Grrrr

Just want to rant about a friend who always calls to talk but ONLY LISTENS TO HERSELF. I had never been as irritated in the past but now I am even more so perhaps due to the exams. Bleah. Why call people to talk if you only care about what you yourself think?

Some of you might know who she is.

She was worrying about how Prof Elliott might set very difficult questions like:

Critically evaluate the possible contribution of an evolutionary perspective to the understanding of abnormal behaviour.

Let me rephrase. She was worried that Prof Elliott might set all his questions like that.

So I told her that he would surely vary the type of questions he sets in one section, and anyway, we only have to answer one question out of four so she could choose not to answer this kind of question when the time comes.

And her reply was, "No lah I don't think so I think all his questions would be this difficult. His last year's paper is so much more difficult than the one 2 years ago!"

Can you see that her answer was not based on logic and probability whereas mine was? I checked the paper and found easier questions like:

2. “What matters in the eye of selection is not truth, validity, or logical consistency, but simply what works in the currency of replicative success” (Buss 2004 p378). Discuss the implications of this claim for our understanding of human reasoning and cognitive function.
3. Discuss the distinction between proximate and ultimate explanations. Illustrate your answer with respect to studies of human mating strategies.

Anyway, I think that question she found difficult is okay lah, as compared to this:

Discuss what you consider to be the main conceptual or empirical limitations of evolutionary psychology. Illustrate your answer with reference to specific studies or published literature in the area.

Now THIS one would surely give me problems as that's from the book that caused my brain to shut off.

And earlier on, she asked me for help with a past year question and I explained it to her. Okay, she listened to that. But later, when I gave her an example for a question to add to her list of examples, she totally ignored my example (i.e. list out all her examples, which consisted of only one, and said, "Can't be only one right?") when I said I was not sure if there was any empirical research for that example but it's definitely a universal phenomenon (parents saving their children at a cost to themselves). I think there should be research for it, come to think of it. That paper we learnt on altruism in Eddie Tong's class eh, even though it's on intentions rather than actual behaviour.

Okay I think you all might not get what I'm saying, but what matters is that I do. Haha.