Exam pressure.

Exam time is when you really gain perspective on life and everything that awaits in the future, which makes you go, “try not to fuck it up okay!”

Contrary to popular “you’re a tambrahm so you have to get good marks and basically excel in everything you do” belief, I don’t test well. So all those poor scores since school days does not in any way represent my intellect and yes I’m not going to act humble here and say ,” no way, I ain’t smart enough to know the Black Scholes model or the binomial theorem or or or the put call parity method of valuing an option” because I do.

Passing an exam is a skill, one that I haven’t been trained for. There are so many factors in play here –

1) You spend months preparing for an exam, be it a professional exam or just a college semester exam. But the whole build up for the D day comes crashing down when you enter the exam center and see your peer’s heads buried inside a gigantic book, which for good reason you haven’t ever seen in your life before. You decide to ignore that and focus only on the book in front of you. You try harder.

2) There is always that one prick who approaches you and asks you that one question from that one chapter you decided to leave in option. Confidence shattered.

4) You skim through the paper during the first 15 mins and 90% of it looks gibberish and unanswerable. Panic commences.

5) You finally spot a question you know very well so you decide to start with that. You write 3 pages of its background, 2 pages of the actual answer and another 3 pages of conclusion. You earn your 5 marks but waste 45 mins in the process.

6) Once you’ve attempted all the questions you know well enough to write 5 lines on and ‘dhapofy‘ another 5 lines, you sit and look around only to find students asking for more supplements. Your mind pretty much takes the darker path now and plays out all the worst possible outcomes of your life in a matter of 10 mins. In all of these visions you’re the one person in the room wearing the loser hat.

7) The invigilator is another sad soul who keeps yelling 30 mins left, 20 mins left, 10 mins left to the point which makes you want to shove your paper down his/her throat to shut him/her up for good.

8) You’re done with the first paper and try to run out of the center to avoid discussing answers with anyone. You reach for your headphones to block your hearing to any ongoing discussions on the way , but you’re too late, the jackass next to you has already declared to his friend that the one answer on which you spent 45 mins is apparently wrong. There goes your hope of passing this paper and your will to prepare for the next paper as well.

Exam is not only about testing one’s knowledge, but it’s about testing you as a person and your capabilities to withstand pressure and all the challenges it throws at you.

So don’t call me no fool yo! I will choke you with a math equation.

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