Are the nasty-wasty exams bothering poor snookums?

seamus

I roffled at this
(thanks to the netsoc message board)

Well, we've reached that inevitable stage of mildly psychotic panic that
descends on UCD late every April, kind of like the Blitz but without the
blackouts and the sirens. This is a very stressful time for students,
with vast pressures condensed into a short do-or-die period. I read in
the last couple of student newspapers a number of variations on a them,
something about students being among the most stressed group in Ireland,
with exams playing a major factor in that.

Aw. Are the nasty-wasty exams bothering poor snookums? 'Cos if you feel
that you are suffering unduly from exam stress, then read the next two
words very carefully: **** you.

Yes, that's right. Goddammit, there are people out there with real
problems. Here you are, in college (one of the finest, most comfortable
and all-round brilliant places you'll ever find) in Ireland (the best
country in the world). You're alive, well fed, sheltered, clothed,
healthy and you have the *gall* to complain about the stress of
exams? There are people dying *right* *now* from cancer, aids, hunger, or
just believing in the wrong god in the wrong country. There are people
being shot at in eastern europe at this very second, for christ's sake,
and you think you have the right to whinge and whine about doing (less
than) one month of exams per year of laughing, dossing, joking and being
taught about a subject of your own choice?

But no, complaining about the exams goes on. And not an in inevitable,
kind-of-like-the-traffic complaining, but as if it's a real problem. As
if it's a matter of life and death. Don't get me wrong, I realise that
these exams can shape the course of your life from here on in, but that's
it. Hell, a sliding door, a missed train can shape your life. They don't
end it. Pass or fail, you don't have a malignant carcinoma. They don't
take you out back and shoot you if you score less than sixty percent.

It's simple. You have an exam. You need to know stuff to pass the
exam. To learn stuff, you study. Problem and solution, right there. At
no point in that logical chain is there a stage "Complain loudly to all
around you about how doomed you are. If they say they're going to fail,
say that you're going to fail even worse." You see so many groups sitting
around at this time, in the bar, smoking area or even library having quite
incredibly pointless "I'm ****ed" competitions.

"I don't know nearly enough to pass."
"I haven't even started yet!"
"Oh yeah, well, I haven't got any notes!"
"I got notes, then burned them. And I don't even know what course I'm
in!"
"I did that, then punched the lecturer, then hit myself repeatedly over
the head with an iron bar to damage my memory like that guy in Memento, so
I'm going to fail even more than you, so there, ha!"

I know you've heard discussions like that, probably thinking the same
thing I always do - "If you're that done for, then do some bloody
work. Or if you're not going to work, then enjoy yourself, but quit this
no-work-no-fun self-pitying bleating".

Work to pass - it really is that simple. You will be allocated a mark
determining how well you answered a series of questions about your
subject. At no stage do the examiners take your volume of notes into
account, so stop queuing by the photocopiers pretending that it's
work. Never, in the entire history of UCD or any other college, has any
exam paper been given a higher mark because of the number of hours the
student was in the library. So if all you're going to do is sit there
staring at the clock, get the **** out.

Some are unlucky, and fail anyway - that's life. But then you get the
final few - the "I'm the most doomed of all" crowd, the ones complaining
about how they don't like their subject, can't do their subject, are about
as suited to their subject as a fish is to hang-gliding. They complain,
and whinge (and complain) that they have no chance of passing their exams,
and are going to fail *so* badly.

Well, guess what? That's what exams are FOR! You come to college to
learn about a subject. And then, in a shocking, totalitarian and nearly
nazi move, the college dares to check if you have actually learnt anything
before trying to teach you more, or, in the case of finals, giving you a
little piece of paper to say you have actually learnt anything. The
bastards! You don't GET to complain about failing if you know nothing, or
can't do the subject, the same way that grease doesn't GET to complain
about fairy liquid.

But I'm wasting my time. People are going to stress, and strain, and
whine, and not even notice the beautiful sunshine and full bellies and
complete sets of limbs they have now, and insist that they've got
problems. And then they'll move on to the grind of nine-to-five, and find
out about real life, and regret wasting these beautiful years for a long
time to come. Or maybe they'll get hit by a truck, and spend their last
few microseconds undestanding a whole new, simple and brilliant set of
priorities they were stuck too far up their own arses to see in life, and
regret wasting these beautiful years for a very short time to
come. Whichever.

So just sit back, relax, and revel in the joy of living, eating, chilling,
not dying of disease/injury/hunger/thirst/incorrect-ethnic-location, in
fact not-having-a-problem-at-all. Think of the hypocrisy of complaining
about exams ("I'm in college, and therefore among the most privileged even
in the first world, which lives in obscene luxury compared to the vast
bulk of humanity, and it's so unfair!").

Then get back to work.

scojones

werd