Merry Christmas had a little lamb.

Puns aside, well the buildup to the 25th itself was bad. All of us have to go through a quintet of events in the next month or so - release of results, Christmas, New Year, school [reopens for the next semester], and finally Exchange results. Things did not get off to a good (or even decent) start.

I have literally (new updated meaning as per 2013) referred the whole issue to the third umpires who will run through the footage again using a whole host of technological aids such as hotspot, snicko and good old common sense. In short, an appeal.

Still, I have admittedly never fathomed such an outcome from the very get go. The amount of work I'd put in, all the hours, the sacrifices - more so than even the O's or the A's multiplied threefold should in an ideal world guarantee me a decent, or even a good result.

My own personal view, not representative of the lclub's or any other official body:

Alas, that did not happen - maybe due in part to the extremely oxymoronic and prejudicial bellcurve that we use (tell me, is it fair to sort through a sample size of 50 students and force them into predetermined grade categories with the knowledge that they do not in reality differ as much as their grades would suggest so to a layman?) Throw in the fact that most, if not all of us, possess the same knowledge of the topic, know full well the law, the issues, the arguments and you would eventually run out of objective criteria to assess us on. The bellcurve is probably, maybe, perhaps the best we can in a university of over 20k undergrads - but in a class of 50-ish students? Across a cohort of 250? It prejudices the students unlucky enough to be ranked within the last 40% - therefore a mandatory B-, C?

The faculty's stance on using raw scores to determine things such as exchange places and individual rankings is laudable - alas, potential employers are entitled to rely on the indoor management rule (hur hur, turquand's) and take your letter grade at face value. How fair is that at the end? In order to allow the university to call themselves 'fair', stave off the 'monster' that is 'grade inflation', we, the students, find ourselves at the short end of the stick.

And that's not even talking about 'moderation'. In short, 'moderation' is good as a tool to combat grade inflation; but even then grade inflation shouldn't be made out as such a bad thing if the students in a particular cohort are academically superior to their seniors.
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Caveat; this was only made worse because of eel, or expectations, exchange, and l**e.

Judge me for the superfluous use of the oxford comma if you will; hopefully I'll feel better once the last of the quintet has passed us all by.

A last coda; on parents: they really supported me throughout "just pass can already lah" - but still I really felt that I'd let them down - all the late nights, skipping family dinners, coming home when they'd alrd turned in and waking up when they'd left for the day. These are variables which the curve swats aside. I personally don't think that the 'student life' department should be using the term 'student life' in their designation if they don't know the other side of things. And it is never one you will pay much attention to, alas, if you have always been (relatively) doing well.
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Rule number one of the curve - the only reason why you did well was because someone did worse than you. You are not who you are (even if that's what everyone high up wants you to think). This semester, everyone wanted to get that extra advantage and scale the curve: turned out everyone mugged so hard that we all ended up roughly at where we started - cue massive disappointment and the raison d'�tre for this long rant.

I've learnt that you must really plumb the depths and subject yourself to the worst excesses of the curve before you can truly come to realise its flaws and shortcomings. So spare a thought for the less fortunate and stop gloating / complaining about your results if the worst grade you got is a B; or a B+.

Happy holidays.

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