Fearing and preparing for that one test!

Fearing and preparing for that one test!

Have you ever experienced a kind of anxiety before a test of the subject you're weak in?

I bet you probably have...

I know how it feels. The same fear is experienced when we are not prepared to take the test.

Maybe you neglected the subject, maybe you didn't understand the basics of it, maybe you partied hard last night, I can keep on guessing for about an hour.

So the moment you feel like you're losing it and the water is chest-high, you start studying like a mad-man.

You get a superpower to complete the piled up syllabus at the same time. You complete all the chapters within hours but you still fear that you might have missed something.

There are always predictions made by you and your friends about the questions that might possibly be on the test papers!

We've been told that gambling is bad, but we do that all the time.

We bet on marks instead of money!

This blog is a description of a recent mid-term test. I can’t say that the subject syllabus was difficult for the students to understand, but surely it was vast!

And the problem for most engineering students is that two tests are conducted in a day…

They wrap-up the midterms in just three days!

You get a 3-hour break after the first test of the day.

Even the smartest kids in the class can feel the pressure on the day. Students manage to study for all the subjects, but there always remains one subject which makes them nervous.

Midterms this year were quite easy for some reasons. With little efforts one could score a decent amount of marks.

Still, there was a subject which made all the class study, speculate and worry in the

3-hour break.

It was related to electronics!

Not that it was difficult to remember all the concepts of the subject.

But it was a tough job to complete almost 50% syllabus in a single day…

We utilized the evening before the test studying for the first test. We thought we could manage the “Subject” in the 3-hour break.

As soon as we got the break after the first test, we took out some studying material from the back-pack to read,

Now “We” here does not represent me or my friends. Here, “We” represents the whole class. I think no one will disagree with me on this statement.

THREE HOURS TO GO:

Me, Dr. Workaholic, Mr. Tenacious, Guy D’Average decided to study together to help each other understand the topics we don’t understand.

And honestly, for the first hour, I think we were really into studying.

We had that kind of super-power where we can complete the required portion for the test in a minimum amount of time. We actually revised what has been done in the class. Dr. Workaholic made me understand the concepts I was finding difficult to understand.

Mr. Tenacious explained all the necessary circuit diagrams. Guy D’Average tried to explain the concepts in a simpler way.

We were confident that we were doing some substantial work.

TWO HOURS TO GO:

 Suddenly, a student started speaking loudly to his friend. He said that he knew about the questions that are going to be on the test. This made us really greedy. We wanted to know about the questions that are going to be on the test. Who won’t?

We asked him if he was sure of that. Unfortunately, it was his guess. We now stopped studying and started guessing. We four were talking like the market analysts from the news channel. We started analyzing the possible questions. We all came to the conclusion that numerical problems are the ones we should tackle first. To be honest, it was quite obvious that a test paper of the subject related to electronics is ought to have numerical problems.

Mr. Tenacious wrote the formula many times on a page. We did everything we could to memorize the formulas required for the test.  We could bet almost anything on the chance that the test would be based on numerical problems. We practiced a few problems on the calculator to get into the flow.

ONE HOUR TO GO:

Dr. Workaholic was so stressed out that he asked us out for a 5-minute walk. We thought that the walk would help us keep our mind calm.

What we saw outside can be described better by someone who has witnessed WORLD WAR, “There was death everywhere!”

Everyone was studying. There were students studying everywhere!

In the classrooms, in the canteen, in the passage, in the library, everywhere!

The college was infested by studying students.

Dr. Workaholic and Mr. Tenacious couldn’t stand it. They felt like they’re not working hard enough. The 5-minute walk failed in just 3 minutes.

Everyone was making their own guesses. We got brainwashed cause we heard a studious student saying that the test will be theory-based.

We hadn’t concentrated much on theory. It would have been better if we had stayed in the class…

The walk turned out to be something that made us much more nervous!

We had to grab our books again. And in the last hour for the exam to start, we got our super-powers back!

Everything we read was stored in our RAM.

(RAM is the part of a computer in which the information is stored temporarily when a program is being used.  )

THE TEST STARTS:

We got our test papers. And to our surprise, it was based on theory.

It was 100% theory-based.  But our RAM memory was still intact!

I think each one of us wrote the test according to our RAM management and memory.

All’s well that ends well.

I thank that studious kid for what he did unknowingly.

While returning home, there were many things running on my mind.

What if we hadn’t planned for a walk?

What if we hadn’t listened to what the studious student said?

What if we hadn’t got our super-powers back?

What if…