Skip to main content

The Ten Stages of Exam Preparation

Stage 1: Indifference
Upon receiving your exam schedule, you divide your time accordingly, maybe even writing a little study schedule for yourself. The world is your oyster. You feel indifferent towards your schedule, as exam time has not yet begun. You know that you have all the time in the world to start preparing.

Stage 2: Determination
As exam time creeps up on you, you start preparing your notes and looking over lectures, maybe doing some practice exams. You are determined to ace these finals and you know that you will do your very best.

Stage 3: Anxiety
You slowly start to realize that the amount of work you still have left to do is disproportional to the few days left that you have before the exam. The failure of your self made study schedule is revealed. You start feeling pangs of anxiety, maybe even calculating how badly you can do on the exam so that you don't fail the course.

Stage 4: Denial
You begin falsely assuring yourself that there isn't that much to study, anyway. You blindly flip through your notes a few times, but they seem like words on a page, without meaning.

Stage 5: Overconfidence
You've flipped through your notes so many times that you're sure you will remember everything during the exam itself. Your brain must have stored the information somewhere, right? You begin to procrastinate and do time consuming things, such as scrolling through Tumblr, imgur, and Facebook. You may play a few video games or buy more levels of Candy Crush Saga at this stage. You feel like you should reward yourself for your hard work.

Stage 6: Regret
The night before the exam, you begin to feel a strong sense of regret for not having started studying earlier. You may try to drown your sorrows with espressos and Mars bars. You try to cram as much information as you can, but know that little can save you now. At this stage, your exam stress starts becoming more than just an academic problem. You may start regretting your choice of university, your habits throughout the year, or your over consumption of alcohol in high school. You become a hot mess.

Stage 7: Acceptance
The regret phase passes as you finally come to terms with the fact that the exam is today, and you must write it, whether you're prepared or not. Your goal is to pass it and move on with life.

Stage 8: Writing the Exam
Your brain is filled with random facts from all your different courses. Your sweater is itchy. The song you were listening to on your iPod that morning is stuck in your head on repeat. You notice that your desk wobbles as you write. You're paranoid that your pen will run out of ink. The guy sitting in front of you has a distractingly muscular back. The clock is ticking. The supervisor is staring at you like you're a thief. And there's only 3 hours to go!

Stage 9: Finishing the Exam
You thought you prepared well. But you notice that your studying was semi-useless, as professors like to put totally random questions on the exam that were only mentioned once in lecture. Five months ago. Then there are questions like "according to the professor, what is...?" As if you payed attention! Whatever, the exam session is almost done. You don't want tot be the first to leave the exam room, but you don't want to be the last.

Stage 10: Time to study for the next exam! Repeat x infinity 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Women: Living Contradictions

What does society want? For women to achieve impossible standards (and, by the way, it is NOT possible to achieve something that is impossible). Society wants us to be living contradictions...cabbage heads on stilts... airhead rocket scientists. Society wants us to be things that don't even exist in fiction, but only in the glossy pages of a Cosmopolitan magazine (look at me! I'm so skinny! So happy! Sexy all the time!). As I heard said many times before, "even Victoria's Secret models don't look like Victoria's Secret models." The way the proportions are warped, each pimple bleached, each hair trimmed down to pre-pubescence, toes and fingers without a scar, and the face angelic and so happy... it makes me sick. It makes me sick because of the contradictions, because women are expected to: Be sexy but not slutty Be innocent but not prude Be virgins but also fantastic lovers Be independent but submissive Be good mothers but maintain careers Be...

The Flood

Sometimes I feel like My insides are flooding Threatening to spill out And clog glutters in the street With all my unsatisfied ambition Sometimes I want to drown In a soup of grey water To just forget it all And become one with the tunnels, Streets, and people of the city Their shoes tracking dirt From one train station to the next Let the rain water drain it all Cleanse it all The grief and the dissatisfaction The mundanity and the boredom Of the occassional commute Let the flood take me Take us To a train station that hasn't been built yet On tracks that don't yet exist Far, far away In the meadows Where the soil can finally soak up All the grey unwanted rain

Happiness is Pink Jellybeans

Happiness is jumping in a pool of pink jellybeans Feeling the cool candy on my skin Happiness is enjoying the pleasures of life Without worrying about confessing my sins Whoever said that we are gluttons For biting juicy pears on the beach Must never have felt the sand in their toes They must have placed their own soul out of reach And what about greed? It's not all that bad To bury a pile of chestnuts for the spring All animals do it, so why shouldn't we? If it's greedy to love yourself, let it be Lust is the one that makes pastors blush Yet it's one of the greatest joys in the body A kiss and a dance, laughter and romance Why did we ever label this happiness as naughty? Have you ever seen a cat sad when it naps? It is okay to sometimes be lazy The body needs rest as does the mind Or the world will set fire from the crazy If happiness is a sin, then let me smile in hell Looking up at the do-gooders above For to live is to err, to cry, and to sing Happiness is pink jell...