September!
The ninth month of the Gregorian calendar. The month of many holidays. People have many different perspectives on what they think of this month. Teacher’s Day is present in this month as well so good for them, I guess.
Some think that it’s a wonderful month where there is lots to offer. Others think that it is boring or even genuinely annoying and stressful. I’m on board with the haters of September because this is the time where I face the most stress-inducing and horrifying things a school can introduce you to. EXAMS!
Look I know there hasn’t been a newly discovered method to test children, but I’m sorry I’m just not content with this one. Exams are not good. They can affect a student’s mental and physical health if they either get overwhelmed by what information they receive or study to the point where they just can’t even eat or drink anymore.
Scared that you might fail an exam? I’m scared of death dude! If anything, I’m scared you might do well in it. Whoever invented exams, I just want you to know that you could have thought of better ways to determine a person’s career than slapping a bunch of questions onto a piece of paper. But to be fair, back then were simpler times and were probably way less stressful. Anyways, you’ve had enough of me rambling.
Let me talk about my exam time.
If I’m being honest, this year could have been so much worse. My school, for some bizarre reason, reduced the number of topics for 2023 from three books including the books from grade 7 to 9 to one book, being grade 9. But this was only for math, science and English but I’ll take it. So, you could imagine how relieved I was. I basically had to study a third of what I had studied in the 7th grade. And just as I thought I couldn’t get any luckier I realize that I have so many study holidays. Even lesser than the amount that I had last year. So far things were almost entirely in my favor.
The subjects that I had to write an exam for were Math, Science, English, Computer Science, French, History, Geography, Global Perspectives and Art. The papers for Math, Science, English, Computer Science and French had a total of 100 marks and contained two papers that were 50 marks each. The rest of the exams were 50 marks in total consisting of only one paper. French was the only one to have 3 papers. Paper 1 was Listening, Paper 2 was Reading and Writing and Paper 3 was Speaking. Also, every paper that has 100 marks is split into two papers for a reason… except Science.
Me: Ok so why do you have two papers English?
English: One’s fiction and the other is non-fiction.
Me: And what about you Math?
Math: One needs a calculator and the other one does not.
Me: Ok so far reasonable responses. What about you Science?
Science: Oh, I just want to.
Me: So, there is no distinction between the papers.
Science: Nope. Since I’m a core subject, I’m allowed to do this.
Me: You do realize that you are just putting more pressure on the students, right?
Science: Umm… Look man I don’t have much going on leave me alone.1. Science: The first one
You know that feeling when your first exam of the semester is going to happen and you just feel extremely nervous at first, but afterwards you get used to it and then just try less? That’s basically what happened to me.
On the day before my science exam my stress-meter was shot up to the moon. I intentionally locked my room and forced myself to study for hours on end. The only time that I took breaks was when I had to eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I’m pretty sure there was a pooja on that same day and I just decided to not go and sleep because I was just exhausted. The next day was the day I looked into the eye of the beast. The day when I conquered my fears. The day when I… wrote on a piece of paper.
I’m going to be honest, during the exam, heck even before the exam, my heart wasn’t beating as fast and I didn’t sweat as much, because I just genuinely wasn’t worried. I just went, did the paper, and left. I’m guessing I don’t get scared in the last minute and I do get scared in the last day (If u know what I mean).
Ok this is getting too long, I’m just going to heavily summarize the rest of my exam days.
2. Computer Science (Practical)- PSYCH!
There was a strike that day, so school never happened.
3. French: A pleasant surprise
I was genuinely scared for French because this time I had a different teacher and I didn’t do so good this term so, again, I studied hard. I’m just going to make a name for this. STUDY MODE! Anyways I completed all 3 papers, and I did surprisingly well.
I know! I’m shocked!
4. Geography- Nothing to talk about. It was just easy.
5. Math- A weird one
It was 4 days since my last exam, and I thought that I was ready for math after I thought I finished days of STUDY MODE. I THOUGHT. I did both the papers and just assumed I did good, but I wasn’t sure. This was a scary day because my dad would not be happy if I did average.
6. Computer Science (Theory) – A very annoying one
You know why I don’t like the theoretical part of computer science? There is way too much to read. If you want to score good marks in this, you need to know everything. I mean every step to every function, every code and just overall everything. So, you know what I did. STUDY MODE!
But, on the day of the exam I was disappointed. Not because I did bad. It’s because I did good, because the paper was easy. So, I studied for hours, and it wasn’t worth it. Bad day for me!
7. Art- Nothing to talk about. It was just easy.
8. English- An exam where I just hoped I’d get lucky
I’ll be honest, I didn’t know how to study for English. So, I just watched some YouTube videos on the English topics, memorized every figure of speech and did a few sample papers.
Not going to lie, I went to this one a little more blind than the rest.
9. History- Nothing to talk about. It was just easy.
10. Global Perspectives- I skipped it because I caught dengue ☹.
8 days later my exams were finally corrected by my teachers. And it was a Parent Teacher Meeting and because I was still recovering from dengue, my parents went to see my marks while I didn’t. So, it was more of a surprise to me than to them. So that meant I could just chill back at home, chatting with my friends, gaming on my console, and watching TV.
So far, a pretty good day, right? Hmmm… just read this part.
I was chilling while eating my lunch and watching One Piece on Netflix and my parents come in. When they entered, I knew I did something wrong by just looking at their expressions. They were right royally upset. They told me that I did good overall, and let me highlight that, OVERALL.
Whenever they say that, it always means that I haven’t done well in a few things. Those being English and Math. I got an 81/100 in English and a 75/100 in Math. Now that may not sound so bad, but I don’t want to be just average. All this happened because of what? My overconfidence. Ever since I found out that my syllabus was smaller, I took my studies very lightly. I may have studied but I just didn’t study enough. I’m not proud to admit this, (because my parents are going to read this too) I also procrastinated at times when I was just tired or hungry.
Hey, but on the bright side, every other exam I wrote came back with good marks.
To be honest, this is the one essay I was not looking forward to writing. I’m practically embarrassing myself by slapping this onto a blog.
Hopefully I can just look back on this many years later and have a good laugh about it and think “Wow, my mum was right. I was a lazy bum”.
So, umm… the lesson for today is, don’t procrastinate and try your hardest.
Or you’ll regret it.
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