Today the PMR examination is finally over for my daughter! I am happy for her because whenever she takes examination, my wife and I feel the pressure as well because she always takes examination seriously. Whether it is just a trial examination in school, or piano, violin and ballet examination, looking at the way she studies and practises, the pressure imposes on herself seems to be contagious and passes onto us! We all are so relieved that today all the examinations for year 2009 were finally over for her. Hurray! she would be able to enjoy a wonderful long holidays playing computer games, watching TV programs, reading her favorite magazines, and sleep late and wake up late!
On the other hand, my son is a very relaxing person and he does not seem to worry about examinations that much! In the same way, because of his attitude towards examination, in return we do not feel the pressure that much. Only my wife pushes him to study more and grumbles on him for being too relax, it is such a strong contrast to my daughter!
To me, I think my son and daughter are at two extreme ends, and their opposing attitudes toward examinations should be "mixed" thoroughly and then divided by two, and that would be the ideal, if this is something mathematically possible!
Examinations were night mares for me for many years. Even when I graduated and started to work for quite some time, the dark shadow of examination haunted me for years. I used to wake up at mid-night, still thinking that I had not studied enough and finished covering all the syllabus for a coming examination! In this respect, I admire my son, and he could sleep equally well with or without examination!
Boys usually do not do too well in examinations before form 5 compared to girls in general. For higher secondary school syllabus, especially coming to science and math subjects, the boys start to catch up. I remember during my time, girls did their form 3 LCE examination quite well, but when came to form 5, the science stream boys fared better in the MCE examination.
I want to reiterate, it is important to choose the right subjects to study, and do not be misled into going into science stream just because your examination results qualify you for that. If a student is not cut to take on technical subjects, it is better to take on the art stream. This is just my personal advice!
I agree with you. I will retake D.V.M anytime but not the MCE please. In the varsity we are assessed many times and the finals at the most carry only 50% of the final marks. Whereas in MCE (SPM nowadays) only that 2-3 hours determines our score - how unfair!
ReplyDeleteI also agree 100% with you on your last paragraph. I have personal experience in this matter.
My daughter, now a Legal Executive in MNLG, got into science stream in SMK. Why? Because she thought that arts class was for less brainy students and thus less glamorous.
Then she wanted to do Law! It was difficult...she had to take a round-about way to get into Law class.
But my brother was lucky to have me properly advised him. I advised him to do Material Engineering. Now he is earning a lot and travelling the world over so very frequently working with IKRAM.