There’s this one electrical class I have taken this semester that has really annoyed me. Put it this way: I’d enjoy it more if it was presented better. The lecturer is a nice enough guy. I remember when I went to the opening day that he was one of the lecturers who showed me around and I liked him then. However the guy cannot actually teach to save his life. He hands out notes, puts these tiny illegibly diagrams up and tells us to copy them. He launches into problems randomly, not explaining things at all (hell, I’m too busy trying to figure out wth the diagram says to even begin to try and understand his ramblings. Not to mention he has a difficult to understand accent which makes things even harder). It was hard work trying to keep up in that class. I also think he must have some kind of technophobia because I am still waiting for my coursework marks to be uploaded to my university online portal. I need to know where I am at with this class but there is no way to do so. Mostly I need to know how badly I can afford to mess up on the exam.
You see, I thought my exam was on Thursday.
It was not. It was, in fact, today.
Yes, I am nearly 19 years old and I still cannot manage my life properly. I am disorganised and forgetful and all over the place.
Full and terribly pathetic story as follows:
Come yesterday, or rather this morning at around 2am I suddenly thought to myself that I should check my exam time table. I didn’t know why and I came thisclose to not checking. Lo and behold my exam was today. I just stared at my phone in disbelief, trying to make sense of it all. I couldn’t believe it. At that moment my exam was 7.5 hours away. I had to get up in 4 hours to make my train. I began to panic. I struggled to breathe, my whole body felt weak and jittery and tears welled up in my eyes. I really couldn’t believe I would be so stupid. I struggled to fall asleep, filled with self loathing and sheer panic and anxiety. I was not prepared. For some reason I was imagining that extra day would make all the difference. Mostly I was just thrown out. How could this happen? Why didn’t I check before? I really couldn’t believe I could do this to myself. I woke up at 4.56am this morning and couldn’t really fall back asleep. At ~6am I dragged myself out of bed and got ready and headed to the station to start my journey to Liverpool with the 7:32am train. I spent my train journey(s) reading through my notes, jotting down a few things until I felt too ill to continue (travel sickness and i was originally feeling nauseous from lack of sleep). For once I was grateful for the long commute, even as I knew cramming like that would make no difference. I put my notes aside, leaned back in my seat and watched the scenery change, on the edge of despair. I arrived into Liverpool with time to spare and sat at the train station for a few minutes, still frantically reading through my notes trying to make sense of it all. I was not in a good state of mind. Can you tell how much I was overacting? These were close to my actual feelings. I get worked up about things so easily but then I was still a little in shock and a bit of confusion. I was actually wondering if the exam was today, if I had messed up again and I dreaded walking to the exam hall and finding nobody there.
They were there. It was today.
The exam itself was held in an underground hall under the metropolitan cathedral. Use your imagination a little and you’ve probably got a good idea of how strange and oppressive the exam hall was. Not to mention I used to have music exams in church halls, and anything that reminds me of my music makes me a little nervous. My hands were not steady as I wrote out my details and I couldn’t calm down. The exam turned out to be…not as bad as I expected. But not good. I made stupid errors, I was still panicking, I was exhausted and basically it was hard to think straight.
I admit I feel much better know. I am looking on the bright side. I could have missed my exam but I didn’t. I have never been so glad for a smart phone allowing me to check things late at night, never been more grateful for my intuition and never more thankful that I listened to that little voice telling me to check my schedule. In retrospect I don’t think that extra day would have made much difference in the end. I was never 100% prepared for this exam. I also dislike my mechanics lecturer but I will give him credit where it is due: at least he made the effort to teach and he teaches quite well. He goes through things clearly, step by step from the basics up with no scribbled diagrams. He even held a revision session to go through the past paper with us and he sent us another past paper with the answers (this electrical guy sent us a past paper…but with no answers. WTF). With the mechanics paper I at least had some idea of what I would be facing. Hell, the paper was almost exactly like the past paper (which made me regret not paying more attention to the past paper haha). I actually feel more confident about my mechanics for once. I didn’t know what to expect of this electrical paper regardless of the shock of suddenly finding it was a lot sooner than I thought.
After my exam I went to McDonald’s and chilled the fuck out, cleared my head with some glorious junk food. Then I went to the library and attempted to tackle the last few maths modules and realised I couldn’t do them no matter what. Oh well, I’ve done 16 out of 19. That should be enough.
There’s nothing more I can do now, really. Now its just the long, long wait until the results. I am going to be hopeful about it. As one guy reassured me before the exam- I have done reasonably well in everything else which means I should pass. I have really tried this year and overall although there were a few minor mistakes I think I have done well. I refuse to believe that one botched exam can ruin everything. (That a couple of missed maths modules will ruin everything, too.) It cannot ruin everything. Right?
