Red Polished Nails
2 people in history (mine actually) incited fear with their shiny red polished nails: one was Mrs Wong my Economics lecturer during A-Levels & Jas, my academic leader. The latter has become less scary now & her nails not as red, but let me tell you about being in Mrs Wong's class.
Some backstory: so that you form a picture in your mind. Context-setting, if you like.
She is well-to-do, drove a glimmering new Mercedes (probably C or E class, can't remember). We speculated that she married a rich guy- either that, or she could be someone who's really good at making money. She is VERY SMART, knows economics (both micro and macro) like it is her birthdate or phone number, and speaks with a style (something like Fran Drescher in The Nanny but slightly less annoying). When she was teaching us, she would have been in her 40s. She was always well-dressed (no outfit hardly repeated twice for the 2 years we were in A-Levels), well made up & no strand of hair out of place, always prim and proper (and expects the same from us boisterous teens) and a complete terror in class.
When whatsapp became the mode of communication, we created one A-Level class group and one of our key discussion was recollections of our past trauma in her class. We could not get any answer right, except for Siti and Fariz. Siti went on to do Economics in Southampton, and eventually married Fariz when he asked her.
Fitty and Ili used to be grilled with endless questioning, and we always wanted to help, but were never allowed to answer any of the questions for them (we wouldn't dare either). These 2 were probably the most traumatised. Me, I was neither her favourite or least favourite list (not that she ever had any, it just seemed so in our inexperienced years). My trick for survival is to lay low, do not volunteer any sort of answer unless asked, and do ALL of her exercises & read ALL the articles that she asked us to read. ONE time she had a flash of "oh-you-have-done-the-reading-like-I-asked-you-to" look when I answered a question, but it was gone as fast as it had appeared.
So, in all, she was quite a character. And a memorable one at that. And she was probably the reason I got a "C" in Economics. I would have failed otherwise: learning Economics to me (especially macroeconomics) was like learning wizardry- I cannot make any sense of it.
Wafa recently contacted her & she suggested that we all meet up. And just so you know, we initially warmed up to the idea but eventually it fizzled off. Whether we would actually meet her, is left to be seen. If we do, you will see a Part 2 of this post 😅
Some backstory: so that you form a picture in your mind. Context-setting, if you like.
She is well-to-do, drove a glimmering new Mercedes (probably C or E class, can't remember). We speculated that she married a rich guy- either that, or she could be someone who's really good at making money. She is VERY SMART, knows economics (both micro and macro) like it is her birthdate or phone number, and speaks with a style (something like Fran Drescher in The Nanny but slightly less annoying). When she was teaching us, she would have been in her 40s. She was always well-dressed (no outfit hardly repeated twice for the 2 years we were in A-Levels), well made up & no strand of hair out of place, always prim and proper (and expects the same from us boisterous teens) and a complete terror in class.
When whatsapp became the mode of communication, we created one A-Level class group and one of our key discussion was recollections of our past trauma in her class. We could not get any answer right, except for Siti and Fariz. Siti went on to do Economics in Southampton, and eventually married Fariz when he asked her.
Fitty and Ili used to be grilled with endless questioning, and we always wanted to help, but were never allowed to answer any of the questions for them (we wouldn't dare either). These 2 were probably the most traumatised. Me, I was neither her favourite or least favourite list (not that she ever had any, it just seemed so in our inexperienced years). My trick for survival is to lay low, do not volunteer any sort of answer unless asked, and do ALL of her exercises & read ALL the articles that she asked us to read. ONE time she had a flash of "oh-you-have-done-the-reading-like-I-asked-you-to" look when I answered a question, but it was gone as fast as it had appeared.
So, in all, she was quite a character. And a memorable one at that. And she was probably the reason I got a "C" in Economics. I would have failed otherwise: learning Economics to me (especially macroeconomics) was like learning wizardry- I cannot make any sense of it.
Wafa recently contacted her & she suggested that we all meet up. And just so you know, we initially warmed up to the idea but eventually it fizzled off. Whether we would actually meet her, is left to be seen. If we do, you will see a Part 2 of this post 😅
posted by elya at 7:32 am
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