bitchings; on the verbal war

first and foremost, i'd like to heave a super duper dramatic big SIGH of relief!
*PHEW!*
Diploma Plus's Psychology Debate for our team is finally O.V.E.R!
(good luck to the next 2 teams on nature vs nurture)
well, our motion was "Humans are naturally good", and my team was the proposition team.
overall, opposition team did better than us. ):
but it was not unexpected as the opponent team is really very strong, and all of them were very outspoken and eloquent.
and i've to admit, our team's morale went down one notch just from knowing they are our opponent.


normally, after some presentation or in-class assessment is over, i'd just go, PHEW! and then get over with it, because what's done is done, and no point crying over spilled milk.
but this particular instance, i just want to note down all the lessons i've learnt from this debate.
it's not the outcome that really mattered the most to me, but rather, the process.
i think it was negligence on our team's part to have let the opponent team intimidate us, just because they had a headstart on doing the research for the debate like, 1 week before us.
stupid Forgel was blabbing during French class to me that how difficult it was, and how much they had to do and I totally freaked. (and honestly, it actually dawned on me that moment, "oh ya! the psychology debate! cuz i totally forgot about it.) and when we actually met up on Friday (French is on Wednesday), it then dawned on us that the debate's next next Monday.
so i admit, it's our own negligence that we didn't prepare sufficiently, and allowed the opponent to intimidate us.
that's lesson #1

next i think for our group, would be coordinating.
i think we relied on Yan Ting too much for our group's coordination in terms of exchange of information etc. and till now i still don't understand why there's a break down of communication. i only realized today that i had completely NO IDEA what Yan Ting & Russell's arguments are about, because I've never ever read their part of the research. and in the end, because of this, their arguments kind of contradicted with some other parts of our arguments. i'm not trying to finger-point whose fault is it here, but i'm just trying to show that both parties are at fault because we shouldn't wait for others to send us the information, but also actively and initiatively and responsibly request for it too, should we not receive it. and in terms of the sender, i think it's always a good habit and the team-mate's responsibility to email everyone in the team what research you've done to:
#1 show you've done your part of the work
#2 prevent overlapping
#3 allow consistency in the team.
this is lesson #2.

whereas for lesson #3...
hmm, it's a little more complicated.
kind of like a personal evaluation for each and everyone.
for Shi Ping,
he's really very stubborn at times, and i would bicker everytime we meet up (or rather, we bicker EVERYDAY since we're like classmates, but recently i bicker more with Clinton. haha. ) and sometimes he thinks in this really eccentric perspective that it will take some time to digest and understand what point he was trying to make. ok sometimes i don't even understand after long time of trying to digest. maybe he's too smart for me to understand? HAHA. (i think some times he's quite pessimistic too, ok digression.)
but nevertheless, i think he contributed the most (content-wise) to our group's debate for the point he found was the most substantial and useful.

for Yan Ling,
i was a little bit upset during the 15mins free-debate because i didn't get the chance to speak up much except addressing the opposition's queries on my points.
and during the free debate, after mentioning a point, Yan Ling went on to point out a second point, and i was quite shock because there isn't much left to rebutt from what we've gathered in the short discussion time we were given.
in my heart i was thinking, "Come on la, if you haven't realized, Yan Ting and I haven't really spoken in the free debate. Why are you so selfish?"

knowing Yan Ling, i know what she did might have been unintentional, but i think what Miss Tan mentioned is true. the opposition team's cooperation is really much better than ours, because like when Chin Xiang and Forgel are "over-talking", the rest of their team mates would gently remind them. and they have the conciousness to help each and everyone to speak up during the free debate, unlike our team.

for Yan Ting,
also a very hardworking member, and somehow, along the way she became the "coordinator" but it's just weird because all the information will go to her, but then not disseminated out, so there was the (mentioned) miscommunication and inconsistency of our debate.

for Russell,
always seem so heck care and look so blur in my opinion, but i'm surprised at his ability to think on his feet rather quickly. but i was feeling quite irritated on Saturday because he said he is free for the whole day when we met up on someday (thurs? fri?) to decide on the next day to meet up. and when we met up on saturday, he said he has to leave at 2pm.

as for myself,
i think i really really need to wake my brain up and make use of it more. i've no idea why, but my brain seems to halt and cease working whenever we're doing discussions. and psychologists have this tendency to phrase things in bombastic manner with complicated phrasing that just automatically switch my brain off. i need to activate my brain and be more quick in thinking off my feet, and also, be more analytical. that's where i'm seriously lack in.
besides that i think it all leads back to the same old problems of procrastination, time management. and when the going gets tough, the tough can't go shopping or viwawa-ing! (escapism) i just have this tendency to want to escape when the workload increases tumultuously. so i think to a certain extent, i didn't display the normal attitude that i usually have for projects in this particular one. (but you know what, i borrowed like, 8 books for the project?! spanning from NLB to SB lib to troubling Joel to borrow from NUS Central Lib and i have to go all the way to NUS to return the books leh!)

but all in all, i think i gained better insights of many things in terms of psychology related topics, and it also helped me re-cap my biology (serotonin, point mutation, photocopy error of DNA, testosterone, cerebral cortex -.-). i also realized the passion for biology is still there, (though not as strong as for psychology) but the knowledge just can't encode into my long-term memory lah boo hoo ):


let's just hope all these lessons are not forgotten!
because it is another painful lesson.

---

on lighter note, it's only 20% lah. (still, can make or break my grades leh!)

and
and
and!
OH NATTY POOT i received the Invitation!
ahahaha.
i'm so psyched about it, it's going to be like, my sole source of support to pull me through these few hectic weeks!!! (i've like, a ton of projects in due soon)

i was so psyched amidst moaning and whining and groaning about the debate during our last minute preparation, that when i saw the Invitation, I couldn't contain myself but started punching the dial keys for Clairey Neo Poots and Clarissa the Bimbo, just to take my mind off for awhile and also because i was TRULY excited about it.

alright enough! i need to chiong my QA tutorial already, and somehow i feel as though i've been talking for over an hour - exhausted and thirsty.