Eggs/Ham In Nations

Ade gets swotty

The sun is here, everyday is warm and welcoming, the beach beckons, but you know it's that time of year once more. You know because student magazines start printing supposedly amusing little articles like this one (unless it ends up in the bin, cheers Sarah). The E-word is upon us once more, foisted by an uncaring dictatorship, and I don't mean Ecstasy. And here's me wanting desperately to write instead of the joys of hessian rug breeding. Tsk!

You know, I looked at the 18 hours of exams I had on the finals timetable and I remember thinking lightly to myself "Oh shit!". I'd much rather do other things, like maybe be tied up and soundly whipped by a college libra....ahem. I wandered round my dept in a daze, musing upon idle whimsies such as "I'd like to dynamite this frigging place!". After three years of total Computer Science, you think I really want to revise this crap??! I'm sick to death of it! Why not just take it as an article of faith that I know it all?! I'm really hurt by this apparent lack of trust. I mean, if I hadn't done any work at all, I wouldn't know how to use a keyboard, would I?? (Yer, well....) ESC[[xyz!!&dammit!

The exams (or "How to sweat little bits of your life away in two hour segments") don't even ask sensible questions anyway. After three years in Aber, you'd think I'd at least be asked to recommend a good pub or a decent pint or something. If they really want to test myself and my compatriots on what we learnt in the lectures, then why not set a Sun crossword?? (Hey, they take us at least half an hour, y'know!) Or what about: "Out of all the lecturers who think they're funny, who is the most sadly deluded?"; "Please award the Cynical Bastard of the Year trophy to one of your tutors"; "Name three power tools and the ways you would use them to exact bloody and perforated revenge on They Who Have Set This Paper"?

These days you can spend an hour just filling in the front of your answer sheet. I mean, c'mon; "Seat no." - whaaat? "The one next to the climbing bars, in front of the girl with the pink teddy bear on her desk and behind the guy taking the heroin overdose". "Student no." - not a clue; is it the same as my bank account, perhaps? What else - "Favourite fantasy"? "Preferred executor of the will"?

Far more inhuman though, is the concept of "Morning exams". Like, you really wanna face "Describe your favourite abstract data type and give a formal mathematical definition if you can remember what all those squiggly symbols are" straight after your Shreddies, right? To be particularly cruel, someone decided that all exams should take place in the hayfever season. Stap me, that's a brilliant idea! Hey, why don't we shove dandelions up their nostrils as well? It can't be fun for the examiners later, peeling apart snotty pages whilst wearing rubber gloves.

The marking of exams is, of course, a complete farce, rivalled only by the likely trial of a Libyan terrorist. There's only one sure way of not getting anything wrong, but unfortunately you only get zero for a blank sheet of paper. Even if you do spell your name correctly. Getting down to hard facts, it's all based on whether or not you bribed/slept with the right members of your dept. Imagine it: your lecturer has already marked fifty identical papers when he/she gets to yours, twenty of which contained the textbook answers, fifteen of which made the same obvious error, and the other erm....fifteen of which say "I cannot answer this question as I have just turned into a small, pink banana and bananas don't do exams" - how likely is it that your answer will get fair consideration unless you're in bed beside them at the time to make sure, or the cheque didn't bounce? Why should examiners bother themselves with this tedious business anyhow, when they could be doing something else less boring instead such as watching Brucie's Guest Night or pulling the legs off small children?

Much of the work has already been done anyway, by means of assignments (yes, those things that get done nine hours before the deadline after the pubs have shut). (Incidentally, my supervisor can't understand why my project has taken so long to complete; I try to tell him I've been working really hard but sometimes the drugs are slow to wear off in the mornings, and they make an hour appear to last three days anyway).

The worst thing about exams is the obligatory smug bastard who strolls out smiling with hands in pockets afterwards, and says, "Actually I quite enjoyed that!". "Yes, well actually I'm quite enjoying this", is the only answer as you nonchalantly batter their swollen head against the kerb before tossing the corpse in front of the next passing UCW bulldozer.

The best thing about exams is the opportunity to get abso-frigging-lutely smashed out of your tiny spent little burnt out mind after the last one. Sample diary entry: "5th June, last exam; 6th June, unconscious". Quite a few people have already said they'll see me down the pub, but frankly I don't think I'll be able to take my eyes off the toilet bowl by then, much less recognise them or myself. Well, after three years in Aber, you've got to be able to demonstrate that you've learnt something, haven't you?

Ade.