Exams

Exams.
Enough said right? Not a test of intelligence, just an episode of “So You Think You Can Study”. It is a long and traumatizing experience, drawn out over 12 years, and we all have to go through it.

The torture starts months before the actual exam, because no matter what you’re doing, watching TV, going out, sitting on your computer writing rants, the whole time there is something sitting next to you, prodding you on the side of the head saying, “You should be studying, you should be studying, you should…” and this voice NEVER GOES AWAY. Of course, you don’t end up studying until the night before, but the voice is still bloody irritating. Even once your exams are over it is somehow STILL THERE – although it is quite liberating when you get to scream back at, “NO I DON'T, BITCH!”

Then there is the actual studying process, which I will describe in detail:

Step 1: stop what you’re doing – turn off the TV, computer, phone, Ipod, etc… Difficulty rating: Agonizing.

Step 2: pick up the book. Difficulty rating: although it sounds easy, this step is surprisingly difficult and consists of many hidden steps such as finding your schoolbag (which is NEVER where you left it), and finding the right book (which is ALWAYS the last one you pull out), but, provided you don’t let these set backs scare you into giving up, it can be done.

Step 3: open the book. Difficulty rating: doable. WARNING – many people give up at this stage because they find themselves flipping through page after page, not knowing where to start and end up tossing it across the room screaming “WHY ARE THERE SO MANY PAGES!?”. Don’t end up like them, use coloured sticky notes to mark your place (for some reason sticky notes just seem to make everything OK)

Step 4: (this one is crucial) DON’T GET DISTRACTED. Difficulty rating: impossible. The solution to this problem alludes even the greatest of minds. You’re fucked.

Then comes day of the exam and the rush to get there on time. The thought of arriving late could terrify the best of us into arriving a couple of days early and camping outside the examination hall – just in case. Yet despite this fear you almost always get to the venue way too early and end up just sitting and waiting for the torture to start. And you always see the WEIRDEST people there, like people in shorts with their socks rolled up, fat kids in yarmulkes (also known as a yamika to those who, like me have no idea how to spell like a Jew), Muslims in full length Berkas and people who you, no matter how much you stare, cannot distinguish as male or female.

It is a few minutes before the exam and people are starting to file in. When this happens, it is time to find your seat (warning: this could involve the difficult task of reading a seating chart, or being walked to your seat by a scary brain-eating invigilator). It seems so simple, but SO MUCH CAN GO WRONG; what if as some kind of sick joke, someone removed your seat and you’re forced to write the exam standing? What if you are one of the last to enter the hall and have to wander around finding your desk while everyone STARES at you? What if – and this is by far the most common fear expressed worldwide – a terrorist group has decided to bomb the school and has chosen to tape the bomb under YOUR DESK (I would advise you to always check your seating area thoroughly for bombs to avoid this mishap).

Then comes the actual exam. Although generally you are told that IF YOU SO MUCH AS THINK ABOUT LOOKING AROUND THE EXAMINATION HALL WE WILL RIP UP YOUR EXAM PAPER AND KICK YOUR ASS OUT, you look around anyway, you just have to. HOLY JESUS ON A CRACKER people do weird shit during exams. I promise you, the dude next to me wrote his name, crossed it out and wrote it again – maybe he got it wrong? – and the dude on the other side of me wrote down his name which took up THE ENTIRE ALLOCATED SPACE. Have you ever met anyone with a name so long that it takes up that whole line? I’m also sorry to admit that I’ve sat next to a zit-popper and a pen-tapper. (Note to pen-tappers: STOP IT; YOU’RE FUCKING IRRITATING). Not to mention the invigilators, who generally sit around picking their noses, digging in their ears with the pens they’re going to mark your exam with and reading books with titles like “People Of Scotland” <--- I’d totally read that book; just saying.

Somewhere amongst all of this you assume you’ve written an exam, although you are in such a blind state of panic by now that you’re not even sure of your first name, and you hope you wrote something that vaguely relates to actual exam topic. Unless of course you were blown up by terrorists, in which case I say YOU LUCKY BASTARD!

Exams: they piss me off!!