it was a killer

Three down, two more to go! And I have self-proclaimed that tomorrow will be a day of relaxation and just plain doing-whatever-I-please after going through 3 papers.

CDA was much harder than I thought it would be. You know how we usually think a module is difficult/challenging/crazy [cue: morpho-syntax]; but after the exam paper is done and completed we went: whew, that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be!

Well, that was the opposite of how CDA was. Throughout the semester CDA was pretty much ok and manageable [with the exception of political discourse - tho' chouliaraki did make sense towards the end]... but the paper was quite a killer.

kill·er n.
Slang. Something that is extremely difficult to deal with or withstand: an exam that was a real killer.

Exactly what I mean.

When I first flipped the question paper over and had a first look at the questions... my mind went semi-blank. After choosing the first question to tackle, I simply sat there, feeling tempted to just stone and not answer at all. Let me give you a sample of the questions. There were 4, but one of them is just too long to put here. [we had to answer 2 out of 4]

1. The concepts of access and control are central to the Critical Discourse Analysis enterprise. Explain what they mean, and say if they are related to each other in any way.

2. In your view, how important is (self) reflexity in performing a critical discourse analysis of any given text?

3. Is it useful to focus on the analysis of visual images? Does such an analysis have a place in critical discourse analysis?

Note that each question carries a weightage of 50 marks. 50 marks. oh gosh. And I only wrote 2.5 pages on average for each question; but quantity doesn't matter - quality does.

Yet somehow now that the paper is over and I'm sitting comfy in my room, it doesn't really matter that much anymore. Hee must be the effects of the 5th round of exams - I'm getting desensitised! Not good! -shakes head-

oh well. I will survive!

p.s welcome to the family little tort a.k.a nikki jordan :)