Lesson 115 (Pre-Advance 1 Lesson 13)

This should be the last for Pre-Advance 1, since this was the test.

I won’t go into a lot of detail, but generally, it was easy. It was easy, and doable, from me who has not been studying and reviewing Anki much. Listening was easy and I could catch most things. Oral was easy too in that nothing was conversation or question and answer. Yes, I still made mistakes that I know I did. I forgot words that I should not have forgotten if I had properly revised. And I found myself forgetting conjugations of things before, and even those in this chapter, and just guessing. For the first time, I had to guess, a few things for grammar, or whatever that section following that was. The essay topic wasn’t hard; it was self-intro and then about habits and that was basically the last essay we had to write (since it was 3A chapter 2). Except I did not write it, though I drafted the points. Still, that was that.

There were some scares because of my printer not printing grey properly, so I had images for the oral disappear from my paper. The squares for writing too, but fortunately the answer sheet still exists, it still gets sent with the notes, so I used that. If not, I would just use my usual writing paper (since I am back to writing paper, as I have used up the book and have yet to buy another).

This other teacher was… nice, seems a bit more… outgoing. We started listening 15 mins into the test, not at the start, so that was fortunate for me who was 2 minutes late because of issues connecting to Zoom after the printer. Which led me to cancel and try again, and I thought (because it disappears from history, and I do not memorise the meeting IDs) that the one that I am left with is not the last one I tried to enter, and the last one is gone from the list. So I had to scramble to my messages to search for the meeting link. Saw it was the same, but by the time I entered it was 2 minutes late. Still, someone joined after me. I actually did NOT pay attention to who was in class (even at the end, more on this later) but when I joined it was 8 participants, so it should be 7 students. And 1 person joined after me based on the teacher saying so, so maybe it was 8 people? But I also think everyone was there, or not, who knows.

So the thing is at the end, I did not get called for oral until the very end. I was the second last. But mine was after the rest could leave as the lesson time was over (1 and a half hours). The timing was also such that the paper is due (to send to our regular teacher) 15 mins after the lesson ends. My oral ended 13 mins after the usual end, so by the time I’d taken pictures, it was 17 minutes past (2 minutes after the deadline). And then I had to resend the writing part because in my haste I took a blurred picture. So it was that by the end, my brain was pretty much, uh, dead.

If there is one lesson to be learnt, it is to be prepared. In the end, this was possibly one of the best outcomes I could have. Actually, I think given the circumstances, I can safely say it was the best in terms of how well I could possibly do. But I am dissatisfied with myself and what I have done that led to this. But I am also so, so tired these days, that I don’t know if I will actually make the changes so that I do not find myself in a similar situation the next time around, where I do not think the outcome will nearly be as good.