We’ve All Been There

Me and my friend met at the entrance to the library, negotiating the best place to sit down for revision. We went down a set of stairs and then another. We meandered past some students studying diligently in silence. Then we found a table and two chairs, in a semi-quiet corner of the building. In my imagination, I pictured myself setting down my rucksack, unloading my pencil case and my notebook, before opening up my laptop to see what was next on the revision agenda. However, as we both set down our bags upon finding our seats, it was as if our sighs of despair opened the gates for a 45 minute conversation about our stressful first exam. My biggest achievement for those 45 minutes was opening my laptop but I neither switched it on nor did I take out my pencil case and my notebook from my bag.

The first exam was for our module on South Asian history. If you’ve been following my other blog posts, you will know that it has been the hardest module to get through. The content was all new to us and on top of that, our seminar leader was very strict with us and quite the challenge. At first, I felt quite frustrated with my seminar leader because everything I said in the seminars felt as though was never to her standard and it made me not enjoy the module as much. Although this was still the case for the rest of the module, as time went on I began to realise that she did have our best interests at heart and did want us to do well. For our last seminar for instance, we were doing some revision and we all sat in the seminar frozen in fear as she grilled us on dates and berated us for not knowing enough for the exam. Then to juxtapose that, me and my friend were standing outside the seminar building, talking loudly and obnoxiously, with the freedom and the knowledge that we will not have to sit another seminar like that again. Our seminar leader walked out of the building, probably confused to see that her students actually had a voice, and she came over to speak to us. She apologised for her tone of voice in the seminar and wanted to clarify that she just wanted us to do our best. This just goes to show that it’s easy to misinterpret people’s intentions when they are being tough on you like this. Sometimes it’s uncalled for but other times, people are just challenging you to try to make you better. In this occasion, it was nice to hear that she wanted us to succeed.

In the library, I reflected on how the exam went with my friend from the same module. We both remarked how that exam was the first time that we actually understood the main topics and arguments of the course. Funnily enough, the whole year for that module felt like a crash course on South Asian history. The first lectures in particular felt like a smack in the face. One of the lecturers took to the stage with a PowerPoint on Siddhartha Gautama who founded Buddhism. One slide was a photograph of a statue of the Buddha and the other was a map of India and that was the whole lecture material with no further slides and no extra notes. To say we were completely lost is an actual understatement. We really had no idea what was going on. For the majority of the module, I think that was the general trend. We survived by picking up small pieces of key information but it was a real challenge. I would like to think that it was a universal experience for the rest of the students but in the last lecture, I was made to think otherwise. For this lecture, the lecturers created a panel to answer some questions from the students to summarise the course before the exam. Some of the questions were really insightful and I began to panic a little bit after seeing how much the other students understood and thought about the material. People were asking insightful questions on a diverse range of topics such as the Mughal Empire, religion and colonialism, whilst I was still trying to piece together the nature and chronology of events! To be honest, I still think that the first term of lectures and seminars were hard to get through for everyone but clearly people grappled with the arguments of the course as time went on faster than I did.

