Me Gusta!

Yesterday was my last exam; well 'last' is misleading since I only had two. But it was on the very last day of exams (as always) so it felt like a marathon getting there. Not because there was so much to study, but actually because there was so little to do. The paper was a beginner's Spanish course, and for someone who has already learned four other languages, the fifth time round wasn't too vexing. In terms of study time, the week and a half since my other exam was probably enough to learn the whole course from scratch. But I went out of my way to try, even learning vocab lists- heaven forbid! I'm not the type to learn a language by memorising it; that's not how you learn them and you shouldn't try. But when faced with an exam, anything to get as many marks as possible seems to be the way to go.

Anyway, come exam day yesterday I arrived ridiculously early- it was of course an afternoon exam, so it was the very last session of exams. I arrived with almost two hours to go, not really knowing what to do. I only came that early because I had nothing to do at home, but the change of scenery didn't help. I had lunch which sucked up some time, but in the end I just sat down outside the room and listened to music. After giving up on looking at my vocab list for the umpteenth time, I started drawing on it. Random drawings are quite an expertise of mine, though this one evolved into a fully-fledged countryside. It's not that great, but it's probably the best thing I've drawn in ages which speaks volumes. It is reproduced below:

Try Not To Psycho-Analyse Me!

After about half an hour of this, some people started arriving. I was hopeful some friends from my class would come early, but alas no! With about ten minutes to go, one arrived and it was a great relief to have another human being to interact with. Of course time went extremely quickly now and in no time we were into the exam room and seated. Reading time was quite interesting; I had finished half the exam in my head when the ten minutes were up. I filled out the first section (true/false ticks!!) in a few seconds, and blitzed through the rest. After fourteen minutes I was up to the last section, the only lengthy one which required writing 100 words (shock horror). When I finished that the clock showed 28 minutes had elapsed. I was rather pleased but then horror kicked in when I realised we weren't allowed to leave until 1 hour 15 minutes into the exam.

I tried not to worry too much; I could very carefully go over the exam and make sure I had got everything absolutely right. I did this and there was still over half an hour to go. I couldn't draw on the exam script, because it was a question/answer booklet, which was rather annoying. In hindsight I should have asked for some extra paper to do so. I entertained myself for a while with the large periodic tables on the walls in the room- it  was a Chemistry lecture theatre. That got pretty boring pretty quickly. At that stage I noticed that I was not alone in this predicament. Quite a lot of people around me were sitting with their papers shut, looking blankly at the walls.

Somehow, we finally got there. The timepiece was a computer clock projected onto the big screen, which seemed to move agonisingly slowly. I could tell when it was a minute away that my eyes weren't the only tracking the second hand with eagle eyes. The invigilators had caught onto this and one moved to the front as the clock ticked over. He wasn't quite prepared for what happened though; the entire front two rows, in which I was seated, swamped the poor man with their papers. Not a soul was left writing. There were many others further back who wanted to leave but they had to wait until the initial assault passed. 

I quickly slipped down the front, grabbed my bag and walked out to freedom. People streamed out after, and from the next-door room where more people were sitting the exam. I felt sorry for the people in our lecture theatre sitting a different paper, it must have been a huge distraction for them! I'm not surprised there was such a mass exodus; in fact I'm surprised that more people didn't leave then. Perhaps some had the 'never leave an exam early' mentality and the stubborn personality which go so well together. Anyway, it was a breath of fresh air leaving getting out of there- literally and figuratively! I then had a great celebratory end-of-exams dinner and movie night with my girlfriend, which was just what I needed! We saw Super 8, which I definitely recommend to all of you, and the dinner was sooo good! Unfortunately, my 'holiday' is going to be consumed by moving house and today was ridiculously busy so I'm not that happy that exams are over- 'I have to study' was such a good excuse! Anyway, at least I don't have to do any more work, which is the way I like it!

Q.E.D.

Couldn't Resist- It's Rather Appropriate!