Why is it that as exams draw close one's inclination to study wanes out more and more, and because one is not studying, one's panic increases. It's a vicious circle. You don't feel like studying, so you're not studying; because you're not studying, you're panicky; more you panic, more you don't feel like studying; more you don't study, the more you feel that you SHOULD study, and that makes you even more panicky...and on and on and on it goes, until suddenly the exams are right on top of you, and you're caught in no man's land.
You sit for the class tests, when you feel that you should spend this time studying at home making up for the semesters which are around the corner. But even as you think so, you feel that even if you'd stayed at home, you wouldn't've studied anyway, so what the heck. Yet, sit for the class tests you must, and you're not prepared for them, because you've been trying (unsuccessfully) to prepare for the big exam at large, and not for the class test in particular. So you toil through the agonizingly slow duration of the class test. You write a few uncertain lines of an answer to a particular part of a particular question. Then you lift your pen off the paper in order to ponder over what could be witten next without sounding outrageously off the mark. You read what you have written. You re-read it. Then you read it again. No, nothing suggests itself, no logical sequence of sentences dawns on your mind, nor any hope-inspiring insertions. You stare and stare at the question paper, you try to glare an answer out of the printed questions, but they're stubbornly and determinedly set against you, they won't suggest a hint, they won't budge, they're stones mocking back at you.
Suddenly you realise that you've not written a word for a long time, and that has attracted the gaze of the invigilator on you. Hurriedly you bend down on your largely vacant answer sheet, and busy yourself in appearing busy writing, as though some bulb has suddenly lit up in all its glory in your mind, and you're trying to spread some of its glow on your answer sheet. After scribbling (or pretending to scribble) a few incoherent words, you look up to see if the invigilator has shifted her attention to some other hapless friend of yours. If she has, you take a sneak peek at your closest neighbour's paper, in the hope that his paper would provide the words of deliverance you so desparately need, only to find that same action reciprocated by your neighbour to you. However if the examiner hasn't taken her glance away from you, you have to resist the temptation to keep staring at her beautiful face and quickly transfer your gaze to the ceiling, pen in mouth, crease on forehead, contemplating in all sobriety what you've just written; then, with a meant-for-examiner-to-see shake of your head, you go about making corrections and lessening the glow on your recently lit answer script.
The examiner finally looks elsewhere, and you try once again to glean some lines of rescue from your surroundings, immediate or otherwise. You look over people's shoulders, ask them what's the answer to that or this, psst psst your friend two benches across from you, but are only met with shrugs, countenances as helpless as yours, and "I don't know"s. The one or two that are scribbling away at full steam don't have the time to look up, let alone act as saviours.
Philosophy dawns on you. Old phrases of 'all (read most) sailing in the same boat' and 'sufferers in a commmon cause' come back to you. You feel smug that you belong to the majority. You don't want to be a part of that inhuman little group who study all year, come prepared for every test, and ask for and fill page after extra page, while you can't fill one half of a sheet of the four you're initially provided with. ('After all,' you wonder, 'don't they have some feeling for us mortals?') You write your name very nicely and carefully on your answer sheet, copy a question or two word to word to fill up the remaining half of the sheet you've written your miserable incomplete answer on, color up the o's and underline the technical and important sounding words on the question paper. You stop staring at the letters on your question paper and start counting them. 299 in total. 299 printed characters. That's some feat.
All of a sudden you realise that it's been some time since you checked the time. You look at your watch, and voila!, time's almost up! You look around, and are relieved to find similar faces of elation all around you. The writomachines are still scribbling away, racing against time to complete the paper. You wish wickedly that may none of them finish in time. The examiner declares it's time, and you feel a sadistic satisfaction watching her snatching away the answer scripts from under the pens of some of the i-have-more-to-writes begging her to give them an extra minute. You self-righteously think that they've been provided enough time, and the examiner is correct in taking away their answer scripts.
You come out of the hall, and find one of your friends boasting to another, "D'ya know, I have attempted 4 marks out of the twenty in that test!" The other says, "Pooh! Pooh! I've attempted two and a half, and half of that is guesswork!" You catch up with them, and say, "Okay, which of you two geniuses can tell me how many printed characters were there in the question paper?" Silence. Both your friends have been taken off guard by this extraordinary talent, and are speechless. After an eloquent pause, you enlighten them: "Two-ninetynine!" You're greeted with 'wow's and pats on the back. You head home gloating in an unprecedented sense of accomplishent.
