stage dives high fives

For the past week or so I've noticed lots of Year 10s (GENEFAG AND CO) sweating it over their subject selections for Year 11. Perhaps this is Year 8 loser Gayvin talking again, but it bothers me when I see people doing subjects that they obviously don't want to do. It goes back to the 'Do what you love and fuck the rest' mentality - the way I see it, if you're not doing alright in a subject and you absolutely hate it, then what's the point? First example that springs to mind is 3u math; I hear about a trillion people sweating it over that goddamn subject every single time the assessments roll around. For the people who are getting a proper payoff - that's totally fine. But for the many others who still slaving at it for mediocre marks and ranks - WHY?

Of course, there are probably about a billion good reasons why: slick ATARs + ultrapower scaling, legitimately great career goals, and ridankulously strict Asian parents are only two of a probably lengthy list (probably). Since I know jack shit about how the HSC works, I can't really say anything. Derp.

I remember back when I still did 3unit - it was the worst. Maybe it was worse for me since I'm most probably a bit worse at math than everyone else, combined with the fact that I'm just plain lazy and don't practice, but I'm pretty sure a fair few people still doing the subject sweat it just as bad as I used to. When I dropped the fucking thing, it was actually one of the greatest feelings ever, and I am pretty confident that it was among the greatest decisions I've ever made for myself. A few weeks ago I tried to explain to someone how it felt using an analogy: if struggling in 3unit is like wearing five layers of clothing on a thirty-five degree day, dropping it is like stripping off all them layers with some nice breeze blowing. Most probably not the best analogy, but that's what it felt like for me. Now, I'm getting (slightly) better marks in 2u, and with much less sweating involved.

As you'd expect, the decision to drop was, in itself, something else that I stressed over. I'd been spending the past year working towards mad 3u reppin' in the HSC, by which I just mean going to Truong every week, and obviously there was the whole thing about how Asians should be wicked at math and etc. Despite 3u pretty much killing me, I was still hesitating about the decision to finally drop. I don't suppose I had it as bad as it could have been - my parents are nowhere near as iron-willed and narrow-minded as a lot of other Asian parents (calling them narrow-minded might seem a bit harsh, but come on, you know it's true) and told me that if I was sweating too much over 3u, I'd be much better off if I just dropped that thang like it were hot because I'd otherwise end up dehydrated. That's a joke. For me, the biggest things that were making me hesitant were Truong and the fact that everyone else did 3unit.


After I got over the fact that pretty much everyone I talked to (except you, Quoc) was a mad 3u rep, the only real big hurdle left was telling Truong that I was dropping. Anyone who gets tutored by him will know why that's madness. Surprisingly, when I finally walked up to him one afternoon and dropped the dumb 2u bomb, he said something like 'Good work,' and held out his fist for me to bump. Throughout the course of the not-actually-intimidating conversation that followed, he kept fist-bumping me after I said stuff; after a few times, he asked me why I kept touching his hands and called me gay. After consulting the 2unit syllabus, I discovered that I had learnt pretty much the whole thing already at Truong, except Exponential Growth and Decay, which I was a few lessons from finishing at Truong, so we agreed that I would continue going to class until we finished it, at which point I'd be done. At the conclusion of my last lesson, he gave me a hug, and told me to get back to him once the HSC results were out to say thanks to him.

And that was that. I could tell vaguely similar stories about the rest of my subjects - while I hesitated about picking a few of them (Ag and Music, in particular) because they didn't fit in with everyone's expectations of Asians and the Phys-Chem-Bio nerd package, I ended up choosing them anyway, and they've paid off pretty well so far; I'm coming 3rd in Music from barely trying, and I came 7th (or 11th, one of them) in Ag last year, though my performance has been dropping a bit lately. People could quite legitimately laugh at my ridiculous choices (I don't really think anyone does, though), but they're not the ones who are pulling pretty sweet marks overall with almost zero effort.
TL;DR - So what I've been trying to get at this whole time is this: in terms of subjects, don't be afraid to just fuck the world, and do what you love. Any advice you've ever heard about staying true to yourself is pure gold.

what? what about my future, you ask? and what am i supposed to be doing in uni? dunno lol, i have no idea.