family law test.

it's on tuesday. i didn't study as much as i'd liked about Domicile on friday, studied 10 pages about Jurisdiction (which is actually the huge set of which Domicile is a subset. ahaha...) on saturday, and attempted (in vain) to finish Divorce on sunday, woke up two hours after my prescribed alarm clock ring (5am).

the day started bad.

my sensitive ears got even more sensitive this morning. i couldn't stand the sound of the door opening (i opened it), of liverpool's butt touching the seat opposite me an hour later (ya, i could hear that well), of kheng fai sniffing beside me a further 20 minutes later (at that point, i prayed: "O God, help me"), and - this one was really the last straw - the sound of Chelsea shuffling about in her bedroom slippers. if the world could end with a shuffle, it did.

"stop walking around la, yoh!" i said, with an impatient wave of my hand. k, it was more polite than i intended, but less polite than i should've been.

chelsea retreated into the kitchen.

then i succumbed to peer pressure and skipped Constitutional Law class. yeah, i said not to sign my attendance for me, but still. never liked skipping classes. felt loser-ish.

we got to the faculty for Administrative Law tutorial at 11am, and our friends told us Dr Johan was upset about the low attendance and counted heads. and yeah, i remember i told people not to sign for me anyway. but still. loser-ish.

i paid Professor Grace the usual amount of attention in Land Law lecture (not much) and wrote a bit in my journal before i started on my Family Law. i opened my Law Reform Act (LRA) to section 54, and at that point, Jira beside me, looked.

see, datin had told us that the test wouldn't be an open-book test, because if it was, we'd all fail 100%. but she said:

"*sinister* and i don't care what you write in your LRA. write whatever you want. i'm not going to check. *sinister*"

so i did. i wrote related sections beside some of the sections, and wrote brief case summaries for the relevant sections. i didn't want to at first, because it felt weird, although datin told us we could. but i did anyway.

why did i feel ashamed when Jira looked?

-journal-

yes, i felt ashamed. i started to think that maybe i was doing something wrong after all. loser-ish yet again.

went for Family Law tutorial at 2pm. i opened my LRA, and Chelsea leaned over and whispered: "eh start to write in your LRA d ar? i thought somebody said won't do this kind of thing wan?"

i seriously didn't remember saying that. but Chelsea insisted.

and my whole world crumbled.

even if writing in the LRA wasn't inherently wrong, going against a promise of principle made it utterly wrong.

i can't.

i can't accept failure. and failure to keep a promise is a great and grave failure.

holding a broken promise in my hand is unbearable. so is breaking one. due to past failures, as much as i can, i try to move mountains to keep my word.

i was crushed the entire tutorial. i contemplated erasing the case summaries i'd written in my LRA. yet again, i felt the urge to keep them there.

I do not understand what I do.
For what I want to do I do not do,
but what I hate I do.
I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.
For I have the desire to do what is good,
but I cannot carry it out.
For what I do
is not the good I want to do;
No, the evil I do not want to do—
this I keep on doing.

romans 7:15, 18-19

When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
For in my inner being I delight in God's law;
but I see another law at work in the members of my body,
waging war against the law of my mind
and making me a prisoner
of the law of sin at work within my members.

romans 7:21-23

loser-ish.

i can't say for sure if i'd have erased them if the next event hadn't come along. all i know is i would've cried erasing those summaries. cuz i can't finish. i really can't read and memorize all in two days.

then hooi ping sms-ed: "datin said can bring proforma.."

five words. five very meaningful words. datin even said we can write whatever we want in our proforma (course outline).

that's essentially the same thing as datin saying, "it's an open-book test, but i'm going to pretend it's not."

i will write in my proforma. because it means that i'll only write whatever i manage to read. datin is being kind because she's giving me the chance to take the test with just some READING, and not memorizing as well. i will not clip notes to my proforma. i will not colour my notes yellow and pretend it's the proforma. this is the second chance God has given me to redeem myself, and i must take it. the thought of breaking His heart twice in a row is unbearable. unbearable. not in a i'm-so-righteous way, but in this way:

What a wretched man I am!
Who will rescue me from this body of death?

romans 7:24

so here i am, blogging though i should be studying. blogging because i feel i must. i must share this before i think it's nothing tomorrow.

Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

romans 7:25

p/s: i found out later, when i confessed to chelsea that i felt guilty for writing in the LRA, that i DIDN'T say i wouldn't write in the LRA after all. the incident started like this:

chelsea: "yoh... write or don't write also will fail."
me: "don't write lor. =P"

-_-!

curse you, orang yang tak paham sarcasm!

=P