Ok so today was Contract Law finals and everyone walked out of the exam hall happy and satisfied - butnotme. Sometimes I really wonder why I can be so forgetful, unalert, unaware, illogical, confused and unrelentingly stubborn in my incapacity to change and improve. There really is a limit to how much I can tolerate my brain for having the tiniest memory storage ever and my irresistible sense of personal intuition that never fails to taint my perceptions and logical thinking process.

I've been too caught up with myself - my beliefs, my values, my principles. And that's influencing my judgments in everything I read, study, and learn. I realized that is really detrimental to this course I am in, because I am supposed to know the law and what it dictates, but what my goldfish memory permits me to is to use my emotions and instincts to determine what I think the law is. And the former and latter often do not coincide. I guess I have really been too self-centered and judgmental all these while. I imprint my own opinions in my course of study and forget to be objective. I litter the notes with thoughts of what I think should be the outcome, what I believe is fair and just, what I know is most ideal. It is my distaste (or maybe it really is my laziness or just incapability in doing massive overhaul memorizing) towards technicalities and my faith in deriving an equitable solutions through discretionary treatments in understanding the law that makes all these step-by-step guidelines so irrelevant to be. And this is probably what always propels me to argue based on principles, morals, ethics and just the rightness of the issues. But this, unfortunately, is not how the study of the subject is in reality. It is simply extremely difficult for my minute pea-sized 2MB internal memory to store all these technicalities which so repel me anyway - and therefore it is my undesirable obstinate character that supports and encourages this glaring flaw in me.

It really sucks big time to know that you tried so hard to understand and grasp the subject - and you really do (at least at the point of your studying) - and end up forgetting 90% of the content and retaining only the gist of it, namely the goals and principles of it. Exam conditions make things a million times worse when you have absolutely no time to fish through that teeny weeny memory disc of yours to spot that information that you need to support your line of argument. You know it's in there somewhere probably, but filtering it out is a huge task because you know you most probably can't in that split second that you're required to. Which brings me to another issue I am uncomfortable with - since when did education become all about memorizing anyway? Education is about learning, it's about picking up useful lessons from the experiences of others and having the luxury to dwell on it, think about it, and refer to information when necessary. Why has it boiled down to simply cramping content in your brain? Is anyone going to be less smart and analytical simply because he needed to refer to some formulations to make his argument? It's like saying a pianist is less skilled when he has to refer to a scoresheet while playing as compared to one that memorizes the entire score! If providing the score is going to be helpful in allowing the pianist play a piece more accurately and precisely, and that is going to let him shine and display his true potential having access to a key resource, then why not let him have that score? Afterall, playing accurate pieces is definitely better than playing wrongly from the start simply because you have nothing to refer to, right?

I really ought not to blame anyone other than myself though. Endowed with poor memory I finally brought to myself the doubt that I am actually suited for this course. I absolutely love what I am learning, the contents of it, and I am passionate for whatever I see myself doing in future (hopefully I do manage to get to do it). But I really do not like the structure and the restraints of the systems. The rules make learning so suffocating. It really does. And it's debilitating. All these days of hardcore mass cramping of information which ultimately proves to fail me during the exam has caused me severe migraine (what's new) again and I am feeling breathless more often than not nowadays. I don't even think I'm working my mind that much as to being analytical or insightful. It is The Cramping.

And then I sink into disappointment and try to suppress or relieve this pain pounding in my head. I search the Net to find out what can resolve my migraine issues. They tell me to identify the source of my migraine - ok that's stress most of the time I guess - then they tell me the only way to eliminate my migraine is to get rid of the source. HOW HELPFUL is that??? That is precisely the problem - I CAN'T! So what do I do. Same old cycle repeats. I live with it, suffer from it, accept it, and go through it. Over and over again. Because I . Cannot . Help . It.