Exam Time

Exam Time ©

By

Michael Casey

Well its exam time, it’s May 19^th 2018, Cup Final Day, Man U v Chelsea, so I shouldn’t watch that I should be revising. There’s something else happening today too but for the life of me I cannot remember what. That’s the trouble with exams you get blockages in your brain, you should have done that section on this or that but you forgot. But hopefully you can get into Sussex, it’s pretty down there and you have the beach at Brighton too, nudists and gay life combined. So when would you actually study, assuming you pass the A Levels and get in there.

I’m sure there was one paper I should have looked at but what was it, anyway at least the Cup Final will be on if I do a bit of revising first. And on it goes, you hope and pray you revise for the right stuff. Your mother prays that the examiners miss all your mistakes and promises money to Charity so long as the Golden Child passes and gets on the Brick Laying course, or Electrical Engineering course. Or maybe gets into Cambridge to do Maths, whatever it is whatever Faith any mum has she will be praying for all she is worth. All she has to do is get you out of bed so you do some actual revising.

Luck or God does play its part, my niece revised like crazy for Geography and hey presto on the day of the exam she turned over the page and there before her was everything she revised the night before. Maybe her grandmother in Heaven had a word, my mum does control the tea pot in Heaven after all. On the other hand you can work so hard and answer all the questions but still get a bad grade. So then you have to live with it. 

Though there is this thing called grade boundaries, these can be changed so that the amount of As or Bs or Cs are shared out. My daughter tells me for her recent exam 80+ percent is no longer an A but could become a C, because lots of very high results were achieved. This seems unfair to me but apparently in the Sciences this can be the case. 

But back to the chase, you have to be organised at exam time. You have to attach your exam time table to the fridge with a magnet. You need to make sure you get up in time to catch the bus to school or college so you don’t miss those exams. That would be tragic, all the studying then the cat has knocked the exam timetable off the fridge, so you are still in bed instead of taking the exam.

There are many study methods, a little bit often and then gradually increase it till you do more and more. Staying up till 2am before a 9 am exam is probably not a good idea, as you need to get your sleep and then get up and eat and shower before travelling to the exam. In films no doubt Hugh Grant would eat and wash in the shower at the same time while reading from notes glued to the bathroom wall, I would not recommend it. As a dad with a daughter doing A Levels next year my job is to provide chocolate and plenty of it, I also have to make sure she gets up in time for the bus and exams. So if today is your Wedding Day no matter who you are then think to the Future, one day you will be doing this too.