Do you know what really Grinds my Gears Part 2: Tests

Welcome back to what really Grinds my Gears: Part 2! This week, I look at my Arch-Enemy, Tests! Quite simply put, Tests are a pain in the butt. They exist to stress you out, taunting you with the prospect of a bad result (shudders), and threatening you with a dark stain on your report. I'm only a month into 4eme right now and I can't even count how many Tests I've had already (I think I've done something like five Maths Tests in one month!). Tests are a living hell, but can be rewarding in the long term, which is part of the reason why I keep crawling back into its Dark, evil clutches...

                                                        THEY STRESS YOU OUT!


Tests are a emotional Roller-Coaster, with three primary stages:
1. Revision, the dreaded period where you have to Review everything you've done in the past week/month of  any subject (not accounting Sport, where Tests are a matter of endurance and physical skill), which for me, normally accounts to 2-3 Hours per Test (no joke, it takes FOREVER for me to even remember one sentence). I spend an entire day pushing back the so-called "Revision time" just because its B-O-R-I-N-G. I mean, could you recite a page of French Text for two Hours without getting bored? I can't. The Revision stage is nessecary if you even want to hope about getting a good Result. I learnt the time-consuming way that if you manage to recite your lessons off by heart you're practically guaranteed to get 5/5, 10/10, 20/20 ect... Only problem is that after two hours of reciting the words over and over again those words become just that: WORDS. It has no meaning to me any more. In Tests, I'm just reciting words by memory onto a piece of paper without any thought behind it. Like Blogger.com tasked with remembering the words that I've typed  when I hit the 'SAVE' button right now. I'm not invested into the subject at all, I'm invested into getting a good Test result. Ask me a Week after any Test whether I remember anything about that Test and I'll say (apart from what Result I got) NO. So that kinda defeats the whole purpose of a Test doesn't it?

2. The Test, the moment when you're the most stressed out: the high stress level points being right before the Test, when your frantically checking your Memory to see whether or not you've remembered anything, and the point where you stumble upon a Question where you have no idea what the answer is (which really Grinds my Gears I can tell you, because for me, thats one point or more less, which then means a lower score, which then means that my Report for the Trimestre has gone down as well, which then means...IT CAN NEVER BE PERFECT!...And I have less a chance of beating my previous score). These moments are the make-or-break of a Test. The really annoying thing about all this stress is that it can  sometimes put a cloud over your Memory, which means blocking certain facts or just effecting the overall Score in any way it can. If stress was a person, I'd shoot it, along with that over Bastard, the guy that invented Education: "GET ON THE FLOOR AND BEG FOR YOUR LIFE!" BANG! Anyway, lets wrap things up, as this paragraph is already becoming far too long...
3. The Result, the part of the process that requires the least effort, but contains one of the most tense filled moments of the entire process. So you've spent the next agonising days wondering about what the outcome will be, whether a 20/20 awaits you or a most evil 10/20 (10 is a insult, 0 is excrutiatingly painful), ready to eat you whole. I've had my fair share of both Results, and this is the only time that I can say that the wait is truly KILLING me. The moment when the Teacher hands you back your Test, the moment when you first set your eyes over the dark red ink at the top of the page, showcasing the two encircled numbers, is THE most tense filled, gut wrenching, suspensful and heart tearing moment that only the greatest of Alfred Hitchcock films can truly match up to. Then, at that precise moment, your fate is revealed...

It can end two ways: one where your left immediately overwelmed, happy, and proud....or the other where you feel bottomless, bullet-hole ridden and deserted, hating your very existance and even going as far as saying you hate your Life. It may shock you how someone can get so emotionally overwelmed over the History Test you had last Friday, but for me, thats what Tests are like. But why get so worked up about it? Its only a Test right? Surely its no big deal? This may seem like a cop out answer to these questions, but I have no reason why, it just affects me that way...

Having said that though, I have only recently become the perfectionist that I am, and I now find myself at the unfortunate point where a 18/20 in a History Test that I spent nearly three Hours on Sunday night revising for it is simply not enough. I have somehow developped this greed to become perfect in everything, and even though I can never acheive 20/20 in everything, god damn do I try. I suppose that's a good thing, put please God, take away all the stress and the hard work, I'm trying to be lazy, I really am! Funnily enough, two years ago I was getting really bad results, not to mention having quite a tough time at School and even a few Family issues. I can't say things have turned out the completely opposite way, but damn if it hasn't improved alot. So perhaps these feelings only occur to perfectionists such as myself? I don't know...
Anyway, I have already done far too much typing (my hands are VERY sore), and I've got quite a bit of Revising to do for an upcoming Test....OH NO, NOT ANOTHER ONE!    

