It's the 2nd day of school today! I am feeling much better today than yesterday. No, I am not feeling sick or anything. It is just that I was feeling super lousy yesterday. I didn't head back to school with the excitement of meeting my friends or attending lectures. In fact, I headed back to school with a heavy heart. I always feel this way during the first day of school because I am reluctant to move away from my slacking days during the holidays and be back to the stressful and competitive school life. And the 1st lecture that I attended yesterday just made my heart sink to rock bottom.

I am taking a module called 'Basic Translation' this semester and the first lecture that I attended was for this module. I thought I could have a rather easy time handling this module, because I thought my standards for both English and Chinese are not too bad. Trust me, NEVER judge a module by its name, because the translation skills involved are not basic at all. It requires a good grasp of both English and Mandarin and I am not at that level yet. After attending this lecture, I have to admit that my language skills are totally incomparable to the others taking this module. The lecturer was randomly picking people out and asked them to translate the English sentences that he posed on slides into Mandarin and they all did it perfectly! I was like OMG! They are all so good! I was feeling stressed out barely half an hour into the lecture and I was taking deep breaths to make this stress go away, but apparently it didn't.

The stress just accumulated when the lecturer told us that translation is not an easy task because it is not just word for word translation; we have to consider the cultural aspect and the context of the sentences, and then translate them into concise sentences without losing the meaning of the original sentences. He gave us more practices by posing more sentences on the slides and I couldn't really translate them properly and concisely. When he gave us the answers at the end of the sentences, most of my answers were inaccurate. I seriously felt like ripping my hair off. After the end of the lecture, I just felt that I couldn't meet the demands of this module and I felt rather depressed.

I waited for 2 hours before my next lecture begins. The lecturer was ok, less scary and stresful than the first one, but the depressed feeling was still lingering in me. At the end of this lecture, I was dead tired. It seemed that my mind became very rusty over the 3 months, and the 4 hours lecture that I attended drain every bit of my energy away. When I reached home, I told my mother that attending 4 hours of lecture is even more exhausting than working 12 hours as temperature screener. I was so tired that I slept at 10.30pm.

The lecture that I attended today was for a statistics module. I thought it would be one of the most dreadful modules that I am taking this sem, but it turns out that I enjoy attending the lecture today! The lecturer was very engaging and his voice just draws my full attention. I left the lecture theatre with a good feeling and that brightened up my day today.

Seriously, I think the lecturer plays a very influential factor in deciding whether the module is enjoyable or not. Even the most enjoyable module can be ruined by a boring, stress-inducing lecturer and of course, a lousy module can be made pleasant by an engaging and fun lecturer. So, I am hoping and praying very very hard that the rest of my lecturers will be good. At least good enough to make me listen and not put me to sleep.

And I have found a solution on how to make me practice translating English to Mandarin, or vice versa, and that is to what MORE TV SHOWS that have both English and Chinese subtitles!!! HAHA wouldn't that be a good way to learn? So I should try to stay optimistic about this basic translation module instead of thinking that 'I can't do it. I am not good enough'. If I am always watching tv dramas and my mother asks why, I will reply her 'I am revising for my module' HAHAHA.