Saturday, May 07, 2005

I had 2 exams this week: quantum mechanics on Thursday and cosmology the day after that. I shan't say more about the exams apart from the fact that I could do most of the stuff, although cosmology had a bit too many 'wordy' questions for my liking.

Immediately after the cosmology exam, as I was packing up my stuff, a guy from my class whom I didn't really know came up to me and said, 'Khee Gan, could I ask you something?'. I'm used to people coming up to me asking me questions about the courses, occasionally even from people I do not know, so I just said yes. 'Is it true that you left early in quantum yesterday?'. Usually, people leave early in exams if a)They can't do any of the questions and can't be bothered to sit there in boredom, or b) They are so good at the paper that they've finished everything well before the allocated time.

Now, I'm fairly well known in class as the guy who always asks questions in class, and my reputation for being the top student in class is quite widespread (even though technically I'm not the top student...my average lagged Xinhui's by < 1% last year). So he must have been implying that I was so smart that I can walk out of the toughest paper before time. I gave him a puzzled look and said no. He turned to his friends and said, 'See...he didn't leave early!'.

I've had earlier indications about crazy rumours circulating about my prowess. Last term, Courtney in my space systems tech class leaned over to me and asked, 'Khee Gan, out of sheer curiosity, is it true that you got an average of 97% last year?'. Now, I was pretty pleased about my 91%, but I personally think that 97% is just plain insane and out of reach. I never boast as I feel that arrogant people are just asking to be put down, but apparently in this case the fact that I don't talk about my results has just let all sorts of rumours about me spring up. Maybe there are rumours that I'm being nominated for the Nobel prize floating around as well.

Most people get gossip about relationships and stuff. I get gossip about my imaginary intellectual prowess.