Exam Woes

Why study for exams.... Are they not about what you know, not about how much you can cram into your head the night before? ~Anonymous

To say STPM is around the corner is technically inapropriate. For goodness sake, it is just directly ahead!

Except for the rare, few weirdos with an inexplicable penchant for exams, they are more of a taboo to most of us, even for us war-battered veterans who have gone through numerous “battles”.

Exam is a blood-sucking leech that sticks to you indefinitely, taking away all the pleasures of the learning process, especially in a place which adopts an exam-oriented education system. How are you supposed to enjoy when you’re studying merely for the sake of examinations? Just to quote someone, the system promotes rote learning: students memorise answers by heart instead of grasping the concepts and apply them accordingly in different situations. You go to tuition to be taught on answering techniques; you go to intensive classes and workshops for forecast questions. What the heck? This will certainly make Aristotle turn in his grave!

Worst still, some people tend to take exams a tad too seriously and adopt misguided strategies to prepare for the Big One. As a result, their lives are turned up-side-down, totally ruined. Let me give you a couple of examples. The names, of course, are obliterated to prevent them from becoming subjects of ridicule. By they way, I do ridicule them.

First of all, let’s dispel the myth that most students burn midnight oil before exams. Be it drinking coffee, taking stimulants or giving oneself an occasional smack in the face, these people are creative when it comes to keeping themselves awake. But have you heard of a case in which one could not get to sleep because he’s too nervous? This poor insomniac has developed a dependence on cough syrup to get himself to bed. Oh great Lord, talk about taking drugs!

Then, there is another one who has totally shuffled his biological clock by sleeping from eight in the morning to the evening, take his “breakfast” (do you have a technically correct term for this?), study for a couple of hours, take a nap then wake up at ten in the night, then study marathon till dawn. God bless this nocturnal soul!

As for me on the other hand, life goes on as usual. It’s still more play than work, more sleep than study, plus a couple of unaccounted-for missing hours each day.