Update 02
I gotta say, it is cute reading that last update post, knowing what we know now… I’ll have to properly write up exactly what happened for the sake of posterity, but basically our city went under lockdown again over the weeks following that update because of the “delta strain” of that “coronavirus” or whatever that you keep hearing about on the news and it’s, naturally, messed a bunch of stuff up. Most relevantly for me and my friends, it’s messed up our school, our final exams and probably most of our mental healths. Helves. Mental states.
This sucks, man!
(Although we must remember that a lot of people have it worse. The nurses and healthcare professionals, for example… and my German teacher sounded very done with the whole situation today.[hover for bonus note] But anyway, back to me complaining.)
I am normally a pretty good student, but things fell apart on Zoom school. It was much worse than last year for some reason (probably due to the anxiety of final exams this time around). I fell behind on work and I feel guilty about it. I did not do as well as I could have on most of my exams (although there were some pleasant surprises) and I did particularly badly in a few that I knew I was having trouble with. I am not looking forward to facing my teachers about this.
I have basically just spent the weekend and handful of days we got off post-exams working on this site and writing this thing to calm down. It has been a nice escape doing research into chiptune and music, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the update so far.
Fortune has smiled upon me, however, as these exams did not count towards our final assessment mark. They are not going to do me any favours written down on any scholarship applications (shudder), but the final number we get that objectively determines our self-worth at the end of the year should be isolated from this whole debacle. Wallowing in self-pity is basically what got me into this mess, so I’m going to figure out exactly what I need to do to get out of it and get the mark I want.
Yeah, I don’t really like writing that last sentence, but that’s the problem, isn’t it. I hate doing this exam-oriented work and most of the time I struggle to see the point of any of it, but then I feel awful when consequences inevitably happen. So! Let’s work on that!
Hence the creation of the War Room, a place where I basically plan to document my study grind for these last few weeks. You may rightly question the wisdom of doing this on the platform of Neocities, a known time-waster (at least for me personally). Well, I think that being able to see my own reasoning presented to myself in a clear way (i.e. in the form of a webpage) should serve as a good reminder when I’m feeling down. Public Neocities updates require commitment, and commitment is a crucial part of what I’m trying to work on. And, if anyone else on here can take away anything interesting from what I document or suggest improvements for myself, all the better! So, stay tuned.
Oh, and yes, I finished Watchmen and VA-11 Hall-A. I’m no good at reviewing (as that previous update will tell you, yikes) but I will say that I found them both good and worth reading/playing. May share thoughts some other time when all this blows over. Same goes for those articles I mentioned – rescheduled to “when this blows over”!
I feel like I should have some sort of sign-off for these…