EXAMINER: “You may now turn over your exam papers…”
With a deft flick of the wrist, I turn over the paper and examine the questions. Things don’t look good. Its that awful moment where I look and see lots of familiar things, but all approached from maddening angles which my revision has obviously missed. I glance back at the rubric (good word, rubric) on the cover and curse my ability to distract myself with parentheses.
It says (among other things):
- There are TEN questions.
- Answer TWO questions.
- You have TWO hours.
I sigh and set about the questions, there must be something I can answer here…
- Why is it so hard to focus?
- “Distraction from Revision can appear more productive than revision itself.” Discuss
- “The average undergraduate is beset by alcohol induced inertia.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Discuss in relation to two subjects and/or beverages.
- “Highlighters are central to academic study.” Defend this statement with reference to the four key goals of highlighter deployment.
- To what extent has the electronic age revolutionised modern learning method?
- “The internet has benefited the procratinator and masturbator more than the serious scholar.” Discuss.
- Critically evaluate the merits of two distraction techniques from the following: (a) Blue-tak (b) Alchohol (c) Facebook) or (d) Wikipedia.
- Demonstrate with appropriate formulae and graphs the inverse relationship between number of pages read and amount of information absorbed.
- “Alchohol, sex and doodling destroyed my degree.” Evaluate the importance of this statement by a sorry and failed under-graduate on finding out just how much the last three years of hedonism has cost him.
- Is the following quote from Boffin (1987) an accurate portrayal of your emotional state as you enter this exam: “You’re going to fail, you little shit. You really are and you know it. And that’s what makes setting this paper so deliciously enjoyable. Watching you squirm there from my desk at the front, like some sort of God… Why did you do a degree anyway?”
I digested these for several moments. There were advantages in the last one – the ‘failure’ question – but glancing round, I could see that the girl next to me was starting on that one. And judging by the fevered expressions which the diagonal line of sight afforded me across the space of the examination hall, it was probably going to be quite a popular one… Therefore, more people will answer it. Thus, more clever people will answer it. Basically, I’d be screwed to go for that one…
And then question 7) caught my eye. Then I realised everyone would answer it on Facebook and alcohol – but that was all I’d revised. I made a few notes on blue-tak, then switched to paper because the letters showed up easier.
No use, no easy essay in that one. Perhaps I’d just have to swallow my pride, follow the herd and answer the ‘you’re going to fail, you little shit’ question after all. Maybe I could find a new angle – perhaps I could disprove the question…
Over an hour into the exam, I finished my first paper. I argued that, despite not having a shower, I didn’t really resemble a little shit and therefore the question provided a misleading impression. And then some stuff I half remembered about teachers not being allowed to swear. Phew, glad that’s over… Now to make my second choice…
Although I was initially drawn to the first question – why is it so hard to focus? – it occurred to me that since I had answered one question successfully already, that implied I could focus and would be logically incompatible with choosing question 1 as my second option. Bugger.
That left me with questions 4 on highlighters, and the two distraction questions – 6 and 9. But after some furious doodling, I found myself unable to concentrate on the latter so I tried to remember the four key goals of highlighter deployment – well, rigour, accuracy and differentiation were obvious – but no idea what the fourth one was… Best to leave that one then… Golly, only half an hour left, perhaps I should’ve left doodling till after the exam…
I settled on question six and made up half of the answer, though some of my doodling helped with the second part of the question. Finally, those hallowed and horrible words were declared…
“Put your pens DOWN and stop WRITING”
I made a mental note to look up the fourth highlighter principle when I got home and then kicked myself when I realised it was ‘don’t loose the lids’.
Oh well, off to the pub I thought. And then wondered, after those two hours of hell, ‘is that really sensible?’ I’ve got general time-wasting the day after tomorrow and the philosophers of study avoidance a few days after that.
I mean, its not like they can make you resit an examination in procrastination, is it? Its not like doing it all again is going to improve your marks when the study guide suggests you distract yourself as much as possible. Then again, I thought after my fifth pint, perhaps I’m taking that advice a little bit too literally…
Onto the sambuca.
