Counting down less than a month to SAT I. After about half a year (probably more) of procrastinating, I've finally registered for real and am now headed down the final run-up to the test itself. You'd think that having been in possession of the SAT prep book for half a year, I should be an absolute beast at this test by now. As much as I'd like for that to be true, or even to be able to fool myself into thinking it is, I am pretty well aware of how unprepared I am. Of course, saying things like this before a major test is pretty redundant. Is it possible to ever feel prepared enough for anything? The very thought of such a concept seems paradoxical, especially to a sleep-deprived mind like mine right now. All my life, whenever I had a test coming up soon and I wasn't studying for it, I was either thinking "aww man, I wish I had more free time to study" (rare response) or "screw this shit, these notes don't even have pictures" (common response). I have never thought of anything along the lines of "I have prepared myself to the fullest extent possible. Any further effort spent on preparation will only be wasteful and inefficient. I shall now do something else until the test day."
So long story short, the SAT is closing in on me and threatening to bite my very vulnerable rear end, and I'll need to start squeezing in as much last minute practice as I can to not fail myself and waste another month waiting for the next exam date.
A weird thing happened to me in camp on Tuesday. Out of the blue, I suddenly had a shock of inspiration course through my veins, and the only way I could release it was through creative writing. So, for the first time in 3-4 years, I wrote a one-word composition topic. It felt really cheap and pointless to come up with a word myself and then write about it, so I asked my bunkmate Zhaofeng to say the first word that came to his head, without telling him what it was for; he said "table". While in hindsight I probably could have written on the revolution of a group of sentient tables against their oppressive, put-heavy-stuff-on-their-heads human masters, at the moment I decided to ask him to pick another word; he said "zombie". It was yet another very unconventional word by 'O' level standards, but I already felt kind of guilty about rejecting the first word, so I decided to go with it. It definitely took a while to get the engine running after 4 years, but I had the luxury of writing in a non-timed setting, so by the end of the day I had a six-page essay on the word "zombie" which in my opinion (which I'm trying to keep as unbiased as possible) wouldn't look too out of place in the 'O' levels in terms of tone; fiction and drama, but nothing over-the-top which tries to disguise outrageous scenarios as good writing. I may or may not decide to retype it here for archiving's sake depending on my mood later on (I'm really too sleepy to type 6 pages right now). Maybe these creative writing exercises will become a once-a-month thing, because seriously why not: I enjoy writing stories in my own pace if inspiration wills me to do so.
Speaking of exercise, next Thursday is my IPPT for the year (cue nervous laughter). I really hope that I can maintain my silver this year, but with my PT schedule having been what it was for the past few months (empty), I really don't have that much confidence in myself right now. Oh well, there's always next time.
