Back for good!

Hello hello!!!! I know I’ve been MIA for a while again, but as I have said so many times before, the boards really took up so much of my time, energy, and focus. You see, here in the Philippines, we have licensure examinations called board exams. A Diploma is not enough if you take up a highly technical course, like engineering, accountancy and a few other courses including chemistry. There are only a few courses that don’t need board exams. Those would be the vocational courses, the technology-based courses (like I.T. and other computer-related courses). 

Honestly, diplomas don’t really mean anything sometimes unless you’re a board passer. You can say that it’s also investing in yourself but then it shouldn’t be made as a job requirement. That’s the thing with Asian countries like ours that is still far too reliant on the background than on skills. 

Anyways, for the boards… well… my board exam preparation honestly was a bit stressful. First, because I handle food budget and menu planning at home and it was hard for me to trust my sisters with doing that because they tend to overspend when it comes to buying foodstuff. And they didn’t follow a menu so it kind of added to the overbudgeting. 

Aside from that, I was pretty sure my mom was trying to fatten me up when she was around because she fed me food I loved (it’s mostly veggies though). So in the end, I did gain 4kgs from all that eating I did while reviewing. 

As for my reviewing focus… well we had these international standard questionnaires: The American Chemistry Society (ACS) olympiad questions, and the GRE (which is for people trying to apply for masters). These two are well-known test banks the boards often took questions from. They both have so many editions and so many questions that anyone could use to supplement the 500 questions included in the board exam so the main goal was to understand why the answers were like that because it wouldn’t be unusual to see the exact question but with different numerical values for the given. So I answered all of those and each time I finished answering a booklet, I would immediately look up the right answer for the questions I got wrong because I learn faster from my mistakes. 

 This was basically my setup for weeks and it worked pretty okay for me because it focuses on more relevant topics instead of what I did before where I would read book after book of each subject.

2 days before the exam, my college roomy and I agreed to just book a hotel room since I doubt any of us could have woken up at 3 am just to meet a 6 am call time. It was way too early for night owls like us. So immediately after discussing that, we had a room booked for the duration of the exam. And it was a pretty good room for like $20 a night since we had AC, a fridge, a stove, microwave, and WiFi.

That's the hotel entrance and my college roomy XD I don't have a picture of myself, it's just weird for me.

Immediately after checking in, we just got our review materials out but I was more surprised that she bought gin with her XD so yeah, at 10 am, we were drinking gin to calm the nerves while we solved more questions for the 1st day subjects. We actually used to do this before major exams back in our college days so it was a nostalgic feeling to me. But it is weird to say that we actually have better computational abilities when we have a bit of alcohol in our system. And no, this is not a regular thing and we are not alcoholics but it has been months since we last drank together.

Aside from the gin when we checked in... we just relied on fast food for the exam days since neither of us had the energy to actually cook the food we brought with us. I am now still recovering and I've been trying to eat more fibrous foods to cleanse out my colon cuz I am really not used to fast food ;;-;;

This is the floor where my room was. The exam was held at a local college and in each room, there were only 12-8 people inside. Alphabetically arranged, I was in the last room XD and there were only 8 people in there, including me. The rest had 12 people in each room, I think. Anyways, for 2 whole days, I was freezing because my seat was directly under the AC and I was literally drained of brain cells because nobody imagined the board exam to be that bad.

Because of that, my batchmates who took the boards with me dragged me to nearby churches with each passing exam day. I honestly do not go to church so it was new to me and they even teased that I might melt if I set foot in a church (luckily I didn't)

So yeah, we lit candles. One candle per board subject and I knew I should have lit more candles because by the end of the exams... I wasn't even sure if I would pass that. This first church is Saint Jude's church

This was at Saint Sebastian. I was honestly just hoping for the catholic belief that is you enter a church for the first time, you need to knock on the door to make a wish

That basically sums up my exam days then immediately after, I was dragged to a spa then I just went into hibernation because I was pretty sleep deprived in the whole month that I was preparing for the boards. The next time you see me, expect an update on my juungle account or a short fiction again. For now, I just wanted people to know where I've been.