When I also reflected back on my exam in the library, I almost found it comical how much my expectation of the exam prior to it starting did not match the way it necessarily turned out. The exam was online, something that they decided to continue from Covid times and it was a new experience for me. In sixth form, I remember the trauma of the invigilator explaining the instructions of the exams to us and how we had 1 hour and 30 minutes to answer two exam questions of our choice. I remember opening the paper as soon as they said it was okay to do so and scanning it frantically in search of a question that I had the most to say about. I also remember getting hand cramp in the middle of the exam as I struggled to write each of my essays in 45 minutes. One would expect university to be much harder but surprisingly, they’ve made it easier. A whole 24 hours, a whole day to write out two answers. You have your computer and you also have your notes. They advise you to finish in 2 hours but technically you have plenty of extra time if needed. In summary, the whole exam process was intended to be more relaxed than usual. Did I react in a fairly relaxed fashion? Not necessarily. I opened the document with the twelve questions and spent quite some time deciding which question to go for. It was not necessarily the case that there were topics that I did not recognise from each question but rather it was the fact that they were all rather interesting that made it hard to choose which question to go for. As I glanced at the clock at the corner of the computer, it was as if time was being eaten away and although I still had plenty of time, I developed a phantom sense of haste that propelled me to pick my two questions. I could have been more strategic about my two questions if I hadn’t been so convinced by my haste. For instance, there was a question on religion that was very similar to the question I answered in my summative essay on Hinduism and Buddhism. It was exactly my thought that it would be a good question to go for. Did I choose that question? No I didn’t. Instead, I picked two questions which were interesting but mentally taxing to write out. At some point I had something written and I got myself to a point psychologically where I thought it was acceptable to submit. I named my document with my anonymous code and the exam number and was ready to turn it in.

It was only after I hit send that that I thought to myself “Shit, what the fuck have I just written?”

I decided to go on a walk after my exam to free my mind from the shackles of my bedroom walls. When I usually go for walks at university, I walk without a particular place in mind and stroll until I eventually make it back to my accommodation. However, this walk was a walk with a purpose! I knew where I needed to go and that was Tesco to get chocolate. People always ask me how I was able to get through three terms of South Asia seminars with my gruelling seminar leader? I would like to think that it was my strength of mind alone but in actuality, it was my strength of mind dependent on the knowledge of a reward of chocolate, that motivated me to sit through all of my seminars. At the end of my South Asia seminars, I would buy myself a bar of chocolate. At the end of my South Asia exam, I also decided to buy myself a bar of chocolate. With the idea of chocolate looming over me, I walked in complete autopilot mode to the shops, gaining consciousness only until I saw the magic bar of Snickers in front of me. I grabbed it excitedly and began to make my way to the till. As I was doing so, I glanced at my phone and saw that I had a message from my future revision buddy in the library. She was asking about how to format her exam document for submission and I found myself multi-tasking, answering her question whilst wandering problematically to the self-checkout, not focusing on where I was going. Somehow, I made it to the till and eventually out of the shop, whilst still glued to my phone. I made a promise to myself that I would only eat my bar of chocolate when I arrived back at my room so like an impatient child, I sped down the bridge to make it back as soon as possible. I did so whilst still being glued to my phone where I was reassuring my friend that she did well on the exam whilst she was equally trying to do the same. She then remarked how strange it was that South Asia was over and how she felt that she only understood the content of the course that week. I responded with “Omg same!” and two laughing emojis. It was then that I switched off my phone and finally paid attention to where I was going.

A few days passed, it was then that I found myself in the library with my friend for revision. I set down my rucksack and opened my laptop that I didn’t switch on until three quarters of an hour later. Instead, I spent the time speaking to my friend about the exam, laughing and joking about the contrast between the expectation and reality of the experience. After this, we knuckled down with some revision in preparation for our next exam on Late Antiquity. I reflect on this exam experience with you also because I think exams, whilst not always relevant for everyone, are things that most of us have sat through and endured at some point in our lives. As such, in various manifestations, it’s a familiar experience. When I was younger, I would always feel quite uncomfortable when people would discuss the exams straight after they happened, pointing out things that they did that I didn’t. I’ve never really been that great at dealing with exams. In the past, I remember stressing myself out to the point that it was almost unhealthy because I was so anxious about doing well. Today, I’m still not the best at controlling stress but I’m always trying to better my conduct and my approach to it. I hope that this light-hearted tipple on my first exam experience was one way to do that. I know that Durham is one of the “Russel Group” universities but the exam experience, the highs and the lows, still remains the same for all its students.

Are you good at dealing with exams? How do you react to stress? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll be sure to reply to them. I love hearing what you have to say!

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See you next week,

Bye,

XOX, Juliette