Exams, part 2

I will continue the '5 Club' series with my next post, probably delving into the murky realms of death metal, but for this post, I want to describe how I feel, what happens to me, as I take an exam, especially having taken my History exam - a subject that matters a lot to me, although I'm not continuing it to A Level - today.

Naturally, as I have done on all other days on which I've had a morning exam, I asked my dad to wake me up early to allow myself an hour or so of last minute revision; rather than actually aiding me in my exam directly, this eases the considerable nerves that are apparently omnipresent on the day of an exam, which can't help as I go through the motions of something that is important and stressful enough as it is! This is accompanied by the eating of my breakfast - on a weekend, this may be a pleasurable experience, but on these dull, dreary weekdays, it rather feels like going through the motions, so much so that I don't particularly taste my food - indeed, I don't really know what I had for breakfast this morning through memory, but rather by default, as for the past few weeks I've begun every weekday morning with the now-tedious ritual of sleepily munching my way through a bowl of fruity mini Oatibix.

This morning was actually slightly different, however - something rather exciting happened yesterday, and so I was looking back on it with satisfaction, however, I was also quite happy with the state of my History revision, feeling that I had fully absorbed all of the subject content, as well as lots of extra seemingly useless tidbits that I could just drop in to impress the examiner. In the end, the only extras I managed to fit in were a brief sentence about the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, a small paragraph about the unification of the German states by Otto von Bismarck after the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, and a bit about the emergence of Progressivism in America and its impact on the Treaty of Versailles. Yes, this is me attempting to show off to my audience now.

So, one finally gets to the exam room, and at this stage, all the nerves culminate, come to a climax, and invariably cause me to give an involuntary little spasm, usually in my right arm and left eyelid, which often gets some questioning looks that I have to try my best to ignore! After that, once actually seated (in the correct seat), there is a sort of drifting feeling of comfort, knowing that I've done my best, and that anything else is beyond me. Still, I expect an A*! (And this is that slightly arrogant touch that I've been told comes over in my blogs).

Writing the exam is a real bore. I actually quite like writing about history, compared to, say, the comparative merits of poems about farms by Seamus Heaney and Gillian Clarke, but nonetheless, half an hour in, when it already feels like someone has been attempting to pull your fingers out of their sockets, it truly sinks in why exams are such an ill-spoken of thing. I don't mind the study leave - hell, I'm doing far less work daily on average than I would be at school, and at my own leisure - but coming to exams makes me feel initially sick with nerves, then comfortable, then stricken with incredible knuckle pain (although that may be something to do with my writing technique), then comfortable once more, usually with a slight feeling of excitement about how well I feel I've done.

The discussions of the exams afterwards with friends are always a bit of a highlight. It's nice to have similar answers to several other people, thus feeling like you've got some marks definitely in the bag, and to compare miseries of harder questions with others too. Then, as there's only a few days in which I have two exams - unfortunately tomorrow is one of them - I usually have the whole afternoon to myself, before buckling down to more revision in the evening.