Exam Season: Week 5 Review

WHOOP WHOOP*

Exam 11: Chemistry

On the morning of the Chemistry exam, I woke up to a text from Erin: "Water, water everywhere, but nothing to do with it..."
This rather beguiled me as I had a shower, did the washing, and filled up my water bottle.
Turns out most of the county was without water - including everyone on our street. I won't lie; there is a chance that we actually syphon our water from people who can afford to pay for it, it's that kind of household. Hell, we lived off next door's broadband for six years. I once got three full meals off people I know just by standing there and looking poor and hungry.
Actually(and this turns out to be the point of the text, which i suddenly laughed at four hours later), there was water in the pipes. It was just that no-one could get to it. I mean gees, the schools once had to close down because of a water shortage while it was raining. For a country that spends most of its time flooding, we do seem to have an awful lot of droughts; the county of Essex once famously called a water shortage during a flood - there was the water, it just wasn't... You know... In the right place. Which was also, conveniently, my answer to the Geography exam question 'What is flooding?'. Although all I really wanted to write was "OH MY DAYS HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS?!"

This issue also conveniently collided with the unnerving progression into informality of the invigilators. I mean, it's not like they let us talk and doss in the last couple of exams, but things certainly got a little more... Relaxed. We line up outside, and then we have to go into the school building, along a short corridor, and into the Sports Hall; in the first Geography exam, S-eb was threatened with exclusion for talking before he even got into the corridor - and you only have to be quiet in the hall itself. By comparison, in Thursday's Physics exam we were talking almost until we sat down - but that comes later(about two paragraphs later, i estimate). Then, as we all traipsed miserably inside on that morning, clutching our see-through pencil cases and clear bottles of water with the label removed, the Head Invigilator is saying to everyone "Eh, hold onto that, would you? Worth more than gold by the time you come out." Because I don't drink much, I had a small half-filled bottle. S-eb had a large bottle filled so much that he had to make sure not to squeeze it in case it burst. He made a poor joke with his eyes.
The Head Invigilator continues to unnerve me, and this was just a standard and prime example. He's been the Head Invigilator for many years, including all the ones I've had exams for. For our mock exams earlier this year, I forgot my pen in the first exam and had to borrow his, then gave it back to him at the end of all the exams and somehow that was massively and tear-jerkingly awkward. Then I saw him in Sainsbury's, which was worse.
Then when I went in today he made the water joke, and partway through the exam, because I get quite skittish, I knocked my watch off my desk and he picked it up and whispered "Stop throwing your jewellery about, eh?" and laughed and I'm kind of like "I'M NOT ALLOWED TO TALK OR MAKE ANY SOUND BUT HE JUST MADE A JOKE SHOULD I LAUGH SHOULD I APOLOGISE SHOULD I-- OH, LOOK, ISOTOPES. THE ANSWER IS ISOTOPES. HAH HAH HAH" and then almost at the end of the exam when I'd finished but everyone still had to be absolutely silent, he came up to me and asked me if it would be the same people in for the Physics exam on Thursday. I think I went for the terrified mute nod.
Oh, yes, and when he found out that I might get ill in the middle of an exam and need strong medication he seriously kept asking me like every five minutes if I was okay.
And basically this is as terrifying as when Mrs. M. hugged me.

Worst for everyone else except me, however, was the last question on the paper. 98% of people in that exam hall hadn't been able to brush their teeth, have a shower, go to the toilet or get a drink before coming to school. They were dehydrated, dirty, hot and thinking "Why does RAO get the water?!".
At which point they turned to the last question, which began "Look at these figures for water shortages..."
I think we should all get extra marks for Exceptional Circumstances due to Emotional Trauma.

Exam 12: Physics

It's easy, they said. It's only Physics, they said.
Actually, it was pretty easy, except the very first question. It's kind of depressing to start on a bad question; one expects it to start easy and then work up through intermediate, inconvenient, unfortunately phrased, cringe-worthy, urination, wtf even is this? and finally JESUS EFFING CHRIST. To start at the top is rather off-putting.
So yeah, when I opened the paper I basically just gaped at the picture of a longitudinal wave and went Sandy and Sandra on its ass.
Mental answer: "HOW DO I KNOW WHAT A COMPRESSION IS? ALL WE LEARNT IS THAT A COMPRESSION LOOKS LIKE THAT ^{*points to compression*} YOU KNOW, THE BIT THAT'S COMPRESSED. DON'T ASK STUPID QUESTIONS THAT AREN'T EVEN ON THE EFFING SYLLABUS. I MEAN, WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO, CIRCLE THE COMPRESSION? GEES, WOMAN."
Written answer: can't remember. Basically blagged it

And then it was all right after that.
Although I was very disappointed by the absence of equations of motion
I love those damn things! You have four equations and you can use them to work out the distance or starting velocity or ending velocity or acceleration or time of flight for anything! It's great! It's just complicated maths with lots of long numbers and rearranging, and then you get 5 marks for your fun!
There were no equations of motion, so Rao was ve'y sad

But then that was the last exam so we all came out and screamed a bit and then sort of went quiet and drifted away and then we went Laser-Quest and played Let's Kill T-om and Rao was awesome and incognito for the first game and like hid in the maze bit and zapped people loads and then cornered S-eb in the second game until he screamed and grabbed her gun to stop her shooting him. But that's not part of the exams, so I'm not allowed to talk about it in a Journal entitled Exam Season Review. That's, like, the rules.
Unlike the rules of Laser-Quest, which I joyously and shamelessly broke with glee and fervour.



*DIRECTOR'S CROTCH DIRECTOR'S CROTCH