly had a flash back to when I was in school, except this time, it was my voice, coming out of my mother's mouth! Anyway, she did say that to me and every Friday, I would come home, dump my bag in the corner and rejoice over the fact that there was no school the next day! The bag would stay in the corner, totally forgotten till Sunday night, where there would be great great amounts of panic because it would be at that point that I would realise how many pages of Chinese writing homework I had to do but had failed to.The thing about it was that all through the Saturdays, there would be this nagging feeling at the back of my head about my homework and I would hastily shove aside because I wanted to be swimming and out playing. As I got older, as long as there was homework not done, no matter how much fun I was having over the weekend, part of me would be dreading the point where I had to go home, buck down and finish it. It was a horrible feeling, that came only second to how I would feel Sunday evening, knowing that the next day, I would have to go back to school again.
Fast forward 20 years...
I still get those horrid Sunday evening feeling, it hits about 8 o' clock and nothing's changed. My father still says very loudly "Got school tomorrow!" Of course, this is directed more at my nephew and niece but it was the exact same tone he used with me to get me to get ready to go to bed. And his tone still makes my heart sink right into my stomach because, really, nothing's changed. Every Sunday, when he says that, it still applies to me. The next day, I would have school. And it still sucks royally.
Just like this sucks.
Going out the whole of today and having lots of fun was great fun. I think I drank close to 1.5 litres of iced tea today. I also had a great lunch, followed by a movie, followed by a great dinner. But I knew, that the minute I got home, I had to start on my homework. Although it's not Chinese homework, sometimes the stuff that I have to plough through is written in a language so alien, it could really be Chinese homework. The feeling really hasn't changed much. It's a deep deep sense of dread with a whole lot of reluctance thrown in for good measure.
Worse, there's the Internet obviously to distract me, the bed that looks extremely inviting and no mother sending the "don't you dare" stare everytime I looked as if I was going to get up from my seat. So, there's really very little motivation or fear that's driving me to do my work. The only thing keeping me planted to my seat is that horrid, horrid sense of guilt that I didn't do a stitch of work the entire day and while that wasn't enough to motivate me to do anything when I was 10, it sure is now.
Darn, I wish I never grew up. Otherwise, I could do what I did then, shove all the Chinese workbooks under the couch so that I could feign ignorance about homework and tell the teacher I couldn't hand in the work because my books were lost. Of course, that trick only works if the couch stays put. If you end up moving and the couch gets moved and having to explain away the dust covered, cobwebbed books to the mother, you'd wish you'd done the homework. I wish I could do the same now especially since I won't have to explain anything to my mother and my couch is a pretty long one that can hide a whole lot of papers.
My only problem is, doing that then and explaining it to my mother was hard. Now, I would have to explain it to 225 students, their parents, my bosses and possibly my bosses' bosses and at the end of it, I'm not going to be let off with just a "no tv for one week" ban. It would probably be more along the lines of "go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200".
So, it really blows.
Technorati Tags: Singapore, exams
Ondine tossed this thought in at 21:55
