- Calm before the storm -

There comes a time in a student's life when he is sapped of interest in his studies to the point that there no longer remains so much as a modicum of motivation.
It is a curious, yet inevitable and well-documented phenomenon which seems to only occur between his penultimate and final examinations. Indeed, studies have shown that the extent of this apathy is proportionate to the duration that separates these papers.

It has been said that the saddest moment in a person's life must come when he has lost the will to live. If there is a student's equivalent to that, this must be it.
This is a tricky period of contemptible disregard for that which he hitherto saw as being of great importance, when he begins to feel emaciated, his taste for progress severely attenuated.

In an act of semi-rebellion, he delights in indulging in all that distracts him (which, I may add, is not very much indeed) from the greater goal, as if to say that he has had enough, that he no longer wishes to be accountable to a force that seems to lie ultimately beyond the borders of his control.
Football seems to be the divertissement du choix of the typical male student, with a passion for the sport and a desire to neglect responsibility blending well to create a cocktail sufficient to tempt even the most focused of personalities. Images of players gliding past their established counterparts with the ball stuck to their feet, with all the grace of a danseur noble, carving out a new artform within the sport, is enough to bring a tear to the eye, and certainly serves to trigger a sudden strong urge to rush down to the nearest pitch, turf, court, or just pavement, to hone, or even display, his own skills.

However, it is at this juncture that an innate sense of guilt sets off a timely intervention that restores some perspective on the fundamental purposes for which an education is procured: money, a good degree leading to future career prospects, personal improvement, money, material objectives, a good record, girls, money.

That is, until the student flips to the back page of the ever-reliable tabloid.

Ballack signs for Chelsea for reported 130,000 pounds a week.

Now that is enough to bring a tear to the eye.

- bleed -

And I'd give up forever to touch you
cause I know that you feel me somehow
your're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
and I don't want to go home right now

and all I can taste is this moment
and all I can breathe is your life
when sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight

and I don't want the world to see me
cause I don't think that they'd understand
when everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

and you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
or the moment of truth in your lies
when everything feels like the movies
yeah you bleed just to know you're alive

- Riiiiiight -



So here's immutable proof that contrary to popular belief, God didn't create apples, papayas and kiwis. And he must HATE durians.

- Hello students and welcome to BS 101 -

So I took my first 3rd-year exam today, and spent half an hour on a question which I eventually cancelled out and did not do. For those in the know, it was a question on the intertemporal model, and was a carbon copy of one that had come out 3 or 4 years ago, with a slight difference: instead of asking students to assume that beta = 1/(1+r), the question stated: "You can assume that beta = r in this question."

The only problem with this was, assuming beta = r led one down a labyrinthine maze, with the cheese at the centre of it being replaced by a loop of interminability and a lifetime of suffering born of charging at windmills. Or half an hour with the eventual effect of having to cancel the question.

It was not shocking, thus, that an irate troop of 3rd-year students stormed the computer labs in a blur of conniption shortly after the paper to make our feelings known to the culprit.

My email: Dear -- ---------- (name omitted to protect the guilty),

Hello there! Just emerged from the EC315 paper and just wanted to let you know it was okay........except for one question, which I'm quite certain had an error in it (which I raised to the invigilator who said there was nothing wrong with it):

Q 13, the intertemporal question, stated that we can assume beta = r
However, this makes the whole question extremely messy and virtually impossible to finish within 45 minutes. I think the appropriate equation should have been beta = 1/(1+r)? Then C1 = C2 and so on and so forth.

Ended up spending 30 minutes on the question, before cancelling it to do question 14, leaving me with very very little time to finish the paper.

Could you advise me on this?

Kind regards,
Jonathan Ng

The very repentant reply: 'Dear All:I have gotten many many emails regarding this question. I'm afraid I cannot answer individual inquiries on the exam at this stage (the School does not allow me). The question said: "You can assume r=beta in this question." You didn't need to assume it'

The troglodyte.

- 360 degrees -

One day he woke up to find that nothing had changed.
It was the same bumming around on metal chairs with holes in them; the same furious, fervent scribbling on stolen white sheets of paper destined to be passed on in time; the same wishing that if ever there was a time history was in some way reflective of the future, this would be it; except the tension that had thickened the air previously had now given way to inevitability, the tremulousness replaced by anticipation, the self-admonishment and remonstrations gone, and in their place stood derring-do and resoluteness.

Here we go.