messymatty

HEART ATTACK! MY HEART ALMOST FELL OUT TODAY! I took my IB A1 Higher English Individual Oral Commentary(IOC). Really really stressed out by it. It has a certain percentage on my final English grade. The time period before I entered the room was really horrible, so filled with tension. One has to read, study, analyse and remember four texts, Much Ado about Nothing, Shakespeare Sonnets, Dubliners by James Joyce and A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift.

Come the exam day, students enter the room, choose 1 out of 8 sealed envelopes which will contain an extract of 40 lines from any of the 4 texts. 20 minutes of preparation time will given in a quarantine room. Following it, we will speak individually to the examiner for 12 minutes on that extract! Followed by 3 minutes of Q&A. OMG! See How stressful it is. The extract chosen is nameless, some extracts like those from the short stories do not beginning or ending sentence, a scene/extract out of no where. Hence we have to rely on our memory which section is it in, whether it's in the beginning, middle or ending parts.

The extract I took was Sonnet 130 done by William Shakespeare, which I immediately recognized. I really thank the Lord for being merciful to me. Being there beside me as I took my exam, helping pen my thoughts down, keeping me calm, allowing me to speak my best. Now I'm sort of relief!

Sonnet 130:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breast are dun;

If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head,

I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;