Aren't exams just great?

28th May 2010

Today I would like to Blog about... exams! I’m not particularly fond of exams, revision or work of any description, but I have found that Exam Season has some perks. You might disagree, but humour me and I’ll explain why Exam Season can be a beautiful thing...

1. When the exams begin, lectures and tutorials stop. This means that I can happily sleep in until 1.00pm every day and not feel guilty about missing anything (other than the beauty of the morning and attractive post men)

2. As soon as you have an exam (or an essay deadline for the Sociology dossers) the sun decides that it wants to come out and play. Surely this is a bad thing? I don’t think so but then again I might be biased – I believe that sunbathing is infinitely more important than revision. I also think that when you absolutely have to revise, it’s much nicer to do it outside, perhaps on a picnic table, sun lounger or on the freshly cut grass. I can see that there may be objections to this, namely by people who don’t have a garden to revise in or by people who think that revision and doing well is more important than being tanned. I see your point, it’s quite sensible really, but what do you think of this – I’m not going to be the next Einstein, if I’m going to be mediocre I might as well do it with a suntan.

3. In an attempt to avoid the revision that comes along with Exam Season I procrastinate in various ways, each more rewarding and time consuming than the one before. In fact, the Art of Procrastination deserves more than one point...

4. I usually begin the procrastination process by tidying my room. It has been said (usually by my mother) that a tidy bedroom means a tidy mind. So when the exams roll around, the duster rolls out. I do an aesthetic tidy of my room – making sure everything is in its proper place. Then come the windows, mirrors and work surfaces. Once they are sparkling I move onto the floor, a good hoover is essential for good revision. This is followed by the sleeping area because we all know that smart people need fresh sheets. Once the room looks nice and clean it’s important to move onto the drawers and wardrobes – a good clean out is needed – clutter isn’t good for the mind you see.

5. Now that I have a nice tidy bedroom I like to reward myself, usually with a good book. Reading is an excellent for of procrastination; you should be reading about the Expressive Cultures of Brazilians, but reading a book about the junk in your food is much more interesting. Did I revise for my A-level Religious Studies exam? No, I read Prince Caspian and the rest of the Narnia books soon followed. Do I regret this? Not at all! The things that I learnt from my procrastination books are far superior to anything I could ever learn about art in Aboriginal Australia.

6. An excellent way to waste time is... Television! Now, I don’t go down the traditional route of watching television in the living room - that leads to being told off for not doing revision. Instead I watch it in the comfort of my bed on my laptop. My only memory of AS and A-levels are the following T.V shows (all of which I watched in their entirely – as in from start to finish) 1. Gossip Girl 2. Grey’s Anatomy 3. Chuck 4. House 5. Pushing Daisies and 6. Bones. That might not seem impressive, but think about this, in 2008 when I started watching Grey’s Anatomy there were four seasons. With roughly 22 episodes in each series that’s around 3696 minutes of uninterrupted television and that’s only for one show. Just thinking about that much television is quite disgusting... But, I have yet to see any devastatingly negative side effects (other than becoming slightly obsessed with characters like McDreamy and McSteamy)



7. Another brilliant way to procrastinate during Exam Season is to listen to some new music – I initially started this Blog to say all the great music that I was listening to, but it became a bit of a monster... I’ve been listening to – KISS, Barenaked Ladies, Simon and Garfunkel, Tupac, The Fugees, TLC, Billy Joel, all things Glee, Ingrid Michaelson, The Beatles, The Mamas and Papas and and a lot of Classical, particularly Tchaikovsky.

8. Exam Season is also a time when vast amounts of food will be consumed – this can be directly linked to procrastination and while it’s probably not a good thing in the long term, it’s definitely fun at the time. It was totally a good decision to eat that entire jar of Nutella, right?

9. I save a ridiculous amount of money because I no longer spend £20+ a day at Uni!

10. You might start to get Cabin Fever (or is it Stockholm Syndrome?) but you become real tight with your family and pets – spending time with real friends and real people takes too much effort.

11. The exploration of Social Networking Sites and of course Wikipedia become exciting and can last for hours.

12. You become a master Blogger. Well, you don’t actually become good at the art of Blogging, but you spend most of your evening in a state of Blogging Procrastination (the best of all) where you write twelve bullet points of complete rubbish. You also get to read several Blogs written by your nearest and dearest. You discover new things about them and your friendship grows stronger – now surely that makes Exam Season worthwhile?

So, you see that Exam Season can be a beautiful thing. Yes, at times you may despair. When you’re sitting in the exam you might start wishing that you had spend some of that sunbathing time reading lecture notes. When you’re forty and still unemployed because nobody wants to hire someone who failed a degree in Anthropology, you can look back and think, “at least I had fun during Exam Season”. Life is far too short to be stressed out – the next time you start to dread Exam Season, just think about all the exciting things that come along with these hellish exams :)

xx

P.S If that doens't convince you, think about this - the END of exams means a 4 month long summer :) :) :)