Saturday, August 22, 2009

Overwhelmed, torturous and stressful!

Yup! That was exactly how I felt for two weeks since 4th of August when we were briefed about the PTK course which ran from the 10th – 15th August 2009.

I was feeling overwhelmed by the fact that I had to prepare 2 assignments (one being on project management, the other on my work, target and achievements for the year thus far), one individual presentation, one group presentation, and one English public speaking on leadership in managing change, all to be done within a span of less than 10 days.

To add to that, on the first day of the course, we had to sit and watch a video of the PM’s speech and write our thoughts and comments, and what we intend to do to achieve his 1Malaysia plan, all in 1 hour, and we are expected to write at least FIVE to EIGHT PAGES, the first 3 pages being our first initial thoughts and reaction to his speech!

To top off the 5 day course crammed with assignments and presentations, we had to sit for an exam on Saturday morning, 15th August. As we were mostly busy with assignments and presentations throughout the week, our last being the group presentation on Friday morning, we only had Friday night (we had a short lecture on Friday afternoon) to study and cram everything into our overworked and over-utilized brains that easily forgets almost everything that it had read and tried to remember within a span of a few hours! LOL!

That is what happens when you are above forty. Your memory just isn’t as alert as it used to be 10 or 20 years ago. I told my hubby and some friends that I could actually see the figures and drawings that I drew the night before, but I simply could not recall what were inside the circles and arrows that I drew! LOL! I think I was running cold sweat during that 2 ½ hour exam just trying to recall what I had studied.

There was also a time that I almost wanted to cry when I could see the page in my head where the answers were but I could not recall the exact thing on that very page! I had to take a long deep breath to calm my nerves before I could finally answer the 5 questions required out of 11. I hope I did well and answered the questions correctly.

I think the organizers shouldn’t ‘torture’ us this way. *grin* We are too old for this already. LOL! Our brains are overworked. *grin* I don’t even mind doing another paper assignment rather than sit for an exam. It would have been more stressful, but, maybe not as torturous. MAYBE! *grin*

Now, all I could do is pray to Allah. I hope that I will pass all stages of the course, insyaAllah. I have to. I need to.

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