This is a letter from me and probably the entire population who are or who ever have taken you while they were studying. I know you mean well and to some people you are their saving grace because they understand how your brain works and how you are manipulated by the lecturers, teachers and examiners but, at the end of the day, I am not one of those people... and neither are a lot of people.
For most of us, you come around once a year and that time of the year and it is literally hell! I try to avoid you when I'm picking my subjects but why is it that all of the best subjects have to have you as assessment? Cold War - Exam. Germany - Exam. Britain - Exam.
I'll pretty much enjoy the entire year learning different things that are genuinely interesting (except maths and science at GCSE because I was just shit at those subjects) and getting to put that knowledge into practise by making products or writing stories. It makes me want to carry on studying for my entire life and just learn everything from history to design to ICT because knowledge is power.
But then April will come and suddenly I'll remember why, after next year, I'm never going back to education. The time of the year where teachers will helpfully remind you that there's only a month until your exams, which will pretty much effect the rest of your life, and you should be in full revision mode. Luckily for me, I've normally been revising for months already but those words are like a kick in the stomach and causes a pain in my chest.
Suddenly I'm expected to remember EVERYTHING that I've been taught over the last 1/ 2 years for a single exam that could be on anything. Funnily enough, every exam I've done recently has totally defied the point of learning because I'm suddenly having to just memorise hundreds of facts and theories and pray that something that has stuck comes up. But, even before I get near to the exams, I've gone through months of anxiety and panicking by just thinking about you. You just seem to exploit all of my weakness: my inability to act under pressure, my worry about forgetting things and my fear of not being good enough when I need to be.
Those months of anxiety leads up to that one day, those few hours where you're faced with the uncertainty of what's even going to turn up. Am I going to be lucky? Or are those months going to just be pointless because I might just have a really bad day. But you and the examiners don't care about that, they just want to see the results you can get under pressure. The problem is that if I fail then they'll think I've not done any work and suddenly my revision has been overlooked because I messed up.
So... that's my experience. I want to thank you exams for creating some of the worst memories and anxiety in my life. Congratulations for mentally breaking me every year for those few months just so that you can show teachers how good or crap they were at teaching. I'll be happy once I never have to see you again but don't worry because you'll have plenty more victims, sorry I mean students, to ruin for the rest of eternity.
Wishing you all the best - have fun ruining lives
From Sonal Lad (a current victim)
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