                                                 ARGHHHHHHHHHHH!

Mass Effect 2: Best game I've played?

http://youtu.be/R5DL6jFXfhM Mass Effect 2 for most people truly ascends what us mere mortals call 'a video game', it changed the whole way people saw gaming and elevated Bioware's status to become one of the best gaming developpers out there. But why has it become blasphemy not to give this game a perfect 10/10 rating? Well, for one week (towards the end of the Summer Holiday when I had nothing to do) I sat cooped up in my Bedroom playing both the first game and the second game non-stop, and...THIS GAME IS AWESOME! Never have I felt so emotionally attached to a Game (heck after a week of almost non-stop playthroughs I started to breath this thing!) in all my life. The characters just seem to suck you into this almost Blade-Runner-crossed-with -Serenity-and-a bit-of-Star-Wars-esque World thats so compelling and surprisingly logical and realistic that it COMPLETELY blows your mind! By the end of ME2 I truly felt it when one of my squad died. The gameplay/combat isn't Call of Duty good but its still really enjoyable (Note: the first games combat was kinda boring, you only really played it to advance the Story and see where it would go, so a real improvement). 

 The Story and setting is what elevates this game and turns it into a masterpiece worthy of any classic Sci-Fi film though, the Story is just SO Epic! You play as well, anyone you want to be, you can change the characters gender, face, colour, name, personality and craft a character that really fits with you (you have the option of being a real Jerk, as displayed in this video http://youtu.be/xFajRU4xAVI or you can play as this really nice, sweet guy who cares for everyone. Other options include the stoic Hero, who sacrifices everything for the greater good or maybe even a mix of any two, or even of bit of all three! The game leaves the options up to you). I choose to be overly nice, but when the time comes a heart of complete stone. These options alone mean you'll have too play it for at least 100 times over to get every single miniscule amount of content in the Game. It doesn't stop with customising your character though, because thats just the start: EVERYTHING in this game can be changed, altered or reconstructed from the relationship you have with the Characters, Weapons, Skills, even shaping and modeling the Story! 

 Everything you do in the game will affect the endings outcome, heck if you've been a mean Bastard throughout the Game's entirety, the Game will reward you with all your Teamates dying at the end, and even YOU can die as well, ending the game completely:  http://youtu.be/pRHhdc53Od8 or like me everyone could make it out alive: http://youtu.be/e-RFVPZhXbo . The coolest thing though is all the choices you made in Mass Effect 1 (sacrificing one character for another, one teamate dying in a arguement with another Team member ect...) can be IMPORTED into Mass Effect 2 so you can continue your 'arc' or 'journey' and then (reportedly the 1000+ decisions you would make over the past two games) that will be carried onto the final game Mass Effect 3 (its got this big Lord Of The Rings Trilogy thing going for it) and ALL OF THEM will shape the ultimate, ultimate ending. So the game can be played differently every time you play it then, which is just amazing! The fact that a programmed game can do  this is just groundbreaking in terms of technology, giving you the impression that its 'your story'. Another, important thing you must do in the game is your Relationships with the other characters. And boy, there are tons of them, ranging from Assasins to Justicars, Robots to Merecenaries to Clones to, well every weird alien character there can be. Some provide comedic relief, others have some really F*cked up backrounds so theres plenty of diversity. 

 The fact that you'll like some more than others will also affect the Game, you can forge relationships over a period of time in the 30-80 Hours you will play ME2, with four optional love interests if you a play a man (http://youtu.be/oNixoKm9T7w , http://youtu.be/YLPk4pwmQ9Q , http://youtu.be/MP1gfoVQSyY , http://youtu.be/1Ja3EjKOqTU ) and three if you play a Woman ( http://youtu.be/ZinuVrgE7So , http://youtu.be/kFMdhHGKRZk , http://youtu.be/_9vMF7ooJes) *COUGH* Theirs even a...erm...Lesbian romance in there somewhere....better not show that..! So as you can see by now, Mass Effect 2 truly is as good as people are saying, and over the period of Days, Weeks (1 Week in my case) or Months that you play this game it will continue to evolve into something truly groundbreaking. This is a 'experience' unlike any other in a Game I've played, attaching you emotionally in a way that Movies or T.V never can. The interactability and diverse nature of this game DOES make it the best Game I've ever played and will definately pull on your heartstrings by the end. Just the fact that you get to be the main Character means its a experience worth searching for...              

NORMANDY OUT!