Wasique Hasan
It’s that time of the year again. Almost everyone in schools and colleges are done with their exams by now, either half-yearly or finals. This gives us time for some introspection.
I think everyone will agree with me when I say there are significant differences in our behaviour before and after exams. Here, I am going to point out some of them, and who knows, maybe you’ll also relate to some of those.
Time stretches and bends and is generally unwilling to play along. Picture this scenario in your head: You are sitting at your desk with an open book in front of you, trying your hardest to focus on the printed words. You are sure it has been already been a solid hour when you look up and the clock says it has only been 10 minutes! Must be a mistake, you tell yourself.
Of course, you then proceed to do what any normal person would do. You know, spend 15 minutes changing the clock batteries and then make sure it is centered, and not tilted, on the wall. Because God forbid, a clock should not be out of alignment! What’s that? I’m the only person who does that? Cool!
On the other side of time’s unfortunate malleability is when you take some well-deserved time off after a particularly tiring study session. You decide to spend an hour, at most, browsing the web. Really! Yet, when you check the time 30 minutes later, you find that four hours have already passed and you’re at the bottom of an embarrassing YouTube spiral, watching ‘Smash Mouth by All Star’. But every time they say ‘star’, I take a bite out of an onion. Not my proudest moment.
Exam time is also when we fashion the grandest of plans. This is something everyone does many, many times. What better time to plan how you’ll spend your upcoming holidays than the night before an exam, right? Obviously you don’t have any pressing matters like, I don’t know, studying for a test. This leads to many book lists, game lists and movie lists (or bucket lists, if your exams are going badly) being made that will be long forgotten by the time the exams are actually over.
Even if you somehow remember the plans once the holidays finally arrive, you’ll probably be too lazy to finish even a quarter of your lists. Actually, that’s too generous _ you’d be extremely fortunate to even finish one item and make it to the second one on a lists.
Lastly, one of the most common things is getting bored out of your mind once the exams finally end. You spend the entirety of your exams looking forward to the day you’ll finally be free, but when it arrives, you realise you have nothing to do. All the activities you found so alluring during the exams _ rereading your old books, replaying games, strumming on that old guitar _ seem bland and uninteresting now that you have more time on your hands. The symptoms of this condition include walking aimlessly from one room to another, trying to find something to do, lying in bed wondering what to do with your life, and taking many, many naps. Actually, scratch that last part, that’s actually pretty fun.
While exams do seem like the bane of your existence and a completely worthless waste of time, they actually do help us appreciate just how fortunate we are most of the year, when we have much free time. Also, let’s not kid ourselves _ we all know we only study the entire year’s lessons when exams come around. Let’s just hope that the next time, they don’t take place at the same time as the World Cup or Champions Trophy.