Students and teachers college-wide are experiencing the Overdue Trial Examinations, or "mocks", as they are affectionally known.

The final stretch of the obstacle course? not quite. The last hurdle perhaps, for we have not yet come to the final exertion bit. That being the actualy A-levels examination.

Failure to stretch prior to a sporting event can be disasterous. Similarly, failure to revise for an examination, any examination, will bear identical consequences.

"Stretching" for the trial exams usually includes, but not restricted to, overnight perusal of the syllabus without any real hope of completion. Most students are never really prepared for the mocks. This upsetting reality is remedied by the faint promise of actually completing their revisions by the real exams.

Motivated by a dismal (or heartbreaking) performance in the mocks, the promise of better preparation for the real exams are easily kept.

However, for the really desperate, there are certain loopholes overlooked by the college authorities concerning their mock exams: More often than not, they use the immediate past year papers. In this case it was the November 2004 examination papers.

While most other colleges, particularly Taylor's, prepare their own mock papers based mainly on targetted topics, our college took the high road of making the students study everything in the syllabus. It's all about the education after all. Way to go, college! =)

Disregard the fact that some students have easy access to these papers. And that usually the questions that have just recently appeared most probably won't appear in the proceeding paper.
Again, it's all about the education. Oh, and trusting the students. The same trust they have of us taking care of the chalet computers ;)

(If you didn't get that, here's the scoop. We now have NEW chalet computers. Woohoo! And two astro receiving TVs in the cafe! But that's not the point. The point is all the computers in the chalets don't have administrator statuses. So that means even with 80GB worth of hard disk space, students can't install anything. Or at least, that's what they think... hehe)
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Reviewing my last entry, the one regarding the college blogosphere, I seem to have stretched the truth, or rather reported a stretching of the truth. The phrase "corporate culture" was probably never used by the BOGs against Fez's blog. It may not have been uttered by them at all.

Fact is, the BOGs, BOTs or whoever owns this place has no problems with the students expressing themselves in any way, with limitations of course.

"NO student or student body is allowed to regulate or instruct another student in what he/she should do or how he/she should conduct himself. The college firmly believes each student should be allowed to take responsibility for their own learning." -- Dr Ikmal on college policy, as quoted by veritasonline.

However, this does not change the fact that the college administrators (those that run the day-to-day management of this place) did call him up to tell him how unhappy the BOGs were with his blog. Hmm... that is peculiar.

Its an understatement to call that stretching the truth on the college administrators part. Selling the BOGs name like that, it was more like *gulp* ... lying.

ADDENDUM : It would be lying, if they DID do it. Considering that this isn't a perfect competition market, I therefore do not receive perfect information. I hereby accept all responsibilities of truth stretching on my blog. =)
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In any case, the best stretch in recent memory is undoubtably last assembly. We had four (4) different speakers enlightening the students on topics as wild as "lions rehabilitation in Afrika" to something closer to the pocket, "the Bursar's (or rather the college's) spending on cool new stuff"; something about college policy (read above) and finally; something worrisome, "Exam Etiquette" Read more here!

After sitting through the longest and most draining (emotionally and physically) assembly ever, nothing gets the ol' circulation going like a good stretch. *yawn*.